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ORDE WINGATE AND THE SPECIAL NIGHT SQUADS – A FEASIBLE

POLICY FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM?

By

Simon Anglim

Abstract

This paper analyses the counter terrorist operations carried out by Captain (later Major

General) Orde Wingate in Palestine in 1938 and whether these might inform current

operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wingate’ s Special Night Squads were formed from British soldiers and Jewish police specifically to counter terrorist and sabotage attacks,

and their approach escalated from interdicting terrorist gangs to pre-emptive attacks on

suspected terrorist sanctuaries to reprisal attacks in response to terrorist atrocities. They

continued the British practice of using irregular units in counterinsurgency, which was sustained into the post war era and contributed to the evolution of British Special

Forces. Wingate’s methods proved effective in pacifying terrorist-infested areas and could certainly be applied again, but only in the face of ‘friction' arising from changes in

cultural attitudes since the 1930s, and from the political-strategic context of post-2001

counterinsurgent and counterterrorist operations..

Introduction

Captain Orde Wingate, an officer of the Royal Artillery, formed the Special Night Squads

(SNS), an early example of a specialist counterterrorist force, in Palestine in 1938, in

response to a specific strategic problem: Arab insurgents, infiltrating northern Palestine

and executing terrorist attacks in order to influence the local population and undermine

British government policy. Even a cursory overview of this problem suggests analogies

with the current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, at one level, this paper

investigates whether the Night Squad model may have some validity for these scenarios.

At another, it contends that, while Wingate’s methods proved effective at the tactical and

operational levels, and would do so now, there have been cultural changes since the

1930s, which, at the military and political-strategic levels, would make them

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unacceptable. Understanding these differences is useful in that they suggest factors likely

to affect current counter-terrorist operations.

Indeed, Wingate was not uncontroversial at the time. Wingate’s first biographer,

Leonard Mosley, claimed that Wingate used torture and summary execution from his

very first operation with the SNS1, an accusation repeated more recently, and with

enthusiasm, by the Israeli popular historian Tom Segev.2 There are no reliable

eyewitness accounts to support these allegations, and they have been rebutted in recent

publications3, but there is some contemporary testimony to suggest that the Night Squads

provoked unease: Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, who served alongside Wingate in 1940-41

and has subsequently involved himself in foreign affairs for over sixty years, expressed to

the author the view that the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) awarded Wingate for his

Palestine operations was ‘won not entirely honourably’ and that the SNS originated a ‘tit

for tat’ tradition aggravating Arab-Israeli relations into the 21st century4 , while as early

as 1938, Major General Richard O’Connor, commanding 6th Division, in southern

Palestine, expressed concern about the alleged ‘Black and Tan’ methods of the British

Army’s 16th Brigade, the parent formation of the SNS, drawing a comparison with the

notoriously thuggish units of the Royal Irish Police who had driven many Irish civilians

towards the Irish Republican Army during the ‘troubles’ of 1919-1922.5 Likewise, David

Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, unofficial leader of Palestine’s Jewish

community in the 1930s and later, first Prime Minister of Israel, received complaints (of

which he was dismissive) from Jewish settlers in northern Palestine, and from

commanders of the Haganah, the Jewish underground militia, that Wingate’s operations

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were actually worsening the situation in northern Palestine in that they were causing

unnecessary friction with the Arab population.6

Therefore, a key theme of this paper is political-cultural attitudes to terrorism and

methods used to deal with it. For purposes of this paper, terrorism will be treated as the

use of violence in order to influence the enemy’s political decision-making through

instilling an on-going sense of fear and insecurity that might cease if the terrorists’

demands are met. Charles Townshend identifies two broad government responses to

terrorism: anti-terrorism – defensive measures a state takes to protect its citizens from

terrorist attack, including special police powers, extraordinary legislation and

surveillance technology – and counter-terrorism. Counter-terrorism is aggressive and

sometimes pre-emptive, involving the use of military force to seek and destroy groups

identified by the state as ‘terrorists’ and those who harbour them. This is likely to be

controversial in liberal democracies, given the ethics of retribution, problems with

national and international law, and that it might be the terrorists’ aim to provoke over-

reaction from the authorities.7 Since September 2001, the USA and certain other states

have adopted a policy of global counter-terrorism, forming the context for current

operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Ariel

Sharon – who may have been influenced by him8 - Wingate was an unashamed advocate

of counter-terrorism, and that this played its part in shaping contemporary and current

attitudes to him must not be discounted.

The final theme of this paper is how far the SNS represent continuity or a break in

British Army counter-insurgency practice. Wingate’s actions formed part of a British

Army strategy having more in common with ‘small wars’ as fought in the Empire pre-

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1939, than with ‘counter-insurgency’ as developed post-war and, particularly, post-

Malaya. Where Wingate’s ideas come closest to British Army counter-insurgent

methods, post-war, is in his furthering the practice of using small, specialist units,

combining British troops with local volunteers, to wage war in the insurgents’ own

territory using their own operational and tactical methods against them. This has been a

key aspect of British Army counter-insurgent operations since 1945 also, and the direct

and indirect influence Wingate exerted upon this will be discussed below.

The Historical Background and the Origins of the Revolt

The British Empire administered Palestine from 1919 to 1948, under the terms of the

1918 Peace Settlement and a League of Nations Mandate. Consequently, the British

Army, supported by the Palestine Police, a mainly Arab force under British officers, was

responsible for security and order in Palestine throughout this time. Moreover, the

Balfour Declaration of 1917 committed Britain to use her best endeavours to assist the

creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, a 90% Arab region.9 Despite this,

there was relative peace in Palestine until the mid 1930s, when a great spasm of anti-

Semitism in Europe, beginning in Poland and reaching unprecedented levels of

viciousness with the rise of the Nazis, resulted in Jewish immigration to Palestine rising

from an average 4,000 per year in 1931 to 67,000 per year by the latter part of the

decade.10

The perceived existential threat to the Arab population of Palestine resulted in an

insurgency bearing some resemblance to that faced by Western forces in Iraq, post-2003.

