William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim

Sir William Slim
File:Williamslim.jpg Sir William Slim as Governor-General of Australia
Nickname(s)	Uncle Bill
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Rank	Field Marshal
Commands	Fourteenth Army Chief of the Imperial General Staff
Battles/wars	World War I East African Campaign Syria-Lebanon campaign Burma Campaign Battle of Kohima Battle of Imphal
Awards	Knight of the Garter Knight Grand Cross of the Bath Knight Grand Cross of the order of St. Michael and St. George Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order Knight Grand Cross of the order of the British Empire Distinguished Service Order Military Cross
Other work	Governor-General of Australia

Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GBE, DSO, MC (6 August 1891 – 14 December 1970), British military commander and 13th Governor-General of Australia. He fought in both World War I and World War II. He was wounded in action three times during his career.

Early years

Slim was born to a lower-middle class family living in Birmingham and attended St. Philip's School and King Edward's School. He taught at an elementary school and worked as a clerk in an engineering firm. At the outbreak of World War I, Slim was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was badly wounded at Gallipoli. On return to England, he was granted a regular commission in a West Indian Regiment. In October 1916, he returned to his regiment in Mesopotamia. He was wounded a second time in 1917 and was awarded the military cross. Evacuated to India, he transferred to the British Indian Army in 1919. Slim was given the rank of captain in the British Indian Army and was posted to the 1st Battalion of the 6th Gurkha Rifles. He became Adjutant of the battalion in 1921.

In 1926, Slim was sent to the Indian Staff College at Quetta. His performance at Staff College resulted in him being appointed first to Army Headquarters India in Delhi and then an appointment to Staff College, Camberley in England where he taught from 1934 to 1937. In 1938 he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and given command of the 2nd Battalion 7th Gurkha Rifles. In 1939 he was given the temporary rank of brigadier and became head of the Senior Officers' School at Belgaum, India.

On the outbreak of the World War II Slim was given command of the Indian 10th Brigade and sent to Sudan, from where he took part in the East African Campaign helping to liberate Ethiopia from the Italians. He was wounded again in Eritrea. He then joined the staff of General Archibald Wavell in the Middle East Command. Given the rank of acting major-general, he commanded British forces in the Middle East Campaign, leading the Indian 10th Infantry Division in the Syria-Lebanon campaign and the invasion of Persia.

Burma campaign

See South-East Asian Theatre of World War II and Burma Campaign

In March 1942, Slim was given command of 1st Burma Corps also known as BurCorps (consisting of the 17th Indian Infantry Division and 1st Burma Division) in Burma, which was being attacked by the Japanese. Heavily outnumbered, he was soon forced to withdraw to India.

He then took over XV Corps under the command of the Eastern Army. His command covered the coastal approaches from Burma to India, east of Chittagong. He had a series of disputes with Noel Irwin, commander of Eastern Army. Slim commanded the advance by XV Corps into the Arakan Peninsula. The operations ended in disaster. General Irwin and Slim blamed each other for the result but in the end Irwin was removed from his command and Slim was promoted to command the new Fourteenth Army—formed from IV Corps (Imphal), XV Corps (Arakan) and XXXIII Corps (reserve)—later joined by XXXIV Corps.

He quickly got on with the task of training his new army to take the fight to the enemy. The basic premise was that off-road mobility was paramount: Much heavy equipment was exchanged for mule- or air-transported equipment and motor transport was kept to a minimum and restricted to those vehicles that could cope with some of the worst combat terrain on earth. The new doctrine dictated that if the Japanese had cut the lines of communication, then they too were surrounded. All units were to form defensive 'boxes', to be resupplied by air and assisted by integrated close air support and armour. The boxes were designed as an effective response to the tactics of infiltration practiced by the Japanese in the war.

In January 1944, when the Second Arakan Offensive was met by a Japanese counter-offensive, the Indian 7th Infantry Division was quickly surrounded along with parts of the 5th Indian and West African 81st Divisions. The 7th Division's defence was based largely on the "Admin Box"—formed initially from drivers, cooks, suppliers, etc. They were supplied by air—negating the importance of their lost supply lines. The Japanese forces were able to defeat the offensive into Arakan, but they were unable to decisively defeat the allied forces or advance beyond the surrounded formations. While the Second Arakan Offensive ended in failure, it proved tactics that were very effective against the Japanese.

