XII
(1891–1970)
LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN pronounced William Slim “the finest general the Second World War produced.”1 His army in Burma comprised British, Gurkha, LORD Burmese, African, and at times American and Chinese troops. He welded this mixture of nationalities into an effective fighting force, and coordinated its operations with British and American air forces. His memoirs (quoted below) contain a wealth of good advice.
The future Field Marshal Viscount Slim saw action as a lieutenant in 1915 in the Gallipoli campaign. He fought at Cape Helles and Sari Bair, attacking up steep hills and surviving in trenches hacked in solid rock in oppressive heat. His battalion had 414 casualties; Slim took a bullet that barely missed his spine. He knew all too well the shortcomings of command in the Great War—generals out of touch with troops, poor planning, inadequate supplies—and their effects on morale.
As an army commander in Burma in World War II, he knew his troops, prepared them for combat, and saw to their needs and esprit.2 He spoke Gur-khali, Urdu, and Pushtu as well as English. In whatever language, wrote General O’Carroll-Scott: “It was always as one man to another—never the great commander to his troops.”3 And Slim did not have the passion for endless preparation that infected so many British generals. He did not delay attacking until he had every possible necessity for victory. Otherwise, says Evans, he would not have given the Japanese in Burma “the greatest land defeat in their history.”4
Slim was born in Bristol, England, the son of a businessman. He attended King Edward’s School, where he joined the Officer Training Corps, and finished training at Birmingham University.
After serving in World War I, he was commissioned in the Indian Army. In the 1920s and 1930s, he commanded Gurkha and Indian troops, with stints at staff college as a student and instructor. When the Second World War began, he commanded of the 10th Indian Brigade, then an Indian division, with which he took Baghdad (June 1941). He was next given the I (First) Burma Corps (Indian and Burmese troops), formed to defend Burma, but was driven into India (April1942). U.S. Lieutenant General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, nominally commanding the Chinese Army of Chiang Kai-shek, tried to help, but could do little.
Placed in command of 14th Army, Slim prevented the Japanese from invading India (1943–early 1944), then launched an offensive into Burma. By December 1944 he had recaptured northern Burma, following inroads by irregulars—Major General Orde Wingate’s “Chindits” (British, Gurkhas, Burmese, and Afri-cans) 5and “Merrill’s Marauders,” under Brigadier General Frank Merrill, American volunteers of Stilwell’s command who led the advance of his Chinese troops.6
Slim managed two of the most difficult commanders in the world—“Vinegar Joe” Stilwell and Orde Wingate. Stilwell was not under Slim’s command and averred to hate “limies.” Yet Slim got his cooperation:
My method with Stilwell was based on what I had learnt of him in the Retreat [from Burma in 1942] . . . whenever I wanted anything, to fly over and discuss it with him, alone. Stilwell, talking things over quietly with no one else present, was a much easier and more like able person than Vinegar Joe with an audience.7
Wingate was under Slim’s command, but barely. He was in direct touch with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who favored eccentrics—if they got things done. Wingate could have been “king of the strange”; slender, of average height, with a tangle of black hair and the beard of a prophet, he snacked on raw chicken and sometimes briefed his officers while stark naked. However, his LRPG (Long Range Penetration Groups) performed prodigies—striking the Japanese behind their lines with small air-supplied detachments. Slim wrote of him:
Wingate and I agreed better than most people expected, perhaps because we had known one another before, or perhaps because we had each . . .arrived at the same conclusions on certain major issues, the potentialities of air supply, the possibility of taking Burma from the north, and . . .estimates of the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese.8
The Battle for Myitkyina (August 1944), however, badly depleted the Chindits (Wingate was killed in a plane crash during preliminary actions); it virtually wiped out Merrill’s Marauders, who were deactivated.9 Stilwell was promoted to full (four-star) general, a grade long deserved, and ordered home. Only elements of the 14th U.S. Army Air Force, under General Claire Chenault (recently of the free booting “Flying Tigers,” serving Chiang Kaishek), 10 remained to support Slim.11
Slim went forward, nevertheless, to bring the Japanese to a battle of decision at Meiktila and capture Mandalay (March 1945) and Rangoon (May 1945). He was made Chief of Southeast Asian Ground Forces (August 1945). After Japan surrendered, Slim restored order in Malaysia and Indonesia. In 1948 he was made Chief of the Imperial General Staff and shortly promoted field marshal and knighted. He was governor general of Australia (1952–60), then returned to England, where he held ceremonial posts; he retired in 1970 and died the same year.