Then, as now, this was driven by a mixture of Arab nationalism and militant Islam, and

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mixed local volunteers and levies, of varying levels of enthusiasm and competence, with

foreign fighters demonstrating higher levels of motivation and training.11 There are also

parallels with the currently fashionable concepts of ‘Complex Insurgency’ or ‘Fourth

Generation Warfare’12, the insurgents using various methods to try to influence public

opinion in the wider world, reports, for instance, being circulated to the press in Axis

Germany and Italy alleging British atrocities against the Arab population.13 So concerned

were the British authorities about these that the General Officer Commanding (GOC)

Palestine, General Sir Robert Haining, wrote to his divisional commanders, Major

Generals Bernard Montgomery and Richard O’Connor, in November 1938, ordering

them to take ‘exemplary’ action against soldiers under their command who indulged in

‘unnecessary violence, vindictiveness [and] killing in cold blood’, all deemed by Haining

to be ‘un-British’.14

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The insurgency began with sporadic attacks on Jewish settlements in 1935, then, in

1936, escalated to a general strike, accompanied by the appearance of guerrilla units

in the countryside.15 These were well drilled and disciplined, and formed largely of

volunteers from Syria and Iraq - most of the Iraqis ex-members of that country's

army - infiltrating via Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon.16 The commander of the

guerrillas, Fawzi al-Quwaqji, was a Syrian Druze who had been commandant of the

Iraqi military academy and was based, for most of this period, in Damascus.17 It is an

indicator of the ‘regular’ nature of the guerrillas that Quwaqji produced a simple

written tactical doctrine and disciplinary code for them.

18

Apart from one period in

late 1938, unless coerced by the guerrillas, the local Palestinian Arabs were generally

law-abiding and even willing to cooperate with British forces, smaller numbers even

taking vigilante retribution against the guerrillas.19

Consequently, it can be contended that the paradigm of Marxist-Leninist or Maoist

‘revolutionary war’ did not apply here20, nor did subsequent operations resemble anything

described by TE Lawrence.21 Rather, what was happening was less an insurgency than an

invasion, using guerrilla and terrorist methods at the operational and tactical levels, in

support of a small but obtrusive group of mainly clerical agitators. The Moqtada al-Sadrs

of 1930s Palestine were the Syrian imam, Sheikh Muhammad Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who

had been preaching jihad against European imperialism since before the First World War

and, after Qassam was killed in combat with the British in 1935, Haj-Amin al-Husseini,

the Mufti of Jerusalem and Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, the Arab shadow

‘government’ tolerated by the British until late in the rebellion, who skilfully combined

inflammatory sermonising to the Arab population with affability towards British

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officials.22 As for its character, the Palestine crisis represents an early form of a type of

conflict British soldiers found themselves caught in the middle of repeatedly from 1945

and which has become common globally post-1990: an ethno-religious clash in which

control of territory, and the mass attrition of the enemy through battle or massacre, are

the main strategic aims, and any attempt at even-handedness by third parties, as the

British were in Palestine, is viewed as treachery.23 Yet, even-handedness marked the

British government response throughout, beginning with the announcement, in August

1936, that a Royal Commission, under Lord Peel, would visit Palestine to investigate

both Arab and Jewish grievances; throughout the crisis, the government viewed the role

of military force firstly as to restore respect for British authority and secondly, to restore

conditions in which methods other than violence could be used to seek redress.24

The techniques the British Army applied in Palestine accorded with the first aim and

deviated subtly from the second, and were rooted in the ‘small wars’ practices described

twenty years before by Colonel Charles Callwell.25 The British Army's underlying

assumption, in waging such ‘small wars’ in the Empire, was Hobbesian: resistance to

Imperial authority was a criminal act, arising either from banditry or tribal rivalry getting

out of hand or from natives being stirred up by agitators: order must be restored quickly

and without compromise if bloody chaos was to be avoided.26 The Army's proposed

solution, in most cases, was to go on the offensive as soon as possible, with emphasis on

killing or arresting the leaders and agitators, an approach observable in Ireland in 1919-

22, Iraq in 1920-21, the Moplah rebellion in India in 1921-22, Burma in 1931 and in

Palestine from 1936.27 The garrison of Palestine, one brigade, was reinforced by two

divisions and four RAF bomber squadrons, forming the Palestine Expeditionary Force,

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under Lieutenant General Sir John Dill.28 Over the next three years, the Army’s aim was

to instil the view that resisting British authority would bring swift, harsh retribution, there

being much use of what Callwell called ‘severity.’29 The death penalty was enforced for

saboteurs and others, life imprisonment for those supporting the guerrillas, and corporal

punishment for juvenile offenders; collective punishment of pro-guerrilla communities

included fines, forced labour, and blowing up suspect's houses.30 Tactics were devised by

the Commander of Troops, Palestine, Brigadier JF ‘Black Jack’ Evetts, and were based

on those used in the Irish Rebellion and on the Northwest Frontier. Motorised infantry

columns swept guerrilla-infested areas on a wide front, these being small enough to tempt

the rebels to try their chances and mobile enough to converge ‘on the sound of the guns’.

