127 – The General who wouldn’t quit: Slim and the longest retreat

We look at the early life and career of Field Marshal William Slim. Dr Robat Lyman discusses Slim’s upbringing, his early military career and how he joined the Indian Army.

This episode looks at personal resilience, optimism and how they formed part of Slim’s leadership style. We also discuss how Slim’s style of command and HQ utilised Mission Command in the harsh terrain and broad AO of Burma.

Born into a modest family, Slim’s rise from a Birmingham schoolteacher to be one of Britain’s greatest Generals. He was severely wounded in Gallipoli and again in Mesopotamia during World War I, Slim demonstrated early his determination and understanding of the soldier’s life. Empathy for his soldiers would be a keystone for his exceptional leadership style.

When he assumed command of Burma Corps during World War II, Slim inherited a disintegrating force retreating under relentless Japanese pressure. Against enormous odds — a thousand-mile retreat over 100 days — Slim restored coherence, morale, and fighting spirit, creating the longest organised withdrawal in British Army history without total collapse.

Central to Slim’s success was his mastery of “mission command,” empowering junior leaders with autonomy while ensuring unity of effort. He handpicked commanders who could think independently, emphasising self-help and initiative, vital in the communication-poor jungles and mountains of Burma. Burma was at the bottom of the list for resource priorities, so resourcefulness and self-help were critical to ensuring the functioning ability of the 14th Army.

Slim’s leadership was also remarkable for maintaining optimism in desperate times. Outward calm, humour, and an unshakable belief in eventual victory inspired loyalty even during strategic setbacks. His ability to forge a cohesive, multinational army — including Indian, British, Gurkha, and Chinese troops — underscores his exceptional command skill.

For junior officers and military leaders, Field Marshal William Slim’s lessons remain profoundly relevant: lead by example, build resilient teams, and never let adversity extinguish purpose.

Dr Robert Lyman has written over 15 military history books and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He served in the British Army for 20 years and in 2011 he won the National Army Museum’s debate for ‘Britain’s Greatest General’ on Bill Slim and in 2013 the debate for ‘Britain’s Greatest Battle’ on Kohima and Imphal. He lives in Berkshire, England.

These two books about the Burma Campaign and Slim are excellent and well worth reading.

A war of Empires.
The Generals.
Slim, Master of War.

Transcripts

What turns a teacher from Birmingham into one of the most effective commanders of the Second World War? We look at the leadership lessons from Field Marshal William Slim. This is the Principles of War podcast, professional military education for junior officers and senior NCOs. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 127 of the Principles of War podcast, the General who Wouldn’t Quit, Slim and the Longest Retreat. This is the first in a three part interview with Dr. Robert Lyman looking at the career of Uncle Bill, who Rob successfully argued was Britain’s greatest general. During the interview, we are going to look at the actions that Slim took that enabled him to be recognised as Britain’s greatest general. But more importantly, we’re going to look at who was he, what were the qualities that he had, how did he think?

So that we can distil some of the great lessons from Slim looking at strategy, command and leadership. We’ve had Robert on the podcast before when we talked about his book Victory to Defeat the British Army 1918-1940. If you haven’t read that book yet, you definitely should. It is the story of how the British army decayed as a force doctrinally, intellectually and physically in the interwar period. And that may resonate with some of the things that we’re seeing in Western armies today. He’s got a range of other books, I’ll just mention a couple of them. War of Empires, 1941-45, looking at Japan, India, Burma and Britain. I’ve got that on audiobook, I’ve listened to it twice. A fascinating book.

He’s also written Slim the Master of War and another book that I have read parts of it multiple times, the Generals From Defeat to Victory, Leadership in Asia, 1941-1945. There’s a lot of great lessons about strategy and leadership in that book as well. Welcome back to the podcast, Rob.

James, it’s really good to be with you again.

So this should be a very exciting topic. Slim, do you want to start with what his background was, how did he come to join the British army and what his experience was in World War I?

Yeah, very briefly. He had always wanted to join the army. He’d always wanted, like many youngsters wanted to put on a uniform. And he was born in 1891 in Bristol, the son of a moderately successful engineering merchant. But the depression of the 1890s was such that the family were forced to move north to Birmingham, the heart of the Industrial Revolution. The family never really had much money, it was a lower working, middle class family. But Slim always had aspirations he had one brother who became a doctor, went to the University of Birmingham, but there’s only enough money in the family to pay for one son to go to university. So Slim, Bill Slim, he was always known as Bill Slim, never. William went on to become a certificated teacher, so a. Basically an apprentice teacher in a school.

