William Joseph Slim

Few generals have ever turned retreat into victory as completely as Field Marshal William Joseph “Bill” Slim, 1st Viscount Slim. In 1942 he inherited an exhausted army retreating from Burma before a powerful Japanese advance. Three years later, the army he had rebuilt had broken the Japanese offensive at Imphal and Kohima, crossed the great rivers of Burma, captured Meiktila and Mandalay, and helped bring about the recovery of Rangoon. Slim’s achievement made him one of the defining British and Commonwealth commanders of the Second World War and earned him the lasting loyalty of the soldiers who knew him simply as “Uncle Bill.” William Joseph Slim was born in Bristol on 6 August 1891, the son of a commercial traveller. His family could not afford the conventional route through one of Britain’s military academies, and before the First World War he worked as a schoolteacher and clerk while serving in the Birmingham University Officers’ Training Corps. On 22 August 1914, only weeks after Britain entered the war, he was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Slim went with the 9th Battalion to Gallipoli, where he was seriously wounded in August 1915 and evacuated to Britain. After recovering, he eventually returned to his old battalion in Mesopotamia, where he was wounded for a second time in 1917. His conduct during the campaign brought him the Military Cross. The award was recorded in the London Gazette supplement published on 8 February 1918, where Lieutenant and temporary Captain William Joseph Slim appeared among the officers awarded the Military Cross. The Gazette His First World War service had already revealed many of the qualities that would define his later career: physical courage, resilience, self-criticism and an unusual ability to understand the soldiers he commanded. Determined to make the Army his profession, Slim transferred to the Indian Army in 1919 and in 1920 joined the 1st Battalion, 6th Gurkha Rifles, becoming battalion adjutant the following year. His interwar advancement was steady rather than spectacular. He excelled at the Staff College at Quetta, served at Army Headquarters in India, taught at the Staff College, Camberley, and attended the Imperial Defence College. In 1938 he took command of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Gurkha Rifles. Money remained tight, and Slim supplemented his Army income by writing short stories and articles under the pen name Anthony Mills. The Second World War transformed his career. Commanding the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade in East Africa, Slim fought against Italian forces and was wounded for a third time in January 1941 when his vehicle was attacked from the air during operations in Eritrea. He later commanded the 10th Indian Division during operations in Iraq, Syria and Persia. For his gallant and distinguished services in those operations, he was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in January 1943. Then came Burma. In March 1942, Slim was ordered to take command of the newly formed Burma Corps. Rangoon had already fallen, communications were collapsing, and British, Indian and Burmese forces were being driven northward by the Japanese. Slim could not save Burma, but he could save much of the army. Through a long and punishing fighting withdrawal into India, he prevented defeat from becoming total disintegration. He studied the failure of 1942 relentlessly, and the lessons of that retreat became the foundation of his later victories. In October 1943, Slim took command of the newly formed Fourteenth Army, later remembered as the “Forgotten Army.” He understood that defeating Japan in Burma required far more than reinforcements. His soldiers first had to believe that the Japanese could be beaten. Slim transformed training for jungle warfare, improved medical care and casualty evacuation, expanded the use of air supply, encouraged aggressive patrolling, and developed the practice of surrounded formations holding defensive positions rather than automatically withdrawing when their communications were cut. Infantry, artillery, armour and aircraft were increasingly coordinated as parts of a single battlefield system. Most importantly, Slim restored confidence. The decisive test came in 1944 at Imphal and Kohima, where Japanese forces attempted to invade India. Slim’s army held, fought while surrounded and remained supplied from the air. The Japanese offensive was broken at enormous cost, destroying much of the aura of Japanese invincibility that had developed during the victories of 1941 and 1942. Slim immediately turned defence into pursuit. Fourteenth Army crossed the Chindwin, advanced through exceptionally difficult country, secured crossings over the Irrawaddy, and struck at the heart of the Japanese position in central Burma. Meiktila and Mandalay fell in March 1945. The advance continued southward until Rangoon was recovered in May. Slim had taken an army that had retreated from Burma in defeat and brought it back as a victorious multinational force of British, Indian, Gurkha and African troops. His wartime service brought a succession of senior honours. Slim was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1942, received the Distinguished Service Order in 1943, became a Companion and later Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1944, and was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the 1946 honours. The Gazette’s historical record specifically identifies Slim among the comparatively small number of military officers advanced to the Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in connection with wartime service. The Gazette These honours accompanied, rather than created, a reputation that had already been established among the troops who fought under him. After the war, Slim became Commandant of the Imperial Defence College. He subsequently left active Army service, but his retirement was brief. In late 1948 he was recalled to become Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, and on 4 January 1949 he was promoted field marshal. He became the first officer of the Indian Army to rise to the position of CIGS. ANU Adb Online His standing continued to be recognised at the highest level. In January 1950 he was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. He had also received the United States Legion of Merit, initially in the degree of Commander, and was subsequently elevated to Chief Commander, the highest degree normally conferred upon senior foreign military leaders. On 10 December 1952, shortly before taking up his next major public role, Slim was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. On 2 January 1953 he was appointed a Knight of the Order of St John. On 8 May 1953, he was sworn in as the 13th Governor-General of Australia. His military reputation gave him immediate stature, while his lack of pretension and ease with ordinary Australians contributed greatly to his public standing. He travelled widely and developed a durable working relationship with Prime Minister Robert Menzies. ANU Adb Online The royal visit of 1954 brought another distinction. Slim was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, with the promotion dated 16 February 1954. The official Gazette notice identified him as Field Marshal Sir William Joseph Slim, Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Commonwealth of Australia. The Gazette While in Australia, Slim also produced the book most closely associated with his name. Defeat into Victory, published in 1956, was his account of the Burma campaign. Rather than presenting himself as an infallible commander, Slim wrote candidly about mistakes, setbacks, leadership, morale and the practical difficulties of campaigning. The work became a classic of military literature and remains closely associated with the study of command and leadership. In April 1959, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Slim a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter. The appointment was gazetted in issue 41691, published on 24 April 1959, and formed part of a distinguished post-war sequence of appointments that recognised both his military career and public service. The Gazette After leaving office as Governor-General in 1960, Slim returned to Britain. On 15 July 1960 he was created Viscount Slim of Yarralumla in the Capital Territory of Australia and of Bishopston in the City and County of Bristol. By the end of his public career, his principal distinctions included KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GBE, DSO and MC, together with his appointment as a Knight of the Order of St John and the United States Legion of Merit. Yet Slim’s historical reputation rests on something less easily represented by titles or ribbons. He understood morale as a weapon, logistics as a condition of victory, and leadership as a relationship of trust between commander and soldier. The men of Fourteenth Army did not remember him because he looked like a great general. They remembered him because they believed he understood them. Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, died in London on 14 December 1970, aged 79. His memory survives not only in formal memorials and military histories, but also in the continuing study of his leadership and of the army he rebuilt in India and Burma. From Gallipoli and Mesopotamia to Imphal, Kohima, Meiktila, Mandalay and Rangoon, Slim’s career spanned two world wars and the final decades of the British Indian Army. His greatest legacy was not simply that he won in Burma. It was that he took an army that had experienced defeat, taught it to believe it could win, and then proved it on one of the hardest battlefields of the Second World War.