Later in 1944 the Japanese launched an invasion of India aimed at Imphal—hundreds of miles to the north. Slim airlifted two entire veteran divisions (5th & 7th Indian) from battle in the Arakan, straight into battle in the north. Desperate defensive actions were fought at places such as Imphal, Sangshak and Kohima, while the RAF and USAAF kept the forces supplied from the air. While the Japanese were able to advance and encircle the formations of 14th Army, they were unable to defeat those same forces or break out of the jungles along the Indian frontier. The Japanese advance stalled. The Japanese refused to give up even after the monsoon started and large parts of their army were wrecked by conducting operations in impossible conditions.

In 1945, Slim launched an offensive into Burma, with lines of supply stretching almost to breaking point across hundreds of miles of trackless jungle. He faced the same problems that the Japanese had faced in their failed 1944 offensive in the opposite direction. He made the supply of his armies the central issue in the plan of the campaign. The Irrawaddy River was crossed (with the longest Bailey bridge in the world at the time—most of which had been transported by mule and air) and the city of Meiktila was taken, followed by Mandalay. The Allies had reached the open plains of central Burma, sallying out and breaking Japanese attacking forces in isolation, maintaining the initiative at all times, backed up by air-land co-operation including resupply by air and close air support, performed by both RAF and USAAF units.

In combination with these attacks, Force 136 helped initiate a countrywide uprising of the Burmese people against the Japanese. In addition to fighting the allied advance south, the Japanese were faced with heavy attacks from behind their own lines. Toward the end of the campaign, the army raced south to capture Rangoon before the start of the monsoon. It was considered necessary to capture the port because of the length of the supply lines overland from India and the impossibility of supply by air or land during the monsoon. Rangoon was eventually taken by a combined attack from the land (Slim's army), the air (parachute operations south of the city) and a seaborne invasion. Also assisting in the capture of Rangoon was the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League lead by Thakin Soe with Aung San, the future Prime Minister of Burma and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, as one of its military commanders.

After World War II

After the war Slim became commander of Allied Land Forces in South-East Asia. In 1948 he returned to England where he became head of the Imperial Defence College and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the first Indian Army officer to be so appointed). In 1953 he was promoted to field marshal, and accepted the post of Governor-General of Australia, without retiring from the Army.

Slim was a popular choice since he was an authentic war hero who had fought alongside Australians at Gallipoli and in the Middle East. In 1954 he was able to welcome Queen Elizabeth II on the first visit by a reigning monarch to Australia. Slim's duties as Governor-General were entirely ceremonial and there were no controversies during his term. The Liberal leader Robert Menzies held office throughout Slim's time in Australia.

In 1959 Slim retired and returned to Britain, where he published his memoirs, Unofficial History and Defeat Into Victory. In 1960 he was created 1st Viscount Slim, of Yarralumla and Bishopston. After a successful further career on the boards of major UK companies he was appointed Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle. He died in London on 14 December, 1970.

He was given a full military funeral at St. George's Chapel, Windsor and was afterward cremated. A remembrance plaque was placed in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral. A statue of Slim was placed at Whitehall in 1990.

The road William Slim Drive in the district of Belconnen, Canberra is named after him.

Slim's place in history

Slim's achievements in taking over a defeated, dispirited and ethnically diverse army on the run and welding it into a cohesive whole that fought and defeated the Japanese in their natural environment are often overlooked. He achieved this remarkable transformation mainly through personal example and his consummate skill as a communicator. The spirit of comradeship he created within 14th Army lived on after the war in the Burma Star Association at whose meetings Slim was a frequent and honoured guest.

Bibliography

• "Defeat into Victory" by Field Marshall Sir William Slim; NY: Buccaneer Books ISBN 1-56849-077-1, Cooper Square Press ISBN 0-8154-1022-0; London: Cassell ISBN 0-304-29114-5, Pan ISBN 0-330-39066-X.
• Early in his career, the Viscount wrote short fiction under the alias of "Anthony Mills".

Sources

• Churchill's Generals edited by John Keegan, Grove Weidenfeld Press, New York, 1991.
• Slim - The Standardbearer Ronald Lewin, Leo Cooper Ltd, London, 1976.