And for a period of time he also worked on a shop floor. So this was really helpful experience for him because he understood the soldiers that he was later to command, perhaps in a more profound way than had he gone to. Had he had a much more privileged upbringing and gone to one of the public, big public schools where access to real people was limited. Limited. He managed to inveigle himself into the Birmingham University Officers Training Corps. Now, even his family’s grandson, Mark Slim and I have talked about this quite a bit. We’re not really sure how he did it. I have a suspicion that he persuaded the university that he was his brother and got into the OTC because his brother was at the university studying medicine.

There was no other reason why he would have been allowed, because of course he would have had to be a student to join the OTC. But he became a member of the OTC, absolutely loved soldiering. And at the point, the Second World War, sorry, the First World War, began in August 1914. He was commissioned, because all members of the OTC were immediately commissioned in order to be able to expand the army. He joined the Warwickshire Regiment, incidentally, the Same regiment as B.L. Montgomery, Bernard Law Montgomery, and which is a fascinating bit of serendipity. And he then went on and saw his first action in Gallipoli, where he was very badly wounded. I mean, he was very lucky to survive. He undertook one of those punishing frontal assaults against the Turkish riflemen and was shot through the lungs and only managed to just scrape through.

Went back to the uk, was patched up, he was medically downgraded. But Slim was a determined chap and he worked very hard to persuade the medical board that he was fit to join regiment and go back to war. He eventually managed to do that in 1917, ended up in Mesopotamia, where after the siege of Kut, operations were underway against the Turks. And he was wounded again in Mesopotamia, where he was awarded the Military Cross. And he was shot again and again in an advance to contact against Turkish riflemen, but again survived. And at the end of the First World War, as the British army, indeed the Australian, all the other armies in the Western powers reduced dramatically, he was determined to stay on at Gallipoli.

He had come across the Gurkha Rifles, six Gurkha Rifles, in fact, and had created a notion in his head that one day he would join the Gurkhas and continue his career as a soldier. And by a number of quite extraordinary means he, that whereas all his peers were being discharged, he managed by a number of, by a circuitous route to get into the gurkhas. So by 1919 he had obtained a commission in the Indian Army. Now this is quite unusual in itself because the Indian army, in order to get a commission in the Indian army as a Brit, you needed to have gone through Sandhurst or Woolwich. Woolwich was the place which trained artillerymen and engineers, Sandhurst, infantry and cavalry. And you need to be commissioned into the Indian Army.

It was a very separate, very different army to the British army and you couldn’t just swap your commissions. So he retired from the British army and took a commission in the Indian army and that was his first World War experience.

So you mentioned that he was wounded twice in the First World War and he was also wounded in Eritrea in 1941. What was his approach to reconnaissance? Was he, was he a risk taker?

He was a risk taker, but you need to really define what risk means. I would suggest that he was, you know, as a soldier, your life is replete with risk. But he managed his risk. So he wasn’t gung ho, to use that more modern American phrase, and was never encouraged the idea of charging willy nilly into the guns as evidence of courage or bravery. He wasn’t that sort of guy. Of course, when you had to march into the guns or into enemy fire, he did it as bravely as anyone else and the evidence is clear to see. But he was a soldier who, he was an officer who operated forward with his troops. He believed that he had to be with them and lead from the front. That was very much part of the makeup of British officers at the time.

The idea that you might be able to command from the rear was anathema to him. And of course this meant all those things associated with personal recce or officers. Patrols, as they were known at the time, were undertaken by him. And he was not alone in this. Often patrols would be undertaken by officers only if particularly important intelligence was necessary or needful on the battlefield. And, you know, he undertook those as much as the next man.

When he took command of burma Corps in 1942, so that was four months after the Japanese attack in the Southwest Pacific. He’s got the 17th Indian Division and 1st Burma Division. What was the situation when he took over and how did he conduct that retreat?

