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The Man Who Invented the Commandos:
Wingate of Palestine
- Abstract
I READ with deep interest Tosca Fyvel’s memoir of Orde Wingate in COMMENTARY [February 1951] , in which he mentions Wingate’s role in devising what later became famous as “commando tactics.” As it happens, I am able to supplement Fyvel’s account with some hitherto unpublished information about the circumstances surrounding Wingate’s daring military innovations.
Orde Wingate was my neighbor in Jerusalem in 1937 and 1938, when he and his strikingly beautiful wife Lorna came to live in the Christian Arab quarter of Talbiah. I had several long talks with him about his views on the Jewish future and, in particular, about the new tactical methods he had introduced in his fight with the Arab rebel bands then infesting Palestine. As I myself was high up on the list of senior British Colonial civil servants to be assassinated, I was naturally interested in his success.
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