Infanteer said:
Wingate was definitely a character. Slim doesn't think his tactics were of much value....
In fairness to both Slim and Wingate, Wingate's
Chindits were a sideshow of a sideshow - Burma (Slim) was chronically short of resources and Wingate never had what he felt he needed. Additionally, Slim was almost certainly correct in saying that, when all was said and done, Wingate's division did not produce an Indian division's worth of military outcome; but Wingate, like most special force commanders, was a colourful master of the media and there is no doubt that the (exaggerated?) reports of his successes raised moral (always a useful thing) and the
Chindits (probably?) did tie up some Japanese combat forces with unnecessary rear area security tasks.
The costs (resources and lives - often of the "best' men) of
special forces are always high and the returns are hard to measure. I
think that
raiding by Combined Operations and SOE, in both France and Yugoslavia, were worth the high costs, but they employed, relatively, few people. Larger scale
special forces have, it
seems to me, spottier records.