The situation when he took over on about 13-3-42 was utterly desperate. The 17th Indian Division, which was only comprised two brigades, it was interesting enough, an all Gurkha brigade. Most Indian divisions had two Indian brigades and a British brigade. But the 17th all Gurkha brigade only had two brigades because one of those brigades had been sent off to Malaya and had been swept up in events there and it had been lost, or Most of the 17th Division had been lost at the Satang Bridge at the end of February. The Japanese arrived in Burma at the end of January. By the end of February, four weeks later, they had pushed the very weak British Indian and Burmese forces back towards Rangoon. The Sittang Bridge was blown early by the Commander of the 17th Division, Major General Sir John Smith VC.

And there are lots of reasons for that which we don’t have time for now. Which basically meant that the British forces at the time were then forced back on Rangoon and a decision had to be made as to whether Rangoon was held. Now, the commander of the army, the Burma army, was General Sir Harold Alexander, flown out just a little bit before in order to take command of the army. And he realised rather late, but he realised in time that Rangoon was indefensible and he ordered a withdrawal. That withdrawal was very nearly circumvented by the arrival of the Japanese under General Aida. But by a number of. But by luck essentially, Alexander was able to extricate himself out of Rangoon and make his way north, which was really the start of the withdrawal from Burma itself.

So about a week later, Slim arrived to take control of the Burma Corps. Now the Burma Corps, as you rightly said, was the remains of the 17th Indian division by now had been reinforced by the arrival of a new brigade, an Indian brigade, and by the arrival of the 7th Armoured Brigade, fresh from its operations in North Africa, which was fantastic. So Slim had command of the 17th Division, the 1st Burma Division, which comprised a number of regiments of the Burma Rifles and some British battalions. And the Burma army itself also included the 30,000 men of Sun Lijian’s Chinese army. So Alexander commanded the Burma Corps and the Chinese Slum commanded Burma Corps. Now, by the time he arrived, the Burma army was streaming north in two routes.

On the right hand side up to place called Tungu on the Sittang, and on the left hand side up the Iroquoddy to Prum. And Slim was then forced very quickly to determine how best he was going to stop the Japanese. So he decided on a series of delaying operations, but they were all pushed back because the country was so big, he wasn’t able to stop Japanese encirclement. And his Burma Corps was pushed back up the Irrawaddy to a place called Yening Yang, at a place called Pinchong, where it was almost surrounded and defeated by the Japanese and only rescued by Sun Lijian’s Chinese. Quite an extraordinary battle in which the Chinese saved the British.

And the decision was then made a few weeks later, on the 1st 2nd of May, to withdraw the Burma army out of Burma, the Burma Corps, back to India via the Chinwin at a place called Kaliwa, then up to Tamu, and the Chinese back eastwards up the. What was the Burma Road, through Mandalay to Leshio and Bamo into China. And this was the. The story of the retreat from Burma in 1942. Quite an extraordinary one, because actually, without the arrival of Slim, I think the whole thing would have gone pear shaped very quickly, because Slim was able to give coherence and sense to what Burma Corps was doing. Prior to this. Brigade commanders and battalion commanders were largely doing their own thing. There’s a hugely chaotic situation and morale was low.

But the arrival of Slim to create a coherent plan for defeating the Japanese advances and the arrival of the 7th Armoured Brigade were hugely important to the success of the withdrawal. And when you look back on the withdrawal or the retreat from Birminal, it was about 1,000 miles and 100 days, the longest retreat in the British army history of the British Army. But it was done coherently. And I think this is the key point here. Slim Little Corps wasn’t defeated. It fought a number of very successful actions, too. In particular, where Gurkha brigades gave the Japanese a very considerable drubbing, once at a place called Cocogwa and the other at a place called Kiorsk, which is just short of the Irrawaddy, at the Ava Bridge at Mandalay, where the Japanese advance was very severely contained and they suffered really considerable casualties.

But nevertheless, the Burma Corps was pushed back into Burma and the Burma army ceased to exist. But the end of that is quite extraordinary. Slim records watching his bedraggled men marching into Imphal, the capital of Manipur india, after this fighting withdrawal of a thousand miles, with their heads held high, carrying their rifles, and they saluted him. And he realised then that the essential power of an army lay in the strength and motivation and fighting power of its soldiers. And their willingness to follow him was quite extraordinary. To fight the fact that they might be winning the tactical battle. They were being defeated strategically because every time they stopped to fight, they were being outflanked by fast moving Japanese. Outflanked because the Japanese had control of the river, the Irrawaddy and the British didn’t. So Slim, what did Slim take away from that?

