Page
THE CHINA MAIL,
"
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1955.
THE LAST PICTURE TAKEN OF WINGATE
The photographer was an unknown Army officer at Imphal The ploture was faken
In a bamboo hut there two days before
Ο
Wingate was killed.
N the morning of March 19, 1944, Wingate called a conference of war correspondents and, with justification, talked of the triumphant progress of the Chindit operation.
"Everything we set out to do has been done," said.
he
An aircraft crashed. And in the wreckage they .found something that, had become a symbol of Wingate and all that he stood for.
A topee
in the grass
IT MARKED
A HERO'S END
by Leonard Mosley
A few days after making
the late afternoon at Imphal. emergency felds in the area this statement, Orde Win He had provisionally planned to revealed that he had made no gate called Colonel · Phil spend the night there, but calls at them, nor radioed his Cochran, the American com- abruptly changed his mind. He position. mander of his air arm, to devided instead to go on to
Lalaghat
Next
over
Some papers blew about, and when they picked them up they found that they were the fumed and crumbling pages of letters from home. And, some distance away, was something which to
A teenage girl wrote to a Bishop...and that was the beginning of the downfall of Harold Davidson The Amazing Rector Of Stiffkey
E
One Of The World Strangest Stories
Told By C.D.T.
VENSONG had just
begun in the little parish church at Stiffkey in Norfolk
crashing and that he was going on June 12, 1932. The pews
Could this really be the will
to die.
of God?
were' well filled with village folk and a number of And yet might it not be that, visitors, but the parson was cruel though li reads as I write 2 stranger. He was de it, the moment of Orde Wingate's putising for the Rector on death was the right one? That the orders of his Bishop- God was being magnanimous?
for reasons which had been presented to the public It was kind...
ander heavy headlines for some weeks,
the soldiers in two theulees of [JINGATE was determined, war had become the symbol of after the war was over, to The Rev. R. H. Cattell was Wingate and all he stood
for: his involvy himself in Israel's reading the prayers when the old-fashioned Indian topes, struggle for independence, and church door opened and in battered now and scorched, lying there seems little doubt that he walked the Rector himself. The in the long grass well away would have disobeyed the Army's little white-haired figure of the from the fire. Lying there al- order to stay out of Palestine.
most defiantly, as if in a gesture of indestructiblity at a scene of disaster where everything else, including flesh and bone, bad been destroyed beyond recogni- ton
Chaplain led
and talk to Cochran,
morning, at first 'light, fell him he W&S off on and asked the pilot, Hodges, to Colonel Alison took off from another tour of the forward is ready to take
off. It was Lataghat
with Lieutenant pointed out to him that the Benjami
the hills near areas.
us his observer, and THERE in weather reports were bad. Hodges they passed
the thickly
Bichenpur the search party. flight be wooded hills.
led by Chaplain Perowne, con- In a small clear- suggested that the postponed but Wingate appears ing
ducted a simple service us they came low, they to have overruled him.
found wreckage, and it looked buried them all in a like the debris of a large plane. And
that Mitchell took off again and few out their report, and a British He swiftly through the angry sky, volunteer force, led by the senior That Was the Last that the chaplain of the Chindits, im- Chindits, or anyone cise save mediately set out, God and his fellow passengers,
the
He flew frst to Broadway in a Mitchell bomber, escorted by
Then Mustang fighters,
to light planes party changed and flow to Aberdeen, where Wingate bad
a conference with htly colum commanders. also visited Brigadier Calvert.
grave,
and
marched
ahd common back
have been Ho
BAKER-CARR
HAROLD DAVIDSON "Removed, deposed and
degraded
the church. Mr Davidson look the the rest of the service.
There sleepy
scenes
in
foock coat, raised his voice in protest. Silently and solemnly the dignified procession passed him by. Not a head was turned towards the ex-Rector, protesting his Innocence In a thin, high- pitched voice.
When the robed
dignitaries had gone Mr Davidson stood for a moment dazed. Then they turned out the lights and ho walked slowly as a man stricken, amid the shadows of the beauti- rul cathedral.
He soon recovered is usual perky confidence and spent that night motoring back to Bluck- pool....and his money-making interests there. For he had not awaited the issue of the long- drawn-out trial to make such capital as he could of his adver- sity. He was an insatiable lover of personal publicity-and ho knew how to find it.
Не
the
returned to his old love, world of entertainment. From 1004 until 1003 (when he
Rev. Harold Davidson Ox- changed a whispered word with But in the Jewish-Arab War, his parish clerk. Certainly he
was five minutes the vital battle for the estab
Jate, but he lishment of the State of Istaci, still expected to take the service.
have would the Jews really
ho walked chosen Orde Wingate to lead Resolutely them, as he believed? My own length of the church, knelt for conversations with Jewish a moment at the altar rail, What had prompted these was ordained) he had toured the leadery and Jewish soldiers make turned and passed down the astonishing
the country giving humorous recitals me doubt it. This was a Jewish chancel to the lectern.
