cover image Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion

Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion

John Bierman, Colin Smith. Random House (NY), $29.95 (448pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50061-9

The English General Orde Wingate is the only foreign officer to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He is revered in Israel. In his native U.K., there are still those who resent him. Bierman (Righteous Gentile, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg) and Smith (Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist) sympathetically portray Wingate's eccentric and combative personality and his equally remarkable, although short, career at arms. There is a distinctly Lawrence of Arabia flavor to Wingate's story. He fetches up in impossibly remote corners of the world, rallies a poorly armed but elusive force and attacks the enemy behind their own lines. This pattern was established in the Sudan, recurred in Palestine and Abyssinia and finally in Burma, where Wingate fought the Japanese until his death in a plane crash in March 1943. The Wingate summoned up in this book was hard on his men, harder on himself and hardest of all on his superiors. He emerges as arrogant, bitterly resentful of anyone who dared advance contrary ideas or question his monopolizing of scarce resources. Wingate's detractors are given their say, as are those who revered him, including Chaim Weizmann and Winston Churchill, whose patronage made Wingate's career possible. The authors obviously admire Wingate's accomplishments, especially his role in prewar Palestine, where, as an ardent Zionist, he instilled professionalism in what would become the Israeli army. With balanced judgment and a sharp eye for revealing details, Bierman and Smith bring a neglected warrior back to life. (Jan.)