He realised the Japanese weren’t superman. He realised they could beaten. All it required was good soldiers, the right tactics, the right training and the right leadership. And he went away and spent the next year and a half effectively preparing a new army to go back into Burma and to defeat the Japanese. So that learning experience was absolutely fundamental. It wasn’t easy. You know, the retreat from Burma was a very tough call. And when you think that, you know, in mid March 1942, he’d just been flown out as divisional commander in Iran, he had undertaken a series of very significant and successful operations. Defeat the Vichy French in eastern Syria, and then he had been involved and led the British invasion of southern Iran in 1941. And then he was plonked without any preparation in Burma.

And all he had was a very brief interview with Wavell in Calcutta before he arrived, which didn’t really amount to much. Wavell was notoriously bad at underestimating the Japanese and overestimating the abilities of his own forces. And when Slim arrived in Burma, he found the situation to be much worse than he had expected.

As you’ve discussed, the retreat from Burma was incredibly difficult. How did he maintain his optimism? Like in spite of the defeats from the Japanese, all of the difficulties of the terrain, the difficulties of the weather, conducting that withdrawal, how did he maintain his optimism?

He was a remarkably phlegmatic man. He wasn’t overly excited, he certainly wasn’t excitable and he wasn’t easily depressed. That doesn’t mean to say that he wasn’t depressed. And I would say that the answer to that question was that he artificially maintained his morale and he ensured that he remained calm, outwardly calm in front of his staff officers and his subordinate commanders. This is a really critical characteristic of command, that you appear in command of the situation. That’s why you’re a commander. And Slim was very good at this. And in his fabulous book, Defeated Victory, he records a number of times during the retreat in 1942 when he was anything but calm and was staring defeat in the face. And one occasion, just before the Battle of Yen and Yang, where he was deploying his forces, everyone was absolutely knackered.

Japanese were pressing him hard from every side. He wasn’t able to trust the Chinese in the sense that they would commit to doing an operation, but then failed to arrive at the moment he required it. There are lots of reasons for that. You know, the interface between international armies on the battlefield is always a fraud and a difficult one. And the Japanese fought brilliantly. Well. Sorry, the Chinese fought brilliantly well in 1942, actually, under song Li Jin. But the interface was a difficult one, a Slim. So there was one particular occasion when Japanese were outflanking him at Yen and Yang up the Irrawaddy. They were pressing him hard from the south. And he tried to appear light hearted in front of his. His brigade and unit commanders. His briefings went all the way down to the commanding officers of the units and his brigades.

And he said, well, it could be worse. As he described in his book. One sepulchral voice came from the back of the crowd and said, how? And Slim said, well, it could be raining. Well, he said, within an hour. This is just on the edge of the monsoon, the big monsoon period, which hits in May in Southeast Asia and rushes all the way through to October. It was raining very hard. So Slim said he could have throttled the man. But, you know, you have to be an actor. Anyone who served in the army knows that being in command is in large part an act. That act represents the quality of your personality. And if you’ve got a good and a powerful personality and it’s well directed, it’s a very important component of the entirety of the art of command.

Those who don’t have strong personalities have to create something into which they can then fit. Slim didn’t have any problem with that, but he had to manage his personality and he had to manage the way in which he presented himself to his subordinates. When you’re succeeding and successful in battle, it’s very easy for people to ignore this. I mean, victory has a music all of its own. Of course, you don’t have to persuade people about how good you are. If you’re victorious in defeat. It’s a much more difficult job for a commander. And you have to present yourself to your subordinates on the basis that they are confident that despite the difficulties you find yourselves in, you have a plan and that you’re in command. And Slim was very good at doing this.

So Field Marshal Sir Claude auchinleck wrote in 1946 that one of Slim’s chief characteristics was his quite outstanding determination and inability to admit defeat or the possibility of it. Also his exceptional ability to gain and retain the confidence of those under him and with him without any resort to panache. Success did not inflate him or misfortunes depress him. So when he took command of the Corps or even 14th army, how did he instil his leadership into those commands?

The really important thing about Slim was creating a command structure under him. And a by that I mean all the personalities in command from unit level up would say battalion, artillery regiment, tank regiment, infantry, battalion, up in his own image. So men had to be, first of all, competent at their job. They had to understand the entirety of the story and recognise that they were fighting a bigger war in which they were component parts. They needed to be good trainers of men. They needed to be able to inspire their men. And this was important at battalion level. It was equally important brigade and divisional and corps level. And Slim spent quite a lot of time in 1943 and 44 creating a command structure in the 14th army that mirrored his own personality. And this is one of the reasons for his success.