Norfolk
of George Gros- village? Why in the style war for Independence which only Mr Cattell was about to read had the Bishop called for a smith, Corney Grain and Clifford a Jow could lead
the first lesson.
locum tenens? The Rector of Harrison, learning as much as And that would
Stiffkey was a remarkable man £1,000 a year. tragic for Orde Wingate.
All eyes were on the new and he was in very serious never, the whole time he was in comer and there was a sub- trouble.
congregation Palestine, took an order from the dued gasp as the Jews but always gave orders and recognised their
In February of that year realised. full well what might teenage girl from the streets of matter how distinguished the
and his unfrocking he exhibited solclor or statesman.
the other person; there to the Bishop of
· 10
Norwich. He in-lol
.ts sisted on being in command. was a brief hiatus and the effect on that prelate, Dr Ber- himself in a giant barrel at
Parishioners ho, have fight was could
tram Pollock, was Would he, or
immediato. Blackpool,
For twopence a time visitors taken a subordinate position and watched horrified as Mr David- Ile ordered Mr. Davidson to op-
past at the rate of son tried forcibly to seize the pear before & Consistory Court streamed accepted orders?
big Bible.
charges. This 1,000 an hour, just to poor at, or to answer five
speak to, the Rector type DI court. is purely perhaps
iron grille and its ecclesiastical and deals generally through the glass front. with church discipline.
no
Rector
and
During adjournments in the trial he gave several such re- citalso pay for his trafence. Then in September, 1932, during
evening, the. When they returned they made through the jungle carrying the expected obedience to them, follow. Mr Davidson handed a London wrote a damning letter the time between the trial's end
Change of mind saw of Orde Wingate.
WHE
JHEN he got back to Broad- way, Orde Wingató immedi- utely put a call through to Cochran asking that the Mitchell Lumber which had brought him in should be sent to pick him Cochran told him that it was already on its way,
up.
It airived and took him off without incident, and arrived in
Lieutenant Richard Benjamin, of the U.S. Air Force, was flying home that evening from a bomb- ung strike against the Japanese; over the hills between him and his base at Hallikandi he saw a pinpoint of bright light below him.
Quality
but
heavy load of the news.
For
1
And so Ordo Wingate, this strange, brooding, perplexing goldler, died in the moment of his greatest milltary achieve ment, at the age of 41.
from a
He
on..
protested
Local dignitarles and the police summoned him in his barrel for causing a pubilo The
days afterwards the death of Major-General Wingate was a top secret of the war. The IL was a long, dificult, coded cables went to Churchill From Lord they und hazardous joumey,
Roosevelt.
As I retraced Wingate's wan- remnants at last. Mountbatten's headquarters, and found the
Nor from 14th Army, commands and derings through Palestine, years There were no survivors.
the were
my of
victims instructions still went out to the after their War of Independence Burma, was over, I sensed, as a non-
and in succceded recognisable, for the crash had Chindits Oghting in
had been exhorting them to new efforts in Jew, that what the Jews were trembling voice read the lesson, been violent and
to tell trying
me was that the while the other cleric stood by But they did Wingate's name, followed by fire.
will of God was kind to Orde fuming helplessly, before stalk- The hearing opened on March nuisance and obstruction. find two identifications that made
Constable warned that then
that sure
And thron came the apnounce- Wingate when He let him die in ing off to the vestry. Among this
At the 29 at Church House, Westmin- Chie!
of the crowd members No one worrici 100 much charred and pathetic heap were ment from London,
Burma In 1944. end of the lesson Mr Catli rester Mr Davidson who had angry Major- the jungle in General Orde Charles Wingate, The Jews would not have chosen turned and spoke to the stupefied bean Rector of Sultier for 20 were
threatening to roll the until the general's plane became the remains of the man who
And when 1948 and the congregation... overdue, and a swift check on all had once been Orde Wingate. D.S.O. and two Bars, was dead. him.
years, daced dve charges of im- barrel into the sea. "With him a bright flame was time to choose the leader came,
the Clergy
So that particular exhibition "um extremely sorry this has morality under extinguished," wrote Winston he may wall have died in a more
Discipline Act of 1802. Among was over.. He tried sitting on a broken happened. It reduces the service the battery of lawyers engaged chair between two, barrels, but painful way Churchill.
heart. He was at least spared to a fance," he said. "I have re-
ceived orders from my superior in the proceedings were Mr local feeling became ugly once that,
Walter Monckton, K.C (now more. In October he was back -Instead, it was his spiritual officer, the Bishop, to take this
oh show, this time in a a glass rather than his bodily presence service, and that no one else knighted and the Minister of
Labour). assisting the prosecu- case inside a shop on the sea tion, which heartened the Jews when was to take il"
and Mr K. J
P. Barra- front, It Was still twopence a the battle came, and has giveri
Metropolitan me and the money was rolling "As comparatively nothing clough (now them courage and inspiration short of force would prevent Mr magistrate), junior counsel for to pay old debts and the ever since.