The following passages are from Field Marshal Slim’s memoirs, largely of World War II in Burma, entitled Defeat into Victory.12 The segments quoted deal with his general ideas on leadership.
Personal Command
Our organization at Army Headquarters was basically the same as I had used for 15 Corps. I never adopted the “Chief of Staff System”, which, following the German and American lead, had been introduced in some British armies. Under this system the Chief General Staff Officer not only co-ordinates the work of the whole staff, but is the mouthpiece of the commander to the other principal staff officers and heads of Services, interpreting to them his Commander’s intentions and wishes. I preferred to stick to the old British method of the Commander dealing directly himself with his principal staff officers. Command is the projection of the commander’s personality and, as such, is an extremely [individual matter].
The Staff
In Fourteenth Army . . . my senior staff officer was actually my major-general in charge of administration. For an army engaged in a campaign in Burma this was logical . . . administrative possibilities and impossibilities would loom as large, [or] larger than strategical and tactical alternatives. In any case the immense supply, transport, medical, and reinforcement organizations that we were beginning to build up more than justified a major-general’s rank.
Planning
The principles on which I planned all operations were:
(i) The ultimate intention must be an offensive one.
(ii) The main idea on which the plan was based must be simple.
(iii) That idea must be held in view throughout and everything else must give way to it.
(iv) The plan must have in it an element of surprise.
Refining the Plan
My method of working out such a plan was first to study the possibilities myself, and then informally to discuss them with my Brigadier General Staff, Major-General Administration, and my opposite number in the Air Force. At these discussions we would arrive at the broadest outline of possible alternative courses of action, at least two, more often three or four. These alternatives the B.G.S. would give to our team of planners, specially selected but comparatively junior officers, representing not only the general and administrative staffs, but the air staff as well. They would make a preliminary study, giving the practicability or otherwise of each course and its advantages and disadvantages. They were quite at liberty to make new suggestions of their own, or to devise permutations and combinations of the originals. The results of the planners’ examination of the proposals were put up to me as a short paper, largely in tabular form, and from it I decided on the main features of the plan to be followed.
Studying the Enemy
At this stage I usually discussed with the intelligence officer whom I had selected to represent the Japanese command . . . what the enemy’s reactions to this plan were likely to be. I was, of course, kept daily in the picture of the Japanese actions, intentions, and dispositions, as far as we knew or could surmise them, but I intentionally waited until I had selected my plan before considering the enemy response to it, as I intended him to conform to me, not me to him. A consideration of these possible Japanese counter-moves never, I think, caused a major alteration in a plan, but they did affect such things as the location and expected tasks of reserves.
Air Support and Transport
As few of our plans were not dependent on air support and air transportation, this was the stage at which general agreement between us [Slim’s headquarters and Air Operations Command] had to be reached.
This done—and thanks to the generosity and unselfishness of the air commanders, British and American, with whom I was lucky enough to work, it always was done—the next step was a meeting of my principal staff officers.
Briefing the Staff
At this, besides the Major-General Administration and the B.G.S., would be present my chief gunner, engineer, signaller, doctor, ordnance and R.E.M.E. officers. To them I would put over my plan, meet or override any special difficulties they might have, and send them off to their own staffs to hold their own conferences and to get the thousand and one things required moving. Meanwhile the B.G.S. and the Senior Air Staff Officer got down to the dovetailing of the land and air aspects on which so much would depend. There was still more for the B.G.S. to do. He had to produce the operation order or directive for the corps and other commanders who were to carry out the operations. This he prepared in conjunction with the administrative staff and the Services.
The Operations Order
I suppose dozens of operation orders have gone out in my name, but I never, throughout the war, actually wrote one myself. I always had someone who could do that better than I could. One part of the order I did, however, draft myself—the intention. It is usually the shortest of all paragraphs, but it is always the most important, because it states—or it should—just what the commander intends to achieve. It is the one overriding expression of will by which everything in the order and every action by every commander and soldier in the army must be dominated. It should, therefore, be worded by the commander himself.