And the quotation from Claude Auchnik, one of the Indian Army’s greatest ever commanders, is absolutely on the bottom because Slim created, and there’s a lot of evidence for this, a lot of people. It’s very hard to find poor commanders in the 14th Army. When a unit commander proved unable to deliver the goods, he was always given two chances. An individual failed once, the second time he was removed. Many people made mistakes the first time and they rectified them and didn’t make them again. But Slim was actually quite ruthless. And this is an unknown side to Slim. But if you’re creating a command structure, remember the 14th Army. The fighting elements, the 14th army, over 606,000 men, 1945, a very large army indeed. There were 1.3 million men in Southeast Asia Command.

If you want things to work for you as you expect, as you would do them yourself, you need to be able to create a command structure and a mentality and a story that replicates yourself. There’s no point trying to force a court into a pint pot. And Slim recognised that. One of the advantages Slim had, of course, as an army commander, he was able to recruit, if that’s the right word, men to senior positions who he knew intimately from this time in the Indian Army. He’d spent 20 years, of course, in the Indian Army. He’s very well known in the Indian Army. He had come top of the Staff college at Quetta.

He was one of the well known personalities in the Indian Army, quite a small army, 190,000 strong, about 5,000 officers, all of who really didn’t know each other intimately, but he was very well known and he knew who the riser who he knew all the stars were in the Indian Army. He was able to appoint them for individuals who weren’t in the Indian Army. He was able to assess them by their battlefield performance. And one of the best examples is Major General Ouvry Roberts, who commanded the 23rd Division in the big battles at Imphal in Manipur in 1944. Uvre Roberts actually was a British service officer and he was a Royal Engineer. But Slim came across him in Iraq in 1941, thought he was very impressive.

And when he got to Burma, when he got to after the Burma retreat was completed, he got hold of Uvre Roberts, brought him to India and put him in command of the 23rd Division in 1943. So that’s the answer to the question. It’s not something that every commander has the ability to do in the sense that you have to deal with the. You have to live with the people you’ve got. But if you’ve got the opportunity of creating a new army and moulding it in an image that reflects you as a commander, reflects what you want to achieve, then that’s the only way to do it. And Slim was masterful in creating the entire command structure of a victorious army in 44, because he had the time to do it. I just give you a few examples in terms of the characteristics.

He wanted unit commanders, so battalion commanders in particular, not only to do all the things I’ve described, be good trainers of men, be positive motivators and be good leaders, but he wanted men who didn’t ask for things, who solved problems when they occurred by using their own resources and ingenuity. He wanted to create an army that was built on the notion of self help, because no one else was going to come and do it for them. So commanding officers had quite remarkable autonomy. There are lots and lots of fabulous stories right across the 14th army of Commanding officers just making decisions because they were the right ones to do it. Wasn’t an army that waited to be told what to do.

And this was the same for Brigade Division, when corps commanders, they made decisions on the basis of what they considered to be right, because they knew what Slim’s intent was. And this is why Slim was a fantastic exemplar in the Second World War of the notion of what we would today call certainly the British army of Mission Command, where unit commanders or commanders at Every level of operate on the basis of a very deep and detailed understanding of what the operational goals of the formations they’re operating in are. So if you’re working as a battalion commander in an operational brigade or division, you know absolutely what the divisional objectives are. You don’t have to be told them every time. And you’re not in hoc to precise instructions if. Well, you clearly have to obey precise instructions.

But the whole idea here is that if you know your commander’s intent two up, as we say in the British army, then you are in a much better position to make the decisive decisions when you have to. When you don’t have your brigade or divisional commander sitting on your shoulder. And Slim knew this intuitively and built an army based on those principles.

That concept of mission command would have been really important too, because I think communications would have been quite difficult in the jungle.

Yes, it wasn’t just the jungle, James, it was distance. Distance was quite an extraordinary thing in the Far east. And if I just really sort of anchor this for listeners, the war in the Far east, we call it the Burma campaign because it was all the loci, or the foci rather was Burma. But actually, you know, in official terms it was the Far Eastern theatre. It was anchored in Calcutta. Major operations took place in 1944 in eastern India. And eastern India, in terms of the line of communication was exactly 1000 miles from Calcutta. You then had another 200 miles over the Naga Hills, through what is now Nagaland, into Manipur. And to reach The Tamu is 200 miles, so that’s effectively 1200 miles from Calcutta.

