PERMINDEX

[Jan Klimkowski]

A Zionist, Bloomfield joined the British military prior to World War II and served in Palestine as an Intelligence Officer under General Charles Orde Wingate.

Source wiki, which attributes it to Canadian archives.

This is significant. General Charles Orde Wingate was a racist British intelligence officer, Plymouth Brethren christian and ardent Zionist, who ran what we would now call death squads - the notorious Special Night Squads - targeting Arab villages in Palestine in the 1930s.

Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them in their patrols. The units frequently ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company, raiding border villages the attackers had used as bases. In these raids Wingate's men sometimes imposed severe collective punishments on the village inhabitants that were criticized by Zionist leaders as well as Wingate's British superiors. Wingate disliked Arabs, once shouting at Hagana fighters after a June 1938 attack on a village on the border between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon, "I think you are all totally ignorant in your Ramat Yochanan [the training base for the Hagana] since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs: how can you put your left foot in front?"[nb 1] But the brutal tactics proved effective in quelling the uprising, and Wingate was awarded the DSO in 1938.

However, his deepening direct political involvement with the Zionist cause and an incident where he spoke publicly in favour of formation of a Jewish state during his leave in Britain, caused his superiors in Palestine to remove him from command. He was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government.

In May 1939, he was transferred back to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan who had trained under him, and who claimed that Wingate had "taught us everything we know."

Wingate's political attitudes toward Zionism were heavily influenced by his Plymouth Brethren religious views and belief in certain eschatological doctrines.

Source.

The Special Night Squads' primary task was to the defend the Iraqi Petroleum Company pipeline, which was frequently attacked by Arab gangs. The squads also raided known gang bases, such as the villages of Dabburiya and Hirbat-Lidd. The force's success caused the cessation of attacks on the pipeline and brought a decline in insurgent activity in the area. It is presumed that about 12.5% of all guerrilla casualties in 1938 were caused by the SNS, which had lost only two of its men (Pvt. Stephen Chapman from the Manchesters and supernumerary Yosef Ben-Moshe) in action. According to Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, their training included "... how to kill without compunction, how to interrogate prisoners by shooting every tenth man to make the rest talk; and how to deter future terrorists by pushing the heads of captured ones into pools of oil and then freeing them to tell the story".[3]

Yoram Kaniuk writes:

The operations came more frequently and became more ruthless. The Arabs complained to the British about Wingate's brutality and harsh punitive methods. Even members of the field squads complained... that during the raids on Bedouin encampments Wingate would behave with extreme viciousness and fire mercilessly. Wingate believed in the principle of surprise in punishment, which was designed to confine the gangs to their villages. More than once he had lined rioters up in a row and shot them in cold blood. Wingate did not try to justify himself; weapons and war cannot be pure.[4]

For its actions, Wingate was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), and all three officers were awarded the Military Cross (MC). Several soldiers and supernumeraries were also awarded medals and citations.

The unit's success caused the establishment of a fourth SNS-like unit in the Sharon, tasked with guarding the electric powerline. During 1939 every British brigade in Palestine had established its own Special Night Squads, although without Jewish participation.

Wingate left the SNS on October 1938, for a leave in England. during his leave he was involved with the Zionist struggle against the Woodhead Commission report, meeting with such notables as Malcolm Macdonald, then secretary of the colonies, Lord Beaverbrook and Winston Churchill. This was frowned upon by Wingate's commanders, who had him demoted from command and returned to GHQ intelligence in November 1938. Bredin replaced Wingate as commander of the SNS, until its disbandment.

Source.

By their mentors, shall ye know them....