Wireless allowed them to communicate with each other and to call on air or artillery

support, which would pin the guerrillas in place, allowing infantry to get within grenade

and bayonet range, or other columns to move around guerrilla positions and surround

them while they were pounded with artillery or from the air, a distant forerunner of ‘find-

fix-strike’. 31

After a series of operations, punctuated by truces, by March 1938, the British Army

had, effectively, annihilated the guerrillas, prompting a change in insurgent strategy.32

The insurgency switched to terrorism, involving murdering or kidnapping British

officials, Jewish civilians and law-abiding Arabs, sabotage of British facilities and night-

time attacks on Jewish settlements.33 This was financed by gun running and drug

smuggling and by a protection racket wringing money and concealment from Arab

businesses and villages; indeed, by now the insurgents had been infiltrated thoroughly by

Palestine's two most prominent bandit chieftains and these criminal activities increasingly

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became ends in themselves.34 By May 1938, British forces were overstretched badly,

with single platoons occupying Arab villages for extended periods and frequently coming

under sustained attack from larger Arab gangs.35 By October 1938, the GOC, Haining,

was confessing to London that he had to cancel all offensive operations and that, the

British had, effectively, lost control of large parts of the country. More worrying still,

because of this, the Arab population was starting to fall in behind the insurgents. Most

ominously – and another echo of parts of Iraq, post 2003 - this included most of the

Palestine Police, there being numerous cases of Arab police aiding the theft of weapons

from police stations.

36

The origins and ethos of the SNS

It was because of this that Haining was willing to support the proposal made to his

predecessor, General Sir Archibald Wavell, by Wingate, then working in the intelligence

cell of his HQ in Jerusalem, to form counter-terrorist units to hunt gangs operating by

night in rural areas. Wingate subsequently rose to major general, having commanded

covert operations in Italian-occupied Ethiopia in 1940-41, and his long-range penetration

groups, or Chindits, in two operations behind Japanese lines in Burma in 1943 and 1944.

He is one of the most controversial British commanders of the past hundred years, his

idiosyncratic personality, and the alleged radicalism of his military ideas, making him

loved or loathed by his contemporaries with little middle ground.37 A detailed discussion

of the ‘Wingate Controversy’ is beyond this paper, but some of its themes are visible. A

common claim by Wingate's admirers is that he was a ‘military genius’38, but his papers

suggest less a great original thinker than an astute cherry-picker and synthesiser of

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existing ideas and who had no compunction about presenting them as his own. However,

where Wingate seems to have been original, in his day, is in seeing war as a clash of

cultures, dialectical and human centred. Faced with a military problem, his aim seems to

have been to turn British organisational virtues - better training, better communications,

more aggression and initiative from junior commanders - into tactical advantages by

exploiting enemy weaknesses in these same areas. These weaknesses are often expressed

in the language of ethnic stereotyping - Arabs were cowards who could not stand up to a

straight fight, Italians were soft and panicky, Japanese were brave but obtuse39 - and

while this may seem flawed to the post-colonial reader, such appreciations were common

at the time and the methods rooted in them often proved effective in practice. In

Palestine, Wingate believed that the superior discipline, initiative and skill at arms of

British soldiers, if tied to an efficient intelligence and information network, would allow

them to defeat many times their own number of badly trained and poorly coordinated

terrorists.40

What Wingate proposed was a ‘counter-gang’ strategy, referring explicitly in official

papers to ‘government gangs’ hunting terrorist gangs on their own territory and using

some of their own operational and tactical methods against them. 41 In his view, the best

way to deal with these gangs would be to deploy what he called ‘moving ambushes’,

specially trained patrol units, sweeping known infiltration routes, or, preferably, directed

towards detected incoming gangs, and drilled to deliver an immediate and effective attack

if one was encountered.42 This represents a practical example of what Sir Robert

Thompson called the ‘tomcat theory’: if one wishes to make contact with an infiltrating

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enemy force, put another force in the same element and with the same intention: a tomcat

in a dark alley will always find another tomcat.43

Wingate had used this method against Shifta bandits while serving with the Sudan

Defence Force ten years before44, and the deployment of such forces has been common

practice in British Army counterinsurgency operations for at least 100 years. Callwell

recommended using ‘armed scouts’, recruited locally, to find and fix enemy forces in

rough country45, and on the Northwest Frontier in 1919, a Corps of Gurkha Scouts - two

platoons of picked volunteers - carried out night-time ambush work against the Pathans,

at one point wiping out forty in one ambush

46

; during the Irish ‘Troubles’ of 1919-1922,

the Auxiliary Cadets of the Royal Irish Constabulary carried out raids and ambushes from

bases inside IRA territory, and in Burma in 1931, ‘packs’ of local irregulars, commanded

by British officers, executed what would later be called ‘search and destroy’ missions in

rebel-controlled areas cordoned by regular formations.47 Post-war, two of Wingate’s

subordinates from Burma, Brigadiers Michael Calvert and Bernard Fergusson, were key

in re-introducing such practices and, in Calvert’s case, formalising them. Fergusson

revived the Night Squads in Palestine in 1946-47, this time against Jewish insurgents,

while Calvert re-formed the Special Air Service (SAS) as a counter-insurgency unit in

Malaya in the 1950s; subsequently, Frank Kitson formed ‘counter-gangs’ to deal with

Mau Mau in Kenya in the 1950s, while the Omani rebellion of the 1960s saw British SAS

troops operate in close cooperation with Omani firqa tribal militia.48 The link with the

SAS is perhaps unsurprising, as some of these units were demonstrating some (not all) of

the characteristics of Special Forces even before 1939. They consisted of volunteers,

having to meet certain criteria for selection, and operated in small units, of company

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strength or below. However, they were directed by headquarters several levels higher,

the Gurkha Scouts being controlled at corps level, while the SNS were formed on the

orders of the GOC Palestine, and was under administrative command of 16 Brigade. The

British Army has a tradition of using special and irregular forces in both ‘high-’ and

‘low-intensity conflict’, reaching its apotheosis in the Second World War. Of those

speculating on why this should be so, General Sir John Hackett and William Seymour,

both involved in British Special Forces in 1939-45, saw their origins in the individualism

and enterprise of the ‘British national character’. 49 Callwell was more sanguine: local

volunteers under British command were useful in guerrilla and ‘bush’ warfare, as they

brought local geographical and cultural awareness, and knowledge of the enemy. He

divided these volunteers into two types: ‘natives’, whose activities should be confined to

scouting, and white settlers who could move beyond reconnaissance into ‘skirmishing’. 50