Davidson from taking part, I can the defence.
cost of an appeal to the Arch- see nothing else to do but to
adjournments bishop of Canterbury. withdraw, 1 cannot conscien- tiously take part in this service the trial ended and the Chancel- with him. It Mr Davidson lor of the Diocese of Norwich, Mr F. K.. North, pronounced Mr through his life, the prestige A Arab Wer his wife cume to
T the height of the Jewish persists I will retire."
Davidson guilty on each count. and the position through which Israel with her young son.
This time there was uproar But the Rector of Surkey he planned to do so many things, was flown over a Jewish settles from the pews. Men and women swore his innocence to his dying
For once
things were going ment named Yemin Ordo (after shouted abuse, or applauded, or day.
Wingate) at a moment when I stood up waving hymn books. well with him.
In 1933 he sat in his glaas bar was being attacked by Arabs Mr Davidson stepped forward frocked in a solemn ceremony and fasted. The police arrested from Syria. She had Orde Win-and with his
Cathedra2. rilsed in Norwich
He was charged that he gate's Bible with her, and whole spouted, "please, please remen moved, deposed and degraded ...did unlawfully fast with ber this is the House of God." from all clerical offices of priest intent then feloniously, wilfully and of mallee aforethought *7.5.48. To the Defenders Silence was restored. Mr Cattell, and deacon....
Mr Davidson, Since Orde the disappointed deputy, acknow-
tiny, grey- to kill and murder himself," at home were beginning to of Yemin Orde, hall him as leader of men; Wingate is with you in spirit, lodged defeat und walked out of haired man in clerical collar and charge was thrown out on ap-
peal and
he was awarded a handsome contribution to his and the men themselves, as with though he cannot lead you in
for the Jews in Palestine in 1930, the flesh, I send you the Bible
lighting fund
wrongful arrest. and the Ethiopians in 1041, were he carried in all his campaigns and dedicated and from which he drew the grateful to him
His immediate reaction-with victories. to his service in a special way inspiration
his eye still on the "front page" that only members of a fighting May it be a covenant between
Was: "I may undergo another Last for a few days now to unit can appreciate,
you and him, la triumph defcat, now and always.”
establish my right to starve where I lilee, when I like, and for as long as I like."
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It was an ironic time that God had chosen for his death, For the first time he had come within scaling distance of the power and military glory for which he had been seeking all
Dedicated
HE statesmen and the people
THE
A covenant
in the flyleat:—
of his
Sho
ہوں
For a man who had stood for so long in the draughty corners Sho flung it out of the plane reserved for social misfits, that and It was picked up by the was a welcome revolution in his settlers, who fought back and life. It was
all turning out repelled. the Invaders. And in
soldiers Werv
all right after all, and the God the ensuing weeks, all over in whom he so implicitly believed Israel, Jewish was at last helping him along fighting as he had taught them, the road towards his destiny. with the tactics he had instilled
into them.
His destiny remained the same
when
of
as it had been ever since 1938, So, at Jenst in spirit, he did ho had his, first moment command the armles of Israel revelation in Palestine: when the great battle came. He Nothing WOR so important to probably realises now that it was him as his return to the Holy the will of God, and it was better Land to take over the army of that way.
the Jaws and lead them to
victory.
And so it must have been a
moment of frustration, of dis-
(WORLD COPYRİGHT)
adapted from GIDEON, GOES TO? WAR, publied by Arthur Barker -
arms
After severn!
The day after his degradation Norwich he said: "I am going on with this &ght i 1 live to be 100.". And he certainly
tried.
On Trafalgar Day he was un-
.."Re- him.
He preached sermons from the inside of a lions' cage and was mauled to death,
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boliet, and possibly even of The Wingate serial has been
angar that ho experienced on the night of March 24, 1944, when he realised that the plane was
MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN
A FRIEND OF MINE OH YOU KNOW)'
LEFT A SUITCASE
HERE.
HIMT WAS
CHES THAT EVER
WEIRD
EB DANCED EVERY
NIGHT: FOR A WEEK
| HERE. HE WORE
EVERYBODY OUT--
ALL OF A SUDDEN HE
SAID HE DIDN'T FEEL
WELL--|
-ÄND HE GOTOLD- RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY" EYES SUDDENLY HIS HAIR WAS GONE--HE WAS WRINKLED--
By Lee Falk and Phil Davis.
--WE ALL SAW.IT/ TWEH
17.
·YEARS
OLDER-
1
He was debarred from per- forming
on
the singe by the Variety Artists Federation, of which he was once self-styled chaplain and member,
After starving he tried "frooz- and after that he tried roasting-lying
his Bide
Ingh
oni
in a glass coffin while an auto- matically-controlled model of the Devil prodded him with a plich-. fork.
The following year, in the summer of 1937, the ex-Roctor's health was failing, His appeal to the Archbishop · had been turned down; his friends were oporty endling him a pestilentinl nulaanco, and money was stil too short.
(Continued on Page 19. Col. 5)