William Slim

In June 2019, the government of the Australian Capital Territory announced that, after considering allegations made to the Government, submissions by the Slim family and the royal commission into child sexual abuse, it had decided to change the name of William Slim Drive, which connects the town centres of Belconnen and Gungahlin. The government had asked for advice from the ACT Place Names Committee about new naming options.

On 27 February 2017, ABC aired another programme detailing the allegations against Slim and Fairbridge Farm. According to one estimate by a former pupil and journalist, David Hill, some 60 percent of children who went to Fairbridge were abused.

The spirit of comradeship Slim created within 14th Army lived on after the war in the Burma Star Association, of which Slim was a co-founder and first President.

Slim had an excellent relationship with his troops – the "Forgotten Army", as they called themselves. In his book, Defeat into Victory, he tells of the malaria rates among his units being 70%, largely due to noncompliance by his soldiers with the foul-tasting mepacrine they refused to take. Slim did not blame his medics for this problem, but placed the responsibility on his officers. "Good doctors are no use without good discipline. More than half the battle against disease is fought not by the doctors, but by the regimental officers". After Slim dismissed a few officers for high unit malaria rates, the others realised he was serious and malaria treatment was enforced, dropping the rate to less than five percent. The combat effectiveness of his army was thus greatly enhanced. This physical and mental turnaround in the army under him was a contributing factor to the eventual defeat of the Japanese in Burma.

During his tenure as Governor-General of Australia, Slim was patron of the Fairbridge Farm child migration to Australia, which has been subject to scrutiny in recent years both in the United Kingdom and Australia. Since 2007, three former child migrants allege Slim sexually assaulted them during visits to the farms. These allegations were dismissed at that time by those who had served under Slim in the army and by his son John Slim, 2nd Viscount Slim. The allegations were aired again on ABC television in the programme The Long Journey Home, broadcast on 17 November 2009.

A statue of Slim on Whitehall, outside the Ministry of Defence, was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. Designed by Ivor Roberts-Jones, the statue is one of three British Second World War military leaders (the others being Alan Brooke and Bernard Montgomery).

Slim's papers were collected by his biographer, Ronald Lewin, and given to the Churchill Archives Centre by Slim's wife, Aileen, Viscountess Slim, and son, John Slim, 2nd Viscount Slim, and other donors, 1977–2001. Lewin's biography, Slim: The Standardbearer, was awarded the 1977 WH Smith Literary Award.

After a successful further career on the boards of major UK companies, he was appointed Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle on 18 June 1964. He died in London on 14 December 1970, aged 79 and was given a full military funeral at St. George's Chapel, Windsor and was afterwards cremated.

In 1959, Slim retired and returned to Britain, where he published his memoirs, Unofficial History. He had already published his personal narrative of the Burma Campaign, Defeat into Victory, in 1956. On 24 April 1959, he was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG). 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".

Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely has recommended Slim's memoirs (Defeat into Victory) (1956) describing Slim as "perhaps the Greatest Commander of the 20th Century" and commenting on Slim's "self-deprecating style" Military historian Max Hastings stated:

At the end of the war, Slim was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Governor-General of Australia in 1953.

On 10 December 1952 Slim was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) on his appointment as Governor-General of Australia which post he took up on 8 May 1953. On 2 January 1953, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of St. John (KStJ). Slim was a popular choice for Governor-General 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. For his services to the Queen during the tour, he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) on 27 April 1954. Liberal leader Robert Menzies held office throughout Slim's time in Australia. His Official Secretary throughout his term was Murray Tyrrell.

On 2 January 1950, he was promoted to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) and later that year was made a Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit by the United States having previously, in 1948, been awarded the lower ranking Commander of the Legion of Merit. On 1 November 1952, he relinquished the position of Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

However, in November 1948 the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee rejected the proposal by Viscount Montgomery that he should be succeeded as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) by John Crocker and instead brought back Slim from retirement in the rank of field marshal in January 1949 with formal appointment to the Army Council from 1 January 1949. Slim thus became the first Indian Army officer to become CIGS.

At the end of 1945 Slim returned to the UK. On 1 January 1946, he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). and took the post of Commandant of the Imperial Defence College for its first course since 1939. On 7 February 1947 he was made an Aide-de-camp (ADC) to the King. At the end of his two-year appointment at the Imperial Defence College Slim retired as ADC and from the army on 11 May 1948. He had been approached by both India and Pakistan to become C-in-C of their respective armies post independence but refused and instead became Deputy Chairman of the Railway Executive.

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.

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).

Slim 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 and, as a result, Irwin (although an army commander) took personal control of the initial advance by XV Corps into the Arakan Peninsula. The operations ended in disaster, during which Slim was restored to command of XV Corps, albeit too late to salvage the situation. Generals 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 (United Kingdom) (Imphal), XV Corps (Arakan) and XXXIII Corps (reserve) – later joined by XXXIV Corps. On 14 January 1943, Slim was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his actions in the Middle East during 1941. The American historians Alan Millet and Williamson Murray described Slim as:

In March 1942 Slim was given command of the 1st Burma Corps which he extricated from Burma in the face of the Japanese advance.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Slim was given command of the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade of the 5th Indian Infantry Division and was sent to Sudan. He took part in the East African Campaign to liberate Ethiopia from the Italians. Slim was wounded again during the fighting in Eritrea. On 21 January 1941, Slim was hit when his position was strafed during the advance on Agordat.

He attended the Imperial Defence College in 1937. The following year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Gurkha Rifles. In 1939 he was briefly given the temporary rank of brigadier as commander of his battalion. On 8 June 1939, he was promoted to colonel (again with temporary rank of brigadier) and appointed head of the Senior Officers' School, Belgaum in India.

In the early 1930s, Slim also wrote novels, short stories, and other publications under the pen name Anthony Mills.

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.

Slim became battalion adjutant with the 6th Gurkha Rifles in 1921.

In May 1919, Slim became a captain in the Indian Army and was posted to the 6th Gurkha Rifles.

Evacuated to India, he was given the temporary rank of major in the 6th Gurkha Rifles on 2 November 1918. He was formally promoted to captain and transferred to the Indian Army on 22 May 1919.

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.

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.

Despite having no other connection to the university, in 1912 Slim joined the Birmingham University Officers' Training Corps, and he was thus able to be commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 22 August 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War; in later life, as a result of his modest social origins and his unpretentious manner, he was sometimes wrongly supposed to have risen from the ranks. He was badly wounded at Gallipoli. On return to England, he was granted a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the West India Regiment.

Silm's craving for a life in the army persisted in which he entered the Birmingham Unversity Officer Training Center in 1912.

After leaving school, his father's failure in business as a wholesale ironmonger meant that the family could afford to send only one son, Slim's older brother, to the University of Birmingham, so between 1910 and 1914 Slim taught in a primary school and worked as a clerk in Stewarts & Lloyds, a metal-tube maker.

In 1903, he and his family moved to Birmingham where he was educated in a Roman Catholic school.

William Slim was born near Bristol, England in 1891.