What is this Gideon Force, which was used by Orde Winston who took his Bible to battle opened to the story of Gideon - the bibles' first mercenary of importance? The Gideon Bible Calendar I have is linked to lot of different things - but I am beginning to believe the people who engineered the World Trade Center and a few other important passages in History - have followed this "Gideon Force"...hit and run, and have surely been trained by English and American intelligensia. Interesting items - inasmuch as Timothy McVeigh was a hit and run guerrilla, and left us messages in a Gideon Bible - thought I would send the two stories for I believe we have not seen the "hidden face' and "hidden hand' behind the World Trade Center..... The Palmach The elite striking force of the Haganah. Established by the Haganah's national command on May 19, 1941, the Palmach consisted of nine assault companies: three in the northern Galilee, two in central Galilee, two in southern Galilee, and one in Jerusalem. ****** The Palmach launched pre-emptive strikes into Syrian and Lebanese territory, frequently sending members fluent in Arabic in Arab dress into Syria and Lebanon to sabotage and scout targets. ****** The Palmach grew to 12 companies. Palmach leaders included Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Haim Bar-Lev, Uzi Narkiss and Ezer Weizman. STORY of Orde Wingate - who tried to murder himself.....so it is written: Major-General Orde Wingate Orde Wingate was born in India in 1903, and was fourth-generation military. His father, maternal grandfather and great-grandfather all having served in the British or Indian service. He attended Charterhouse as a day student, and at the age of eighteen, entered the Royal military Academy at Woolwich. His cadet career was undistinguished as he was bored by team sports and the structured curriculum. He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery into the Royal Artillery in 1923. In 1929 he went on an Arabic language course sponsored by the War Office, and followed this with a tour as Company Commander of the Sudan Defence Force. He also gained a First-Class interpretership in Arabic. In February 1932 he joined a Royal Geographic Society camel expedition to find 'lost oasis' of Zerzura in the Libyan Desert. In January 1935 he returned to England and Married Lorna Paterson. The following December he became Adjutant to the 71st Field (Artillery) Brigade, Territorial Army, Sheffield. He also passed the examination for the Staff College but failed to gain admittance. 1936 saw Wingate joined British Forces in Palestine. Here he organized Special night Squads, and was awarded the DSO and was mentioned in despatches for his work. The Special night Squads became successful to the point where they turned back the tide of the Arab revolt in Palestine. On Leave in London, he submitted a paper on unconventional operations to Basil Liddell Hart, the military theorist and defense correspondent of The Times, who in turn passed it on to Winston Churchill. Wingates' first meeting with Churchill followed in late 1938, and Churchill would come to believe Wingate to be a new 'Lawrence of Arabia'. Wingate was appointed in Appointed military Advisor and leader of guerrilla campaign in Ethiopia in November 1940. The Ethiopian campaign began in January 1941 and Wingate employed the Gideon force. The Germans did not actively pursue Special forces operations after a few units were tried out in Europe but not expanded, instead concentrating on their Blitzkrieg approach, but the British effort was far larger than the German and of a fundamentally different character. It commenced in June 1940 on a two-prong basis. One prong was in Britain and centered around the seaborne light infantry raiding forces called the Commandos. The other was in Egypt, where forces able to penetrate and exploit the desert were formed. The creation of these units drew on the promising junior officers and soldiers from the regular armed services and generated animosity from the conventional services. Wingate was recalled to Egypt by Wavell, to assist in the creation of the Middle East special operations forces. Wingates special-operations forces were created alongside the Long Range Desert group conceived by desert-explorer Bagnold. The British fostered irregular forces in Sudan were used to good effect in conjunction with the Allied conventional forces against the Italian forces in Ethiopia. His campaign commenced in January 1941, and improved dramatically as the north African campaign sent the Italians reeling. Wingates' single greatest success was when he employed his Gideon Force to baffle and disrupt the enemy garrisons blocking the road to Addis Ababa. The Gideon force held down more enemy troops in their hunt for the guerrillas than the British Army actually had to fight. By May 1941 the eats African campaign was largely concluded and only mopping up remained. Once back in Cairo, Wingate lost his acting rank of Colonel, reverting to a Major and wrote a blistering report on the organizational shortcomings which had hampered Gideon force. Wavell blasted him for the tone of his report, and in mid 1941 Wingate suffered as Wavell was reassigned to India, and he suffered bouts of malarial fever, which were not aided by the despondency and despair he felt at the time. He went to a private physician to avoid a convalescence in the rear areas, and overdosed on atabrine. For some unknown reason, alone in his hotel room, he stabbed himself in the throat with a sheath knife. He was saved when he fell unconscious before he could finish the job and, when help arrived, the bleeding was stopped before it was too late. After months of recuperation, he lectured on the Ethiopian campaign and was touted for a slot in SOE. In the Week before Singapore fell in 1942, Wavell requested that Wingate be assigned to his command in India. When Wingate arrived in India in March 1942, he found a command of two different forces and two different objectives. The British trying to secure India and the Americans trying to support the nationalist Chinese. Wingates orders were to report to the Bush Warfare School and take over guerrilla operations against the Japanese. He was restored to his temporary rank of colonel. Over the next two years British and American guerrilla cadres, under SOE, OSS and Naval Group-China auspices would undertake operations in China. Following the disastrous defeat of the British and Chinese forces in Burma, Wingate carried out a detailed reconnaissance of as much country as he could, and this information formed the basis of Wingate's theory on how to beat the Japanese. He now wanted control of Long Range penetration forces to attack the enemy rear rather then smaller guerrilla forces. With Burma's geography being