Wingate’s SNS can be seen as part of this tradition. He insisted they should include

personnel from the Jewish Settlement Police (JSP, Notrim in Hebrew), a part-time

volunteer force formed to protect Jewish settlements from the terrorists, and should

operate from Jewish settlements likely to come under attack.51 Consequently, the SNS

were infiltrated thoroughly by the Haganah.52 Wingate intended this: he was a fanatical

Zionist, vitriolically dismissive of Islam and Arab culture, advocating the forcible

incorporation of Transjordan into Palestine, ‘ethnic cleansing’ Arabs from contested

areas and demanding that Britain create a Jewish state in Palestine as a matter of political

and strategic urgency.53 However, the arguments he presented his superiors for having

Jews in the squads were practical - they were well-educated and therefore easy to train,

had a vested interest in helping the British, and, unlike the Arabs, most could speak all

12



three languages of Palestine.54 Moreover, fighting was tasked initially to British infantry

soldiers, from the Manchester Regiment, the Ulster Rifles and the Royal West Kents, the

three battalions in 16th Brigade, the main British formation in Galilee, supplied when

Evetts, now 16th Brigade's commander, ordered their Commanding Officers to find

twelve men and an officer each for unspecified ‘tough work’. Jewish police participated

initially as guides, scouts and interpreters - however, as operations continued, they played

a more prominent combat role and Jewish sergeants sometimes commanded patrols. 55

The Haganah viewed the Night Squads as a means of obtaining military training and

continuing the inter-communal struggle under the aegis of the British Army: indeed, they

apparently regarded the SNS as much as a Haganah unit – Plugot Ha’esh, the ‘Unit of

Fire’ – as a British one.56 Two such trained were Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, both

later paying tribute to the decisive effect Wingate had on the development of the

Haganah.57 This raises issues for those hoping to enlist participants in inter-communal

conflicts or resistance movements as allies, the most important being how far they bring

their own political-strategic agenda with them, and how this might affect the aims and

methods of the outsiders soliciting their support. Wingate recognised this with his

Haganah, as did his distant (and much-loathed) relative, TE Lawrence, with the Bedu of

the Hejaz. In both cases, the locals’ programme was recognised, accommodated and

turned into a cause to fight for, although in both cases, there were political repercussions

later on.58 More recent operations have seen local agendas either misread or not

recognised at all and relationships not developing as hoped, as, for instance, between the

Americans and Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, or again with Afghan warlords in 2001.59

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With Evetts' support, Wingate was authorised by Haining to form his first squads to

patrol a favourite terrorist target, the oil pipeline running across northern Palestine from

Iraq to Haifa, which, by spring 1938, was being blown up several times a night.60 Wingate

began by tying the network of agents, informers and information gatherers he had created

in Galilee to the SNS, identifying bottlenecks on the insurgents' routes of infiltration and

supply, upon which ambushes could be concentrated. Frustratingly for the historian,

Wingate’s papers skim over the intelligence aspect of his operations, he preferring to

concentrate upon organisation, tactics and outcomes. Patrols consisted of ten-man

squads, trained in set tactical responses through battle drill, Wingate being one of the first

British officers to use this training method.61 Each patrol had two or three scouts moving

ahead of the main body, one sometimes being Wingate himself: should they detect a

gang, the drill would begin with the scouts sending torch signals to the main squad to

adopt ambush formation; when the gang was level, the squad would throw grenades and

then charge with bayonets fixed, Wingate, like Callwell and Evetts, being a lifelong

believer in the terror effect of cold steel. If meeting a gang too large for one squad to

handle, they would fire flares to draw in other squads, Wingate also believing this would

scare the terrorists into retreat.62 With small sub-units, operating semi-independently in

hostile areas by night, over-rigid control from the centre may prove counter-productive.

Consequently, Wingate applied what might, anachronistically, be identified as ‘mission

command’63, the job of the Night Movement Group Commander – Wingate himself –

being to oversee training and recruitment, coordinate with other units in the area, collate

and issue intelligence and information, and deploy the squads on operations rather than

exercise command over units in contact with the enemy, although, as noted already,

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Wingate accompanied patrols frequently and, indeed, was wounded in action on one

occasion.64 Another factor in ‘mission command’, a loose, and, in this case, organic

tactical ‘doctrine’, was instilled via battle drills.65 Another aspect of ‘mission

command’ is emphasis upon personal leadership and tactical nous. These are difficult to

quantify, but it is notable that a number of SNS officers and squadsmen were to rise to

senior rank in the British and Israeli Armies, both forces placing a high premium on these

qualities. Wingate became a major general and won the Distinguished Service Order

(DSO), and two bars, this being a British decoration awarded to officers of the rank of

captain or above for outstanding command ‘under fire’. Lieutenant HEN Bredin of the

Royal Ulster Rifles, who commanded numerous SNS patrols under Wingate, also rose to

major general and won four DSOs and the Military Cross (MC) – an award given for

outstanding leadership in combat to officers below the rank of captain - and two bars,

while another British SNS commander, Lieutenant Rex King-Clark, won the MC for his

service in Palestine and rose to command his battalion in 1944-45. If including the

impromptu (and unauthorised) Notrim patrols Wingate organised before and during the

SNS period, among his Jewish soldiers were the future Israel Defence Force Generals,

Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon.

