From Suicide Attempt to Soldiering: Orde Wingate

Wingate the survivor
On 4 July 1941, in the midst of a malaria induced delirium, Major Orde Wingate tried to commit suicide in his room at the Continental Hotel, Cairo. He was dejected, depressed, overusing an anti-malarial drug, and physically and mentally exhausted after fighting in the East African Campaign. Amid the suffocating Egyptian heat, he twice stabbed himself in the neck with a hunting knife. The second wound cut his jugular vein and he fell unconscious to the floor. The thud of his fall, however, attracted attention and help quickly arrived. He recovered in hospital and went on to become one of the most controversial British generals of the Second World War.
Orde Charles Wingate was born on 26 February 1903 in India and raised in the dissenting sect of the Plymouth Brethren. Always a non-conformist, he was zealous, ambitious, puritan in spirit, rude and single-minded in pursuing his vision and beliefs. Such a man easily made enemies. Never hesitating to defy orthodox thinking, he persistently quarreled with superiors. He was famous for his peculiarities, including eating raw onions, receiving visitors naked, and slovenly dress. He was imbued with great self-confidence and energy and most of all possessed “a burning desire to fight.”
After attending the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich—an unhappy experience where he was poorly treated by many fellow cadets—Wingate was commissioned in 1923. He spent the next five years with the Royal Artillery, his longest and almost only period of regular soldiering.
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