Gideon Force

Gideon Force
Wingate, the Gideon Force Commander, talking with the Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia
Active	1940–1941
Countries	Britain, Sudan, Ethiopia
Branch	Army
Type	Infantry
Role	Irregular warfare
Disbanded	1 June 1941
Commanders
Notable commanders	Colonel Orde Wingate

Gideon Force was a small British and African special force, which acted as a Corps d'Elite amongst the Sudan Defence Force, Ethiopian regular forces and Arbegnoch (Patriots) fighting the Italian occupation in Ethiopia, during the East African Campaign of World War II. The leader and creator of the force was Major (later Colonel) Orde Wingate. At its peak, Gideon Force had fifty officers, twenty British NCOs, 800 trained Sudanese troops and 800 partially-trained Ethiopian regulars, a few mortars, no artillery and no air support, only intermittent bombing sorties.

The force operated in difficult country at the end of a long and tenuous supply-line, on which nearly all of the 15,000 camels perished. Gideon Force and the Arbegnoch (Ethiopian Patriots) ejected the Italian forces under General Guglielmo Nasi, the conqueror of British Somaliland. The campaign took six weeks and captured 1,100 Italian and 14,500 Ethiopian troops, twelve guns, many machine-guns, rifles and ammunition and over 200 pack animals. Gideon Force was disbanded on 1 June 1941, Wingate was returned to his substantive rank of Major and returned to Egypt, as did many of the troops of Gideon Force, who joined the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) of the Eighth Army.

On 9 May 1936, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI), formed from the newly occupied Ethiopia and the colonies of Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. During the First Italo-Abyssinian War (1895–1896), the Regio Esercito (Royal Army) had been defeated by the forces of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia at the Battle of Adowa. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in October 1935, the Italians invaded Ethiopia from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. On 10 June 1940, when Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, Italian forces in Africa became a potential threat to British supply routes along the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. The Kingdom of Egypt remained neutral during World War II but the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 allowed the British to occupy Egypt to defend the Suez Canal. Egypt included the Sudan as a condominium known as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Egypt, the Suez Canal, French Somaliland and British Somaliland were vulnerable to an Italian invasion but Mussolini looked forward to propaganda triumphs in the Sudan and British East Africa (Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda). Comando Supremo (Italian General Staff) had planned for a war after 1942 and in the summer of 1940, was not prepared for a long war or the occupation large areas of Africa.