The SNS in action

In early June 1938, Night Squads destroyed three Arab gangs and attacks on the pipeline

ceased temporarily.66 However, the gangs switched to carrying out large numbers of

simultaneous sabotage attacks by small parties - what the Jews called ‘pellets’67 Wingate's

response was twofold. Firstly, he acquired some machine guns from 16th Brigade and

15



switched to using large numbers of small, static ambushes, which killed enough saboteurs

for attacks on the pipeline to cease altogether. Secondly, he switched from attrition to

deterrence, beginning a programme of patrols ‘visiting’ Arab villages by night in order to

impress upon the local Arabs that the British were in the area and watching them. This

technique seems to have been revived by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins of the 1st Royal

Irish Regiment in Iraq in 2003, he paying surprise night time ‘visits’ to known Ba’athists

in his operational area to let them know their behaviour was under scrutiny, this

forestalling at least one murder of a local helping the British.68 How many terrorist

attacks Wingate’s ‘visits’ prevented will never be known, but what is known is that they

were just as frequent, on a greater scale, and more aggressive: some involved searches for

arms and fugitives, and some of these could be highly aggressive; any Arab resisting

arrest could expect at least a punch in the mouth, and Wingate, on at least one occasion,

extracted information from suspects by forcing them to swallow sand soaked in oil. 69

By late June, with Evetts' backing, Wingate escalated his deterrence policy to pre-

emptive raids on Arab villages known to be harbouring terrorists, the first, on the village

of Jurdieh, involving Wingate leading three patrols across the Lebanon frontier to hit the

village from behind, killing fifteen terrorists: the Headman of Jurdieh then asked the local

Jews for a truce, which was upheld.70 In July, Wingate carried out a large raid,

involving an almost company-sized force, on the village of Dabburiya, killing twelve

terrorists and for which he was awarded his first DSO.71 By now, Wingate was

expressing the view, in official correspondence, that all rural Arabs were potential

terrorists, most of them backed the insurgents, and that the aim of British action should

be to keep them in line through threat of punishment. He put down cessation of attacks

16



on the pipeline to ‘the experience that anyone hanging about the line for an unlawful

purpose was liable swiftly and silently to vanish away’ and that sabotage ceased due to

offensive action by his SNS.72

It is unsurprising, therefore, that Wingate's activities culminated in reprisal attacks.

The best known of these came in October 1938, when a large Arab gang entered the town

of Tiberias and murdered nineteen Jewish civilians, mainly children. In reaction to the

news, Wingate redeployed two squads from another mission and ambushed the gang on

its way out of Tiberias, killing forty of them.73 The next day, the rest of the gang was

attacked in its hideout at Mount Tabor, and another fourteen were killed.

74

A few days

later, a SNS force, not under Wingate's command, raided the village of Hitin, during the

course of which three Arabs were shot, one after firing upon the squad.75 By this time,

Wingate had returned to the UK, and was not to command the SNS in action again.

The SNS Assessed

At the tactical, operational and military-strategic levels, Wingate's methods worked. The

attacks on the pipeline ceased while he was patrolling it, and resumed after he left. The

Jurdieh raid calmed down one of the most violent parts of Palestine. 16th Brigade

reported that the gangs were still in disarray a year later, and in autumn 1938, the impetus

of the terrorist offensive clearly shifted southward, away from Galilee.76 Moreover, the

SNS model was applied in other parts of Palestine and continued into 1939, Major

General Bernard Montgomery, who took over command in northern Palestine at this

time, being an admirer of Evetts and the night squads. SNS participated in the renewed

British offensive of 1939 which finally scattered the guerrillas altogether, 16th Brigade

17



reporting in May 1939 that they had dislocated comprehensively the gangs from their

support system in the villages of Galilee.77

Conclusions

In terms the development of British ‘small wars’ strategy, Orde Wingate continued the

practice of deploying small, specialist units combining regular troops with local irregulars

inside insurgent-controlled or threatened areas and using the insurgents’ own tactical and

operational methods against them. There is little practical reason why this model could

not be applied in current operations. Fighting patrols and ambushes are basic infantry

tasks, and the SNS were not ‘special forces’ per se, but soldiers from three line infantry

battalions working alongside Jewish police. It would therefore not be difficult to assign

infantry or even local home guard units to interdict terrorist supplies and reinforcements,

to execute pre-emptive attacks on those who dispatch murder gangs or bombers or just to

‘visit’ those who might be about to misbehave. Indeed, British and American Special

Forces have performed some of these very tasks in Iraq.79 However, the situation faced by

Western forces in the War on Terror is so complex and all encompassing that it would be

facile to suggest it could be resolved through a few doctrinal ‘quick fixes’ at the

operational and tactical levels.

Even a cursory study of the SNS, such as this one, reveals methods, and, above all, a

mindset, rooted in their times and which might not find acceptance at other times or

places. Wingate himself was a lifelong advocate of ‘severity’. In 1943, he considered

initially building operations in Japanese-occupied Burma around popular resistance and

local guerrillas. He rejected this, arguing that insurgencies are most effective against

18



regular forces wary of casualties and constrained by a morality that forbad harsh

reprisals, particularly against civilians. If, however, they faced an opponent prepared to

murder civilians and prisoners or destroy property in reprisal, then local insurgents' ties to

the populace would constrain them, operationally and tactically. It was obvious to

Wingate that the Japanese, the Germans and the Soviets fit into the latter category. 79

There are several reasons why coalition forces deployed in the War on Terror must

currently try to fit into Wingate’s first category. Modern ‘complex insurgency’ or ‘fourth

generation warfare’ aims at demoralising the general public in the target society, and, at

another level, at subverting disaffected elements to induce them to join the insurgency.

79

Democracies are particularly vulnerable to this kind of attack, due to the power of a mass

electorate, a free and unfettered mass media using technology, unknown in Wingate’s

day, to beam words and images instantly to a global audience, and an entire legal, media

and political sub-culture waiting to pounce on even the suggestion of impropriety.