Up Front: Briefing the Commanders
The next step was to take the operation order myself to the subordinate commanders who were to act on it. On principle . . . it is better to go forward to them, than to call them back; to give them their orders at their headquarters rather than at your own. That applies whether you command a platoon or an army group.13
Personal: Saving Strength
I must have ample leisure in which to think, and unbroken sleep. Generals would do well to remember that, even in war, ‘the wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure.’ Generals who are terribly busy all day and half the night, who fuss round . . . wear out . . . their subordinates [and] themselves. Nor have they, when the real emergency comes, the reserve of vigour that will then enable them, for days if necessary, to do with little rest or sleep.14
Morale
Morale is a state of mind. It is that intangible force which will move a whole group of men to give their last ounce to achieve something, without counting the cost to themselves; that makes them feel they are part of something greater than themselves. If they are to feel that, their morale . . . must . . . have . . . foundations. These foundations are spiritual, intellectual, and material . . . [in]order of their importance. Spiritual first, because only spiritual foundations can stand real strain. Next intellectual, because men are swayed by reason as well as feeling. Material last—important, but last—because the very highest kinds of morale are often met when material conditions are lowest.
1. Spiritual
(a) There must be a great and noble object.
(b) Its achievement must be vital.
(c) The method of achievement must be active, aggressive.
(d) The man must feel that what he is and what he does matters directly towards the attainment of the object.
2. Intellectual
(a) [The soldier] must be convinced that the object can be attained; that it is not out of reach.
(b) He must see, too, that the organization to which he belongs and which is striving to attain the object is an efficient one.
(c) He must have confidence in his leaders and know that whatever dangers and hardships he is called upon to suffer, his life will not be lightly flung away.
3. Material
(a) The man must feel that he will get a fair deal from his commanders and from the army generally.
(b) He must, as far as humanly possible, be given the best weapons and equipment for his task.
(c) His living and working conditions must be made as good as they can be.
Religion and Belief in a Cause
[It was easy] thus neatly to marshal my principles but quite another to develop them . . . and get them recognized by the whole army.
At any rate our spiritual foundation was a firm one. I use the word spiritual [to mean] belief in a cause. Religion has always been and still is one of the greatest foundations of morale, especially of military morale. Saints and soldiers have much in common. The religion of the Mohammedan, of the Sikh, of the Gurkha, and of the fighting Hindu—and we had them all in the Fourteenth Army—can rouse in men a blaze of contempt for death. The Christian religion is above all others a source of that enduring courage which is the most valuable of all the components of morale. Yet religion . . . is not essential to high morale. Anyone who has fought with or against Nazi paratroops, Japanese suicide squads, or Russian Commissars, will [know] this; but a spiritual foundation, belief in a cause, there must be. . . .
Nor [is] it enough to have a worthy cause. It must be positive, aggressive, nota mere passive, defensive, anti-something feeling. So our object became not to defend India, to stop the Japanese advance, or even to occupy Burma, but to destroy the Japanese Army, to smash it as an evil thing.15
Motivating both Fighting and Support Soldiers
The fighting soldier facing the enemy can see that what he does, whether he is brave or craven, matters to his comrades and directly influences the result of the battle. It is harder for the man working on the road far behind, the clerk checking stores in a dump, the headquarter’s telephone operator monotonously plugging through his calls, the sweeper carrying out his menial tasks, the quartermaster’s orderly issuing bootlaces in a reinforcement camp—it is hard for these and a thousand others to see that they too matter. Yet every one of the half-million in the army—and it was many more later—had to be made to see where his task fitted into the whole, to realize what depended on it, and to feel pride and satisfaction in doing it well.
Now these things, while the very basis of morale, because they were purely matters of feeling and emotion, were the most difficult to put over, especially to the British portion of the army.
Personal Contact with the Troops
The problem was how to instil or revive their beliefs in the men of many races who made up the Fourteenth Army. I felt there was only one way to do it, by a direct approach to the individual men themselves. Not by written exhortations, by wireless speeches, but by informal talks and contacts between troops and commanders. There was nothing new in this; my corps and divisional commanders and others right down the scale were already doing it. It was the way we had held the troops together in the worst days of the 1942 retreat; we remained an army then only because the men saw and knew their commanders.
Efficacy of Appeal to “Higher Things”
One of the most successful of British commanders once told me that you could make an appeal to these higher things successfully to officers, but not . . . the rank and file. He underestimated his countrymen, and he had forgotten history. His dictum was not true of the England of the Crusades, of Cromwell, of Pitt, nor of Churchill. It was not true of my army, of either the British, Indian, Gurkha, or African soldier.
