Robert Lyman - Bill Slim

Every cadet at Britains Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst receives, on joining, a thin red volume entitled Serve To Lead. Bearing the motto of the Academy, the book distils the wisdom of past British military leaders (not all of whom are famous) on the subject of morale and leadership in war. For most cadets this is their first exposure to Field Marshal Sir Bill Slim (he was never called William), the man responsible for destroying two Japanese armies during World War II, the first in India, around Imphal and Kohima, in 1944 and the second in Burma, around Meiktila and Mandalay, in 1945.

Every analysis of Slims achievements in Burma provides evidence of a remarkable military talent. Most are effusive in their praise for him as a military commander.

In a masterful summary of the higher command of the Burma Campaign, the historian Frank McLynn states:

There are solid grounds for asserting that when due allowances have been made Slims encirclement of the Japanese on the Irrawaddy deserves to rank with the great military achievements of all time Alexander at Gaugamela in 331 BC , Hannibal at Cannae (216 BC ), Julius Caesar at Alesia (58 BC ), the Mongol general Subudei at Mohi (1241) or Napoleon at Austerlitz (1805). The often made but actually ludicrous comparison between Montgomery and Slim is relevant here there is no Montgomery equivalent of the Irrawaddy campaign. His one attempt to prove himself a master of the war of movement Operation MARKET GARDEN against Arnhem was a signal and embarrassing failure. Montgomery was a military talent; Slim was a military genius.

The Old Edwardians Rugby Team 191314, Slim is second from left on the back row. In 1908 Slim joined King Edwards School in Birmingham as a pupil-teacher on a salary of 17 shillings and sixpence a week. King Edwards served one of the poorest areas of industrial Birmingham. His intimate knowledge of the lives led by his young male pupils made him deeply aware of the impact of poverty on behaviour: it was said of Slim when he reached the elevated station of Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1947 that he had never forgotten the smell of soldiers feet. (Viscount Slim)

And yet, in 1942 Bill Slim was a relatively unknown and not particularly successful Indian Army general who had just presided over the British Armys longest ever retreat, 1,000 miles (1,600km) from Burma into India. How did he find himself in command of a triumphant, all-conquering army in India in 1944 and Burma in 1945? The story of the transformation of this army, from defeat into victory, the title of his best-selling war memoir in 1956, is not just the story of British arms in the Far East between 1942 and 1945, but the account of Slims rise to military greatness. At the end of the war he commanded the largest British military force ever assembled, and at Imphal in 1944 (to say nothing of MandalayMeiktila in 1945) had dealt what one Japanese commentator, a veteran diplomat, considered to be the greatest defeat Japan had ever suffered in its history.

Slim was successful as a commander for two reasons. He was, first and foremost, a born leader of men. He was constantly mindful of the predicament of the men who had to fight battles designed by men who would often be far to the rear when the bullets began to fly. Slim instinctively knew that the strength of an army lies not in its equipment or its officers, but in the training and morale of its soldiers. His basic premise was:

That the fighting capacity of every unit is based upon the faith of soldiers in their leaders; that discipline begins with the officer and spreads downward from him to the soldier; that genuine comradeship in arms is achieved when all ranks do more than is required of them. In battle, the soldier has only his sense of duty, and his sense of shame. These are the things which make men go on fighting even though terror grips their heart. Every soldier, therefore, must be instilled with pride in his unit and in himself, and to do this he must be treated with justice and respect.

Slim made tremendous efforts to communicate with his men, travelling vast distances to talk with them, simply and honestly, as man to man. He never engaged in histrionics or tricks of oratory and through these events his strong and attractive personality shone through. His firm view was that the most important attribute of a leader was his effect on morale, and he did everything he could to ensure that he was seen and trusted by his men. He inspired confidence because he related to the men as men, not as subordinates. He was the antithesis of the chteau general who never ventured far from the comfort of his headquarters, far to the rear of the action. He brought his men into his confidence in a way that was very unusual at the time, the result of the complete absence in his personal make-up of any social pretension. Half a century after the war George Macdonald Fraser, the best-selling author of the Flashman books, recalled Slim arriving at his battalion of the Border Regiment in Burma in 1945 for one of these talks:

The biggest boost to morale was the burly man who came to talk to the assembled battalion by the lake shore Im not sure when, but it was unforgettable. Slim was like that: the only man Ive ever seen who had a force that came out of him, a strength of personality that Ive puzzled over since. His appearance was plain enough: large, heavily built, grim-faced with that hard mouth and bulldog chin; the rakish Gurkha hat was at odds with the slung carbine and untidy trouser bottoms. Nor was he an orator. His delivery was blunt, matter-of-fact, without gestures or mannerisms, only a lack of them. He knew how to make an entrance or rather, he probably didnt, and it came naturally Slim emerged from under the trees by the lake shore, there was no nonsense of gather round or jumping on boxes; he just stood with his thumb hooked in his carbine sling and talked about how we had caught Jap off-balance and were going to annihilate him in the open; there was no exhortation or ringing clichs, no jokes or self-conscious use of barrack-room slang when he called the Japs bastards it was casual and without heat. He was telling us informally what would be, in the reflective way of intimate conversation. And we believed every word and it all came true. I think it was that sense of being close to us, as though he were chatting offhand to an understanding nephew (not for nothing was he Uncle Bill) that was his great gift. You knew, when he talked of smashing the Jap, that to him it meant not only arrows on a map but clearing bunkers and going in under shell-fire; that he had the head of a general with the heart of a private soldier.

Slim knew his men and could communicate with them because he was one of them, and, from the bloody days in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia during World War I and in the inter-war years on the North-West Frontier, had experienced their bitterest trials. He understood men wrote the Australian journalist Ronald McKie, who met him in Burma. He spoke their language as he moved among them, from forward positions to training bases. He had the richest of common-sense, a dour soldiers humour and a simple earthy wisdom. Wherever he moved he lifted morale. He was the finest of Englishmen.