So those great battles in 1944 were effectively fighting a very significant battle in Moscow from London, sourced from London at the end of one road, sort of. When I talk about this in Europe, it’s really quite extraordinary when people get their heads around the dramatic challenges of sustaining and maintaining a large army at the end of a thousand mile long stick. And of course, this is where air power comes in. It was really important consideration in 44, 45. But distance was as well. And units had to operate on the basis that the commanding officers, brigade commanders made decisions as and where they were on the basis of their commander’s intent. Which is why, yes, mission command was the only way in which the 14th army could actually succeed.

He had a wide range of nationalities and languages in the 14th Army. How did he manage that?

Well, the first thing to remember is that it was an Indian army. The Indian army had always been multi ethnic and comprising every component of India. I Don’t want to overran that because of this thing. Some of your listeners will understand the martial races theory after the Mutiny in 1857, when the British government took over India in 1858, the Indian army very separate to the British Army. Just to remind listeners, again, it was the legally constituted army of India, recruited largely from what was known at the time as martial races. And these tended to be races who were loyal to the government, the sirtar, and from parts of the country that had a martial or a military tradition. So 40% of the Indian army in 1940 came from the Punjab and the north west of the country.

So Sikhs, Punjabi, Muslims, Punjabi Hindus and parts of India that had proven their ability as soldiers. And there was a long martial military tradition in the Indian army. But of course they all spoke different languages and they were all from different tribes and ethnicities. In fact, there were 32 separate ration scales in the Indian army in 1940 to take account of these differences. So what brought the Indian army together? The first of all was a unified officer caste. And this is really important. Caste and class were really important. This wasn’t an ethnic or a racial thing. This was about an officer caste. And this is no different to any other nation’s peacetime armies were an officer cast class stroke. Caste is often essential to the professional success of that army.

Even in highly democratic armies, like I might add, the Australian army, an officer class is still critically important for the establishment of proper military authority. And this was very important. The number of Indians in the officer caste was limited. By the 1945, it was exactly half and half. 10,000 officer in the Indian Army, 5,000 Indian, 5,000 British. But in 1940 there were far fewer Indian officers. Of course, the other reality was that the lingua franca of the Indian army was Urdu. Urdu was a northwestern dialect which had been adopted by the Indian army as its language. And every Indian soldier understood pidgin Urdu, even if their primary language was Hindi or another language or dialect entirely. Just to give you an example, India has hundreds and hundreds of separate languages. In the Naga Hills themselves, there are 17 Naga tribes.

Each of the Naga tribes has its own language, not dialect, language. So Urdu became the lingua franca of the Indian army and everyone spoke it to one degree or another. All officers had to pass their higher Urdu exams. So the whole series of exams they had to undertake. If you were a young Brit and you came out of Sandhurst and you joined the Indian army, you spent a year with the British regiment india first, then you joined your Indian regiment having got a bit of experience of India under your belt, so you didn’t embarrass yourself. You then had one year to pass your initial Urdu examination and then you had to pass your higher Urdu as well, which basically higher Urdu, you basically speak it as fluently as a native. So language was really critical.

Good officers also went on to learn Hindi, Hindustani, which is the language of the eastern India, northeastern India. And many officers, certainly all officers in the Gurkhas, the ten regiments of Gurkhas also learnt Gurkhali. So a professional long service Indian army officer from the UK or from Australia, and quite a number of Australians in the UK Indian army in fact would speak three languages.

We’ll leave the interview there. A fascinating insight from Robert of the formative years for Slim, as well as how he conducted himself during the difficult times of such a long retreat. For me, the big takeout is the ability to maintain that optimism. Optimism in spite of all of the defeats, all of the hardships, all of the personal difficulties that he would have been going through as they were conducting that withdrawal will return next week with the next episode in this interview. The Principles of War podcast is brought to you by James Ealing. The show notes for the Principles of War podcast are available at www.theprinciplesofwar.com. For maps, photos and other information that didn’t make it into the podcast, follow us on Facebook or tweet us at surprisepodcast.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on itunes and tag a mate in one of our episodes. All opinions expressed by individuals are those of those individuals and not of any organisation.