A Discussion Of Field Marshal Bill Slim As A Military Commander

In 2011 the National Army Museum conducted a poll to decide who merited the title of 'Britain's Greatest General'. In the end two men shared the honour. One, predictably, was the Duke of Wellington. The other was Bill Slim. Had he been alive, Slim would have been surprised, for he was the most modest of men - a rare quality among generals. Of all the plaudits heaped on him during his life, the one he valued most was the epithet by which he was affectionately known to the troops: 'Uncle Bill'.

On 15 January 1942, the Japanese invaded Burma. Within months, the Japanese occupied the country and forced the Allied Forces to conduct a brutal retreat into neighboring India. During the next 3 1/2 years, both forces continued to fight in a campaign with the Allied Forces retaking Burma in May 1945. One of the principle figures in this turnaround of the Allied Force was British Field Marshal William Slim. During the Burma Campaign, Slim served in several key leadership positions culminating as the 14 Army Commander. This focus of this study is to determine the role Slim played in the reconquest of Burma. Specifically, how did Field Marshal William Slim's organizational leadership actions (as defined in the U.S. Army leadership manual, FM 22-100) while serving as the 14 Army Commander contribute to the Allied reconquest of Burma during World War II? It is hoped that the findings of this study will be of value to leaders of all levels currently fighting the Global War on Terrorism.

A personal account of military field command during the Second World War as told by Sir William Slim, who led the British forces in Burma. In Mar. 1942 he took command of the Burma Corps and then led the British 14th Army, formed in 1943. They were British, Australians, Canadians, South Africans, Burmese, Chinese, and African soldiers, but mainly drawn from the volunteer Indian Army. For three years Slim's soldiers tied down tens of thousands of Japanese troops in Burma which keep them from fighting in the Pacific. Slim relates the long retreat through Burma and the final hard-fought victory over the Japanese forces, capturing the harsh realities of war. This narrative was first published during his appointment as the 13th Governor General of Australia, granted by the, then new, Queen Elizabeth II, in May, 1953.

Field Marshal William 'Bill' Slim ended World War II in command of Fourteenth Army. Focusing on his time in Burma, this paper covers the period 1942-1945 and his time as a Corps and Army commander. In 1944 Slim, as commander Fourteenth Army, deployed XV Corps and successfully defeated the Japanese for the first time in Burma. This book sets out the historical aspects of the three main campaigns managed by Slim. First, it examines Slim's input and performance in the First and Second Arakan Campaigns. Second, his decisions at the defense of Kohima and Imphal and the subsequent break out of the Indian Army from those locations. Finally, it assesses the pinnacle of his generalship during Operations Capital and Extended Capital. His decisions offer future operational artists guidance and prescient advice. His efforts are often overlooked because of the focus on the European theater. This book offers that Slim should come out from the shadows of other better-known general officers, and be rightly held up as an exemplary proponent of operational art.

Masterly biography of the 'greatest commander of the 20th century'. Field Marshal Slim is less well known than other Second World War generals, but is now widely regarded as the best. To the men under his command he was 'Uncle Bill', probably the most respected and loved military leader since the Duke of Marlborough. Born into an impoverished family in Bristol in 1891 and brought up in the Black Country, he was commissioned as a temporary Second Lieutenant on the outbreak of the First World War. Twice seriously wounded, in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918. After the war he was unable to remain an officer in the class-ridden British Army without private means and transferred to the Indian Army, where he developed an enduring affection for the Ghurkhas and began writing short stories to supplement his income. Slim's career stalled between the wars, but during this time he developed the leadership techniques that would make him a national hero within a decade and which are still taught today at Sandhurst. Promotion came rapidly with the Second World War, and in March 1942 he was sent to Burma to take command of the British-Indian First Burma Corps, then in full flight from the advancing Japanese. Through the force of his leadership, Slim turned disorderly panic into a controlled military withdrawal across the border into India. Two years later, having raised and retrained the largest army ever assembled by Britain, Slim drove the enemy out of Burma and shattered the myth of Japanese invincibility which had hamstrung the Allied operations in the East for so long. Slim returned to Britain laden with awards and honours. He became a popular Governor-General of Australia in 1953, was raised to the peerage, and died in London in 1970. This important biography will be written with the full cooperation of the Slim family, and Russell Miller has had access to all their papers.

