Gideon Force was a small British and African special forces unit, which acted as a "Corps d'Elite" amongst the Sudan Defence Force, Ethiopian regular forces and "Arbegnoch" (Patriots). At its peak, Orde Wingate led fifty officers, twenty British NCOs, Sudanese troops and trained Ethiopian regulars. He had a few mortars, no artillery and no air support, only intermittent bombing sorties. The force operated in the difficult country of Gojjam Province at the end of a long and tenuous supply-line, on which nearly all of its perished. Gideon Force and the "Arbegnoch" (Ethiopian Patriots) ejected the Italian forces under General Guglielmo Nasi, the conqueror of British Somaliland in six weeks and captured and troops, twelve guns, many machine-guns, rifles and ammunition and over 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.