William Slim(1891-1970)
William Slim was born near Bristol, England in 1891. In 1903, he and
his family moved to Birmingham where he was educated in a Roman
Catholic school. Silm's craving for a life in the army persisted in
which he entered the Birmingham Unversity Officer Training Center in
1912. At the start of World War I, he was commissioned to the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment which he saw action at Gallipoli where he was
wounded in August 1915. After nearly a year in a army hospital, Slim
also served in France and in Mesopotamia where he participated in the
capture of Baghdad in 1917 where he won a Military Cross medal. In May
1919, Slim became a captain in the Indian Army and was posted to the
6th Gurkha Rifles. From 1926 onward, he held various staff appointments
until he was given command of the 10th Indian Brigade at the start of
World War II which he fought in the Sudan, and Italian-held Eritrea,
and led the capture of Vichy French held Syria and Iran in 1941. In
March 1942 Slim was given command of the 1st Burma Corps which he
extricated from Burma in the face of the Japanese advance. In 1943, he
fought major conflicts against the Japanese in India and the border
region of Burma until he was appointed commander of the 14th Army in
Burma where he won the Second Battle of Arakan (February 4-24, 1944)
and the campaign of Kohima and Imphal (March 7-June 22, 1944).
Revitalizing the British-Indian army he led it to the victorius Battle
of Meiktila/Mandalay (January 14-March 28, 1945) which smashed the
Japanese Area Army in Burma which led to the recapture of the Burmese
capital of Rangoon in May and the reconquest of Burma until the formal
Japanese surrender in September that same year. Slim's achievement in
welding a smaller, defeated, demoralized army into a united confident
fighting instrument was matched during World War II only by Montgomery
with the 8th Army in North Africa. At the end of the war, Slim was
appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Governor-General of
Australia in 1953. Slim retired from politics in 1960 and retired to
his home in London where he died in 1970.