Like most members of the professional military freemasonry, Slim came to admire "all the soldiers of different races who have fought with me and most of those who have fought against me." Among the most likable of his enemies were the Wazirs of India's Northwest Frontier. In 1920, Slim took part in a retaliatory raid on an obscure village. It was an unusually easy victory over the canny Wazirs, whom the British took by surprise and escaped from with scant loss. Afterwards, in the casual frontier way, the British sent a message to the Wazirs, expressing surprise at the enemy's unusually poor shooting. The Wazirs replied in courtly fashion that their rifles were Short Magazine Lee-Enfields captured in previous fights with the British and that they had failed to sight the guns to accord with a new stock of ammunition. Now, having calculated the adjustment, they would be delighted to demonstrate their bull's-eye accuracy any time the British wanted. "One cannot help feeling," Slim says, "that the fellows who wrote that ought to be on our side." Slim genuinely enjoyed his virtually blood-free skirmishes with such foes as the Turks, the Wazirs and the Italians in 1940 Ethiopia.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUSI DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2022 'This is a superb book.' - James Holland In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. But change was coming. New commanders were appointed, significant training together with restructuring took place, and new tactics were developed. A War of Empires by acclaimed historian Robert Lyman expertly records these coordinated efforts and describes how a new volunteer Indian Army, rising from the ashes of defeat, would ferociously fight to turn the tide of war. But victory did not come immediately. It wasn't until March 1944, when the Japanese staged their famed 'March on Delhi', that the years of rebuilding paid off and, after bitter fighting, the Japanese were finally defeated at Kohima and Imphal. This was followed by a series of extraordinary victories culminating in Mandalay in May 1945 and the collapse of all Japanese forces in Burma. Until now, the Indian Army's contribution has been consistently forgotten and ignored by many Western historians but Robert Lyman proves how vital this hard-fought campaign was in securing Allied victory in the east. Detailing the defeat of Japanese militarism, he recounts how the map of the region was ultimately redrawn, guaranteeing the rise of an independent India free from the shackles of empire.

This unique book reproduces three reports and studies about Field Marshall William J. Slim and the famous Burma campaigns of World War II: Field Marshal William J. Slim: The Great General and the Breaking of the Glass Ceiling - Slim Chance: The Pivotal Role of Air Mobility in the Burma Campaign - Field Marshal Slim - Theoretical Thinking and the Impact of Theory on Campaign Planning Field Marshal William J. Slim is considered by many historians to be one of the finest generals of World War II. His accomplishments were truly extraordinary. He commanded a polyglot army, consisting of six different nationalities speaking eight different languages, that fought in some of the most inhospitable, disease-ridden country in the world against the war's toughest opponent, the Japanese. In March 1942, he assumed command of a British-Indian force in Burma half way through the longest retreat in the British Army's history. Even though he was unable to reverse the disaster, he kept his force intact and led it to safety. Over the next three and one half years, despite very limited resources and several inept senior commanders, he rebuilt his force into an army that was able to inflict on the Japanese their greatest land defeat of World War II. In the process, he conducted four of the most classic operational campaigns of the war-the battle of the Second Arakan; the battles of Kohima and Imphal; the capture of Mandalay and Meiktila; and the pursuit to Rangoon. Throughout his career, but especially during World War II, Slim met all the criteria for a great general and strategic leader as set forth in Lord Wavell's generals and generalship. Despite these great accomplishments, Slim ran into several "glass ceilings" during World War II. Twice he was relieved of command, once immediately after his greatest battlefield victory. This study examines Field Marshal' Slim's leadership. It takes a brief look at his biography, then compares him against Wavell's standards for generalship by highlighting events from his career that illustrate each standard. Finally, it addresses the issue of the "glass ceiling"--what it is, the events surrounding Slim's encounters with it, and how Slim was able to overcome it. The intent is to show that Slim was not only a great World War II general, but is still a model of leadership worthy of study by the U.S. Army. This study applies lessons learned from air mobility's pivotal role in Field Marshal Sir William Slim's World War II Burma campaign to contemporary air mobility operations. The author begins by tracing the evolution of air mobility from its pre-World War I roots to the Second World War, noting how its development proceeded despite the lack of coherent, codified doctrine. Next the author assesses Slim's Burma campaign and how the key elements of organization, training and leadership, apart from air mobility, proved critical to Allied victory. Building upon this, the discussion turns to air mobility's contributions to Slim's joint campaign. From this analysis, the author identifies the tenets of air superiority, organization and air mobility normalization as being critical and enduring airpower lessons from the Burma theater. The closing chapters offer a primer on contemporary mobility operations before arguing that modern air mobility practitioners must account for five key essentials: superiority across the air and space domains; proper organization that promotes relationship building at the operational level of war; normalization of the complete air mobility supply chain and its accompanying idea of "air mobility mindedness"; training focused on increased interoperability; and the vital role of leadership.

Just as many football players have failed to become great coaches, so too have many governmental leaders, leaders of industry and military officers failed to succeed when placed at higher levels of responsibility. Understanding how to solve problems at increasingly higher levels of dynamic complexity is certainly important to the success of the military at large. Being able to discern a complex situation, sizing up what is happening and what is critical to the situation, knowing at a glance what is occurring and why, confidently understanding what is important (and what is not), and then making a successful decision to respond are critical aspects of senior leader decision-making. Resources at this level are rarely sufficient to overwhelm the opposition everywhere continuously. Divining a “path of success” that maximizes leverage over the competition at least cost is imperative for long-term operations. One way to explore this vital issue is to examine the thoughts and decisions of those who have been thrust into complex decision making situations and were eminently successful, time and again. Sir William Slim faced almost insurmountable complexity in dealing with the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II. Yet he managed to figure out a way to succeed in spite of the complexity he faced, soundly defeating the Japanese and driving them completely from the country. Bill Gates has faced complexity of an entirely different sort in his unparalleled rise to success in the computer software industry. He has managed, in spite of the complexity, to uncannily make decisions that have propelled him to the top of his profession. This monograph examines the research question, “Do the decision making methods used by Sir William Slim and Bill Gates correspond to the theories espoused by Gary Klein with respect to patterns and anomalies, singular evaluation, and leverage points?”