Wingate wronged
Sir: If to have refused to serve under Orde Wingate is a qualification, J.A.R. Milman is excellently qualified to write long and wild letters about him to you (Letters, 6 May). No, I wrong the poor man: he was also issued with Wingate's 'first, and as far as I know, only order under the designation of "Burmarmy Long Range Penetration Group"' on 29 March 1942. This may well be so, but it is important to remember that the first Chindit Expedition was in 1943, and the second in 1944, and that quite a number of orders were issued after Milman had his moment of glory, some of which are fixed for ever in the minds of those who received them.
Milman thinks that no one was better placed than Terence O'Brien to observe Wingate's modus operandi. As Wingate's GSO III (Air) in 1944, I was pretty well placed myself, though probably not so often at the sharp end, where 'HQ' is seldom popular. The curious thing is that I have `What chance do I stand?
I come from a broken home.' not heard our General's conduct of the 1944 operation accused of 'confusion and ineptitude'. The senior officers who did their best to slander our dead leader cannot have thought of that one. For 51 years the world has shared my opinion that whatever sort of a bastard Orde Wingate may have been, he was an efficient bastard, and bril- liantly introduced a large force into the guts of the enemy. Now we are to be denied even that.
Paul Griffin
1 Crombie House, The Common, Southwold, Suffolk
Previous page