Up-front Appearances
I made a point of speaking myself to every combatant unit or at least to its officers and N.C.O.s. My platform was usually the bonnet of my jeep with the men collected anyhow round it. I often did three or four of these stump speeches in a day. I learnt, or perhaps I had already learnt in 15 Corps, the various responses one got from the different nationalities. Even the British differed. A cockney battalion saw the point of a joke almost before it came, a north country unit did not laugh so easily but when it did the roar was good to hear. All responded at once to some reference to their pride in the part of Britain they came from or in their regiment. A lot more could be made of this local pride; it is a fine thing. All the British were shy of talk of the spiritual things. This was most marked in the English; the Welsh and Irish had fewer inhibitions on these subjects, and the Scots, who are reared more on the romance of their history, least of any. While Indian races differed in almost everything, they all were more ready than the British to respond openly to direct appeals on . . . abstract grounds. They had not only a greater feeling for personal leadership, but their military traditions, their local patriotisms, and their religions were much more part of the everyday fabric of their lives than such things are with us. Their reaction was immediate and often intense. The Gurkha, bless him, made the most stolid of all audiences. He had a tendency to stand or sit to attention and his poker face never changed its expression until it broke into the most attractive grin in Asia at a rather broad jest. . . . The African . . . responded much as an Indian. Language was a difficulty [but was overcome].
Food and Minor Luxuries before “Higher Things”
I found that if one kept the bulk of one’s talk to the material things the men were interested in, food, pay, leave, beer, mails, and the progress of operations, it was safe to end on a higher note—the spiritual foundations—and I always did.
Every Man Important
We played on this very human desire of every man to feel . . . himself and his work important, until . . . the administrative, labour, and non-combatant units acquired a morale which rivalled that of the fighting formations.16
Building Morale after Retreat [From Burma, 1942]
A victory in a large-scale battle was . . . not to be attempted. We had first to get the feel through the army that it was we who were hunting the Jap, not he us.
All commanders therefore directed their attention to patrolling. In jungle warfare this is the basis of success. It not only gives eyes to the side that excels at it, and blinds its opponent, but through it the soldier learns to move confidently in the element in which he works. Every forward unit, not only infantry, chose its best men, formed patrols, trained and practiced them, and . . . sent them out.
Sometimes they brought back even more convincing exhibits, as did the Gurkhas who presented themselves before their general, proudly opened a large basket, lifted from it three gory Japanese heads, and laid them on his table.
The Value of Easy Victories
[To instill confidence] [w]e attacked Japanese company positions with brigades fully supported by artillery and aircraft, platoon posts by battalions.
We had laid the first of our intellectual foundations of morale; everyone knew we could defeat the Japanese, our object was attainable. The next foundation, that the men should feel that they belonged to an efficient organization, that Fourteenth Army was well run and would get somewhere, followed partly from these minor successes.17
Conclusions
Slim finished World War I with a disdain for staffs, and scars of wounds attesting to poor high-level decisions. Nevertheless, he saw the necessity for minimal staffs, so long as they did not separate the commander from his men. He depended heavily on personal contact to build morale among the troops, and to control his subordinates. His operations were planned for offensive action, with an element of surprise; to achieve the latter he studied the dispositions and habits of the enemy (the Japanese). No operation was begun without adequate supply and air support, but he did not carry preparations to extremes.
Slim understood well that winning was important, and arranged easy victories for his troops when they embarked on the recapture of Burma from the Japanese. His men were untried and/or demoralized by seemingly unbroken Japanese victories. He believed that men were motivated by religion—of their choice or into which they were born—but that religion, perse, was not essential to morale and therefore victory. He thought that it could be replaced by belief in a cause, which could unite men of different religions, such as he commanded, and evidently he was right.
However, in speaking to the troops, he emphasized—along with the mutual goal of beating the Japanese—“food, pay, leave, beer, mails, and the progress of operations.” And he worked steadily at making every man feel he was important to victory, whether fighting in the front lines or providing support in the rear.
He took care of his men, and stayed in contact with them, never hesitating to risk his own life for the mission or to motivate the troops (although he does not say so in his memoirs). His sympathy for the eccentric but effective Wingate, who was always courting death, well illustrates his general attitude. His position against excessive preparation, which made for victory in the field, had gotten him into trouble at the staff college—along with his lack of interest in gentlemanly sports, notably riding and hunting. But: “In the end, the Commandant decided that on sheer merit alone Slim deserved the highest grading and this he was given.”18
That was the story of Slim’s life. From humble beginnings, he had to convince his superiors at all stages of his worth, and despite his outstanding record in Asia, was not made a field marshal and knighted until three years after the war.