William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim

Encyclopedia : W : WI : WIL : William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim

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.

Contents

1 Early years
2 Burma campaign
3 Post World War II
4 Bibliography
5 Sources

Early years

Slim was born to a lower-middle class family living in Birmingham and attended 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 out 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 out. 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.

Post 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. In 1953 he was promoted to Field Marshal, and accepted the post of Governor-General of Australia, without retiring from the Army. His correct title while Governor-General was therefore Field Marshal Sir William Slim.

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 he 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. 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 Silm was placed at Whitehall in 1990.

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

Bibliography

"Defeat into Victory" by Field Marshall Sir William Slim; NY: Buccaneer Books ISBN 1568490771, Cooper Square Press ISBN 0815410220; London: Cassell ISBN 0304291145, Pan ISBN 033039066X.
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.

|- style="text-align: center;"

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.