applicable to this sort of operation, the Japanese supply lines would have to run along the three major rivers and were therefore vulnerable to ambush. Wingate persuaded Wavell of their ability and the Long Range Penetration groups were the result. They were given the formal title of 77 Indian Infantry Brigade, with Wingate as their brigadier, Wingate achieving that rank in June 1942. These 3,000 men eventually became the Chindits. See The Chindit Expeditions for details. The Chindits were comprised of volunteers supplemented by a battalion from each of the Burma Rifles, The Gurkhas and the King's Liverpool regiment. Wingate spent the summer of 1942 training this force for an operation planned for the autumn. The Chindits' role was supposed to support the Chinese and British efforts by disrupting the Japanese lines of communication. Wingate divided his force into separate columns, conditioned them to the jungle's environment by a relentless program of forced marches, and practiced radio co-ordination and receipt of the air-supplies on which each column would depend behind enemy lines. The Plan was postponed for a variety of reasons, but Wingate persuaded Wavell to allow the Chindit part of the plan to proceed, he argued that it would help by time. See The Chindit Expeditions for details of the operations. Wingate emerged from the jungle with his men, emaciated and bearded, to find himself and his men heroes. Churchill ordered Wingate back to England and then took him to the Quebec Conference in August 1943. During the journey to the conference he formed plans for the attack on Burma, a long range assault by glider and parachute to insert a force in the Japanese rear area and establish a series of strongholds to hold the Japanese, while Chindit mobile reserves fell upon the attacking Japanese forces rear. The Americans were persuaded and committed to providing the bulk of the aircraft and gliders required. The force, eventually named First Air Commandos would be sent into combat in early 1944. The Americans provided C-47 transports and gliders, light liaison aircraft, thirty P-51 Mustang and twenty B-25 Mitchells. The entire Air Force was designated 1 Air Commando and commanded by an American, Colonel Philip Cochran. Wingates second Chindit Expedition was scheduled for Spring 1944 and was one part of a three part operation, with the Chinese coming into Burma from the North, and British XV Corps attacking into the Arakan, commanded by Lieutenant General William Slim. British IV Corps would advance across the Chindwin with Special Force supporting both the Chinese and Slim by establishing air-supplied strongholds astride the key Japanese supply lines. The offensive opened in February 1944. See Victory in Burma. Wingate sadly died before his Chindit forces could complete their second expedition. He was killed in an air crash in India on March 24th 1944 when his B-25 Mitchell Bomber crashed. Commanders and Heroes Index Sign My Guestbook View My Guestbook These pages are part of british-forces.com. © 2000 british-forces.com. ______________________________________________________________ * THE LAVON AFFAIR * Now forgotten by most of the few people who ever knew about it, was the Lavon Affair that once rocked Israel to the very core. After the Egyptian revolution of 1952, relations between the U.S. and the new Gamal Abdel Nasser government steadily improved. Cultural and economic agreements between Egypt and other Arab states and the U.S. were being discussed, and it was sincerely hoped that the U.S. would aid the projected Aswan Dam development program. By 1954 American Ambassador Henry Byroade's personal friendship with Nasser seemed likely to produce results. A U.S. aid program of $50 million had been started. The situation was viewed in high Israeli quarters as a grave threat to the continued flow of American dollars into Israel from public, if not private, sources. A direct severance of relations between Egypt and the U.S. was deemed desirable. An Israeli espionage ring was sent to Egypt to bomb official U.S. offices and, if necessary, attack American personnel working there so as to destroy Egyptian-U.S. relations and eventually Arab-U.S. ties. The creation of simulated anti-British incidents was calculated to induce the British to maintain their Suez garrison. Several bomb incidents involving U.S. installations in Egypt followed. Small bombs shaped like books and secreted in book covers were brought into the USIA libraries in both Alexandria and Cairo. Fish skin bags filled with acid were placed on top of nitroglycerin bombs; it took several hours for the acid to eat through the bag and ignite the bomb. The book bombs were placed in the shelves of the library just before closing hours. Several hours later a blast would occur, shattering glass and shelves and setting fire to books and furniture. Similar bombs were placed in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Theater and in other American owned business buildings.24 In December two young Jewish Egyptian boys carrying identical bombs were caught as they were about to enter U.S. installations. Upon their confession, a sabotage gang of six other Jews was rounded up. Five more were implicated in the plot. The conspirators, who received sentences ranging from fifteen years to life, were the objects in the U.S. of multifold sympathetic editorials and articles. Nothing appeared in print at the time to refute the image that this had been but another Nasser conspiracy to unite his country against Israel. The cry "anti-Semitism" widely reverberated. In 1960 an investigation in Israel called attention to the forgery of an important document in what had been announced as a "security mishap" that had precipitated the resignation of Pinhas Lavon as Minister of Defense in 1955. Shimon Peres, then Deputy Minister of Defense, and Moshe Dayan had, with the forgery, attempted to place the legal responsibility for the unsuccessful 1954 sabotage attempt at Lavon's door. Ben-Gurion had fought the reopening of the case, but a subsequent rehearing revealed that Lavon had been an innocent victim of the machinations of Peres, Dayan, and Brigadier Abraham Givli. Even though the army, through censorship, attempted to cover up its own blunders, the "Lavon Affair" led to a Cabinet crisis and the resignation of the Ben-Gurion government in 1961. As late as December 29, 1960, the Times was still referring to the scandal only as "a disastrous adventure in 1954." As the already abnormal ties between Israel and the U.S. grew stronger, scant attention was paid to the disclosure in Israel of this blatant attempt to torpedo U.S.-Arab relations. The above is taken from "The Zionist Connection II, What Price Peace?" by Alfred M. 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