Moreover, this takes place currently in the context of a global war against terror in which

coalition forces are deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a ‘liberating’ mission,

aimed ostensibly at replacing brutal, despotic regimes with liberal-democratic ones

tolerant of dissent and respectful of the rule of law.81 Misconduct towards civilians or

prisoners can undermine belief in this mission perhaps less in the countries concerned –

where soldiers are often expected to be ‘brutal and licentious’ - than in the Coalition

forces’ home societies, as reactions to the My Lai, Abu Ghraib and Haditha episodes

indicates. Indeed, as the case of Haditha (still sub judice at the time of writing82)

demonstrates, the mere allegation of transgressive behaviour can stimulate public opinion

against a war, particularly if that war is controversial to begin with.83

19



That the British Army and elements of the Jewish leadership were concerned that

Arab insurgent ‘atrocity stories’ might prove effective as propaganda, and that the

activities of certain units might be playing into their hands, has been mentioned already,

as has concern about Wingate’s impact upon inter-communal relations. It is worth

recalling that there have been several cases from Iraq where use of robust, but legitimate

means of prisoner restraint has prompted allegations of ‘war crimes’ (albeit from those

with little operational experience and with axes to grind against the alleged

‘perpetrators’). 84 Interestingly, one of the spurious claims made against Colonel Collins –

which seem to have initiated this phenomenon - stemmed from the arrest of a suspected

insurgent during his night-time ‘visits’.85 More seriously, forcing somebody to swallow

sand, oil-soaked or not, was identified as a form of torture, when used by the Japanese, as

long ago as the 1940s.86 Wingate’s use of these methods, and his unabashed advocacy of

pre-emption and reprisal, are matters of record, begging the question of whether a revival

of the SNS would be worth the risk politically, whatever their virtues at the tactical level.

NOTES

1. Leonard Mosley, Gideon Goes to War (London: Arthur Barker 1955), pp.58-59

2. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate

(London: Abacus 2000), pp.414, 430-431; Michael B Oren, ‘Orde Wingate: Friend

under Fire” Azure Issue 10, (www.azure.org.il/10-oren.html), pp.3, 12

3. See Simon Anglim, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper

No.49: Orde Wingate, the Iron Wall and Counter-Terrorism in Palestine 1937-

39 (Shrivenham: SCSI 2005), pp.46-48; Oren, Op.Cit, pp.10-12

20

http://www.azure.org.il/10-oren.html

http://www.azure.org.il/10-oren.html



4. Interview with the author of 25 August 2004

5. O’Connor to his wife of 2-3 November 1938, LHCMA O’Connor Papers 3/1/18

6. David Ben-Gurion, ‘Our Friend: What Wingate did for Us’, Jewish Observer and

Middle East Review 27, September 1963, LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File

15/3/11, pp.15-16

7. Charles Townshend, Terrorism: A Brief Introduction (Oxford: OUP 2002),

pp.114-139; also discussed in Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works:

Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven & London:

Yale University Press 2002), pp.105-130

8. Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought (London: Cassell

1977), pp.247-248

9. Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Siege: The Story of Israel and Zionism (London:

Grafton 1986), pp.87-90, 125; Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs

under the British Mandate (London: Abacus 2000), pp.36-39

10. O'Brien, Op.Cit, pp.202-203

11. Ibid, pp.209-212; Segev, Op.Cit, pp.359-363

12. John Mackinlay; Royal United Services Institute Whitehall Paper No.44:

Defeating Complex Insurgency (London: RUSI 2005), especially pp.19-40; Colonel

Thomas X Hammes USMC, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21 st Century (St Paul

MN: Zenith Press 2006), especially pp.207-224

13. PRO WO32/4562, ‘Hostile Propaganda in Palestine 1938: unfounded allegations

against behaviour of British troops2, 1939; Appendix D to PRO WO33/1436,

‘Information for Commanders of reinforcing troops in Palestine’, 1936; Folios 7a, 32a,

21



40a, 41b, 55a, 57g in PRO WO191/86, ‘Report of Palestine Royal Commission: events

preceding and following publication’, June-September 1937

14. Haining to Montgomery and O’Connor, undated of December 1938, LHCMA

O’Connor Papers, File 3/2/8

15. PRO WO191/70, ‘Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine, 1936',

February 1938, pp.1-2, 22-23, 159-161

16. Ibid, pp.1-2, 160

17. Cutting from the New York Times of 16 October 1936, in PRO CO733/316/1,

‘Interests and Opinions of the USA on the situation in Palestine', August-December 1936

18. Ibid, and see Appendix B to PRO WO191/88, ‘History and Notes on Operations:

Disturbances in Palestine', 1936-1939 for the insurgent ‘doctrine'; Segev, Op.Cit, pp.363,

368-371

19. PRO WO191/70, pp.1-2, 160

20. See Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (London: Souvenir Press 1998); Mao Tse-

Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Praeger 1961); John Shy and Thomas W

Collier, ‘Revolutionary War', in Peter Paret (Editor) Makers of Modern Strategy from

Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: OUP 1994), pp.815-862

21. See TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (London: Jonathan Cape 1935),

pp.195-202

22. O'Brien, Op.Cit, pp.209, 212; Segev, Op.Cit, pp.359-363

23. For a summary of this model, refer to Robert E Harkavy and Stephanie G

Neuman, Warfare and the Third World (New York: Palgrave 2001), pp.201-205, 230-232

22



24. See, for instance, Army Council Instruction of 7 September 1936, Folio 7a in

PRO WO32/4174, ‘Army Council Instructions to Lieutenant General JG Dill regarding

the command of the Palestine Armed Forces’, 1936

25. Colonel CE Callwell, Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice (Facsimile of

3rd Edition, Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press 1996); see also Field

Service Regulations 1929 Edition (London: HMSO 1929) Volume II, pp.204-207

26. See, for instance, ‘MFC', ‘Raids and Reprisals on the North-West Frontier',

Journal of the United Services Institute of India [ JUSII ] Volume LIV, 1922, pp.383-392;

Anonymous, ‘The Burmese Rebellion 1931', JUSII Volume LX 1932, pp.146-150, 153-

154

27. Annex F to PRO WO33/1436 ‘Information for Commanders of Reinforcing

Troops in Palestine 1936'; PRO WO141/93, pp.22, 30-31; PRO WO191/70, p.161; PRO

WO191/75, ‘Preliminary Notes on Lessons of Palestine Rebellion, 1936', Paras.26-29;

