Slim, William (Joseph), 1st Viscount Slim of Yarralumla and Bishopston

▪ British field marshal

born , Aug. 6, 1891, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.

died Dec. 14, 1970, London

 British field marshal and chief of the Imperial General Staff who turned back an attempted Japanese invasion of India and defeated the Japanese armies in Burma (Myanmar) during World War II.

      Joining the British army as a private at the outbreak of World War I, Slim soon became an officer and campaigned in the Dardanelles, France, and Iraq. In 1920 he received a regular commission and joined the Indian army, in which he served throughout the interwar period.

      Commanding an Indian brigade at the beginning of World War II, Slim participated in the British conquest of Italian East Africa (1940). The next year he led the 10th Indian Division in its attacks against Vichy French units and native pro-German forces in Iraq and made the first contact with Soviet forces in Tehrān during the Allied occupation of Iran. Hastily appointed to command the 1st Burma Corps in March 1942, he conducted a 900-mile- (1,450-kilometre-) long retreat from superior Japanese forces that overran all of Burma. He succeeded in bringing his troops back to the Indian frontier, and in October 1943 he was given command of the 14th Army. With this force, he undertook a partially successful attack into the Arakan region (February 1944) on the Burma-India frontier, and then, in the Battle of Imphal-Kohima (March–July 1944), he repelled a major Japanese drive to invade northeast India. Devising new tactics adapted to jungle warfare in broken terrain with no continuous front lines, he used aerial resupply and guerrilla warfare to supplement his main effort of pushing the Japanese out of most of Burma. Rangoon (Yangon) fell on May 3, 1945, and in June he became supreme Allied commander of ground forces in Southeast Asia. The Japanese surrender on Aug. 14, 1945, however, cut short his plans for the invasion of Malaya.

      Appointed commandant of the Imperial Defence College in 1946, Slim became chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1948 and was promoted to field marshal. He served as governor-general of Australia from 1953 to 1960, when he was created a viscount. His memoirs, Defeat into Victory, appeared in 1956.

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