AF Perrott, Inspector General of Police, Northwest Frontier Province, to Major General

Richard O'Connor of 18 October 1938, LHCMA O'Connor Papers File 3/2/1;

Anonymous, ‘The Burmese Rebellion 1931', JUSII LXII 1932, pp.157-161; Callwell,

Op.Cit, pp.41-41, 72, 76-78, 97-107, 147-149; Captain W St J Carpendale, ‘The Moplah

Rebellion 1921-22', JUSII Volume LVI 1926, pp.79, 82, 86-87; Captain CMP Durnford,

‘The Arab Insurrection of 1920-21', JUSII Volume LIV, pp.188-189; Major General

Charles W Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London: Macmillan 1939), pp.14-21, 99-100

28. PRO WO32/4500, ‘Notification to Parliament of calling out of Section "A" Army

Reserve to from Palestine re-inforcements [sic]', 1936; ‘Correspondent in Jerusalem',

‘Service Problems in Palestine', RUSI Journal Volume LXXXI 1936, pp.805-80

23



29. Callwell, Op.Cit, pp.40-41

30. The Palestine Martial Law (Defence) Order in Council 1936, and other papers in

PRO WO32/9618, ‘Palestine Disturbances, Martial Law Policy', 1936-1938; PRO

WO32/4562 ‘Hostile Propaganda in Palestine 1938: unfounded allegations against

behaviour of British troops', pp.9-11

31. PRO WO191/70; PRO WO191/75, pp.10, 26, 29; PRO WO33/1436, Paras.15-36

32. PRO WO32/4562, pp.3-4; PRO WO32/9401 ‘Disturbances 1936', p.4; PRO

WO191/88 ‘History and notes on operations: disturbances in Palestine', p.4

33. PRO WO191/88, pp.4-5; ‘Kidnappers in Palestine - The Terrorists' Technique',

Daily Telegraph 28 December 1938, LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File 15/5/297

34. PRO WO32/4562, p.4

35. Ibid, pp.1-2, 5; PRO WO32/9497, ‘Operations in Palestine, 20 May-30 July

1938', pp.1-2, 6; Enclosure 1c to PRO CO733/383/1, ‘Police Reorganisation, Sir C

Tegart's Mission to Palestine'

36. PRO WO32/9498, ‘Operations in Palestine 1 Aug- 31 Oct 1938', pp.2, 5; Stuart

Emeny, ‘Arabs gain control over large areas in Palestine’, News Chronicle, 12 October

1938, LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File 15/5/297

37. See Peter Mead, Orde Wingate and the Historians (Braunton: Merlin 1987)

pp.139-184

38. Most notably in Ibid, pp.17-24; David Rooney, Wingate and the Chindits:

Redressing the Balance (London: Arms & Armour 1994), especially pp.9-10, 201-249;

Sir Robert Thompson, Make for the Hills (London: Leo Cooper 1989), pp.71-76

24



39. ‘Appreciation by Captain OC Wingate, of Force HQ Intelligence on 5.6.38 at

NAZARETH of the possibilities of night movements by armed forces of the Crown with

the object of putting an end to terrorism in northern Palestine' [hereafter ‘Night

Movements'], LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File 15/5/3000, pp.2-3; Brigadier OC

Wingate, ‘Intruder Mission', War , No.48, 10 July 1943, pp.5, 7-8

40. ‘Night Movements', p.3

41. Ibid, p.2

42. Ibid, p.2

43. Thompson, Op.Cit, p.31; Thompson, then an officer in the Royal Air Force,

served with Wingate on both Chindit operations and was a staunch posthumous defender

of his reputation.

44. Bimbashi OC Wingate, ‘Report on DINDER Patrol carried out by two sections of

No.2 Idara EAC from 11/4/31 to 26/4/31', p.1; OC Wingate, ‘Report on No.11 Patrol

EAC 1932', pp.5-6; Bimbashi Wingate EAC, ‘Note on Game Protection on Dinder and

Rahad Rivers’, p.1, all in Imperial War Museum Wingate Early Life Papers, Box III;

Simon Anglim, ‘Orde Wingate in Sudan, 1928-1933: Formative Experiences of the

Chindit Commander’, RUSI Journal Vol.148 No.3, June 2003

45. Callwell, Op.Cit, pp.144, 339-345, 350-351

46. India, Northwest Frontier Corps Troops - Corps of Gurkha Scouts, War Diary,

1919 May-1919 August, in PRO WO95/5390

47. PRO WO141/93, Volume I, p.24, Volume IV, pp.68-69; PRO CJ4/152, ‘The

Black and Tans', p.1; ‘Burmese Rebellion', pp.160-161; Charles Townshend, ‘The Anglo-

Irish War', unpublished paper presented to the Institute for National Strategic Studies,

25



Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, pp.15,

17

48. See Robert B Asprey, War in the Shadows (London: Little Brown 1994), pp.425-

427, 639, 1126-1127; Tony Geraghty, Who Dares Wins: The Special Air Service 1950-

1992 (London: Little Brown 1992), pp.187-188, 198-203, 325, 331, 333-334, 336-338

49. William Seymour , British Special Forces (London: Sidgwick and Jackson 1985),

pp.5-6

50. Callwell, Op.Cit, pp.144, 345, 350-351

51. David Ben-Gurion, ‘Britain's Contribution to Arming the Hagana’, Jewish

Observer and Middle East Review, 20 September 1963, pp.13-14; Memo from Sir Arthur

Wauchope, Governor General Palestine, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26

January 1937, in PRO WO32/4178; PRO WO191/70, p.118

52. David Ben-Gurion, ‘Our Friend: What Wingate did for us', Jewish Observer and

Middle East Review, 27 September 1963, p.15; Captain OC Wingate GSI, ‘Principles

Governing the Employment of Special Night Squads, Nazareth 10.6.37' [a misprint for 10

June 1938], LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers, p.3

53. Ben-Gurion, ‘Friend', p.15; David Ha'Cohen, ‘The Story of a Historic Friendship',

Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, 17 October 1969, p.15; Christopher Sykes,

Orde Wingate (London: Collins 1959), pp.111, 113, 121-122

54. ‘Night Movements', p.3

55. Maurice Samuelson, ‘Return to Ein Harod: Major General HEN Bredin describes

the Night Squads', Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, October 17 1969, p.20

56. Ben-Gurion, ‘Friend’, p.15

26



57. Yigal Allon, The Making of Israel’s Army (London: Valentine, Mitchell 1980),

pp.8-11; Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1976),

pp.44-48

58. Lawrence spoke of ‘Doctrine, the idea that produces friendliness…’ in ‘The

Evolution of a Revolt’, Army Quarterly Volume I Number I, p.69 and in his entry on

‘Guerrilla Warfare’ in the 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica, reprinted in Gerard Chaliand

(editor), The Art of War in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press

1994), p.890; Wingate wrote about this issue, including a pungent critique of Lawrence’s

‘doctrine’, in his ‘Appreciation of the Ethiopian Campaign’, several draft copies in the

IWM Wingate Abyssinia Papers, pp.3-7, 10, 13-14

59. General Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: Regan 2004), pp.309-

313; George Friedman, America’s Secret War: Inside the Worldwide Struggle Between

the United States and its Enemies (London: Little Brown 2004), pp.3-25, 163-165, 192-

100; Hammes, Op.Cit, pp.130-133; Bob Woodward, Bush at War (London: Pocket Books

2002), pp.141-144, 155, 230, 252, 254, 260, 266-268, 273, 292, 295, 299

60. PRO WO33/1436 Part II Para.8; PRO WO190/70, pp.131-132

61. David French, Raising Churchill's Army: The British Army and the War Against

Germany 1919-1945 (Oxford: OUP 2000), pp.21, 218-219

62. Captain OC Wingate, ‘Organisation and Training of Special Night Squads (SNS),

HQ 16 Inf Bde No.1127/1, August 1938', in LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File 15/5/300,

Appendix, p.2

27



63. For an introduction to this concept, see Robert Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver –

Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle (Novato, CA: Presidio 1991), pp.50, 52,

113-118

64. ‘Night Movements’, pp.15-16

65. ‘Organisation and Training’, pp.2, 4

66. ‘Night Movements’, pp.1-2

67. ‘Wingate avenges the death of Sturman and his comrades', Ha’aretz , 21 April

1942, transcription in IWM Wingate Chindit Papers, Box V

68. Tim Collins, Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict (London: Headline 2005),

pp.223-225, 230-253

69. Wingate, ‘Principles', pp.4-5; Lieutenant Rex King-Clark, SPECIAL NIGHT

SQUAD 1ST BATTALION THE MANCHESTER REGIMENT - PERSONAL DIARY,

Imperial War Museum King-Clark Papers, pp.13, 17; John Bierman and Colin Smith,

Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia and Zion (London: Macmillan 1999),

pp.115-116

70. Sykes, Op.Cit, p.151

71. Captain OC Wingate OCSNS, ‘Report of Operation carried out by Special Night

Squads on the Night of 11th/12th July 1938', LHCMA Liddell Hart Papers File 15/5/300,

p.1-3; King-Clark Diary, p.27

72. See Wingate, ‘11/12 July', pp.1-2; Captain OC Wingate, ‘Note on the

Development of Special Night Squads, RAF Hospital, Sarafand, on 14.7.38', LHCMA

File 15/5/300, p.2

73. Sykes, Op.Cit, pp.178-179

28



74. Ibid, pp.180-181

75. Segev, Op.Cit, pp.430-431

76. PRO WO32/9498, ‘Operations in Palestine 1 Aug-31 Oct 1938', pp.2-5

77. Montgomery to Lieutenant General Sir Ronald Adam, DCIGS, in PRO

WO216/111, ‘Major General BL Montgomery, 8 Division Palestine: demi-official

correspondence'; 16th Infantry Brigade Intelligence Summaries of 9 May and 5

September 1939, in PRO WO201/2134, ‘Palestine Intelligence Summaries: 16th Infantry

Brigade Operations', 1939-1940

78. Friedman, Op.Cit, pp.309-313; Christian Jennings, Midnight in Some Burning

Town: British Special Forces Operations from Belgrade to Baghdad (London: Cassell

2005), pp.195-211

79. Colonel OC Wingate, ‘Notes on Penetration Warfare - Burma Command', IWM

Wingate Chindit Papers, Box I, pp.2-4

80. Hammes, Op.Cit, pp.208, 212-215, 217-218; Mackinlay, Op.Cit, pp.vi-vii, 37-39

81. For example, see Collins, Op.Cit, pp.158-160; Franks, Op.Cit, pp.419-425, 526-

528, 542-544; George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (London: Faber &

Faber 2005), pp.24-99; Woodward, Op.Cit, pp.338-342

82. June 2006

83. Michael Duffy, Tim McGirk, Aparasim Ghosh, ‘The Ghosts of Haditha’, Time,

Volume 167 Number 24, 12 June 2006, pp.48-55; Friedman, Op.Cit, pp.326-330;

Mackinlay, Op.Cit, p.37; ‘The Massacre in Haditha’ and ‘A horror that will not be

buried’, The Economist Volume 379 No.8480, June 3-9 2006, pp.14-15, 49

29



84. Collins, Op.Cit, pp.389-391, 393-395, 369-370, 409-411, 417; Evan Wright,

Generation Kill (London: Corgi 2005), pp.387-390

85. Collins, Op.Cit, pp.407, 410

86. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire

and the War with Japan (London: Allen Lane 2004), pp.342

END

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