After the longest withdrawal in the history of the British Army, how did Slim rebuild the Army?
This second episode in our three-part series with historian Dr. Robert Lyman looks at the processes that Slim put in place in the 14th Army to turn defeat into victory against the Japanese in Burma. His approach to leadership, lessons learnt, doctrine development, training and enabling a culture of Mission Command developed the capabilities needed with 14th Army to defeat the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. He did all of this in some of the worst terrain and in the worst weather that any Allied soldier had fought in, and he did all of this whilst at the bottom of the global military supply chain.
After the devastating retreat from Burma in 1942, Slim faced the challenge of reestablishing morale, combat effectiveness, and unity across a diverse army composed of British, Indian, and African troops. Slim employed a pragmatic leadership style — identifying problems, confronting them honestly, and building confidence from the ground up. His ability to communicate clearly, avoid overpromising, and empathise with soldiers (“he never forgot the smell of soldiers’ feet”) became the hallmarks of his success.
Slim’s focus on morale through trust and transparency – a lot of this came down to better conditions for the soldiers. The introduction of military newspapers for better communication (which told the truth) , improvements in logistics, equipment, and health care, particularly malaria prevention and the treatment of the wounded. He also ensured that soldiers understood that they were fighting for a righteous cause. Lastly, he ensured that the soldiers had the best officers to lead them in the fight.
Slim’s doctrine development in 1943 was rooted in real battlefield experience from the withdrawal. He also sought out lessons learnt from the Australians who had been fighting in the Kokoda and Milne Bay Campaigns. He emphasised intellectual rigour, war-gaming, and staff collaboration. Practical solutions were prioritised — like ensuring air supply capabilities for remote jungle operations — and doctrine was rapidly translated into action at every level.
By 1944, the 14th Army was a cohesive, capable fighting force. Recruits underwent 11 months of rigorous jungle warfare training, surpassing even modern peacetime standards.
For military professionals, this episode offers actionable lessons in strategic thinking, training, and building resilient organisations under pressure.
Listen now to discover how Slim’s leadership reshaped the war in Southeast Asia — and why he deserves greater recognition as one of WWII’s greatest commanders.
Transcripts
How do you rebuild an army that has just conducted the longest withdrawal in the history of the British Army? We look at the wisdom of Slim in morale lessons learnt and training. This is the Principles of War podcast, professional military education for junior officers and senior NCOs. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 128 of the Principles of War podcast, how to rebuild an Army. Practical leadership lessons from Field Marshal Sir William Slim. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the second part of our three part interview with Dr. Robert Lyman and we’re looking at the leadership and strategy lessons that we can glean from the example set by Field Marshal Sir William Slim.
The last episode looked at how he managed the disaster that was the longest retreat in the history of the British army and how, despite all of the tribulations that his soldiers had gone through on that long retreat, they marched out of the jungle with their heads held high and with their weapons and recognisable as an army. That is an incredible feat. This week we’ll talk about how he rebuilt the army so that it was able to defeat the Japanese in battle. Let’s get right back into the interview with Robert. Slim was quite a transformational leader. How was his approach in turning around the morale of first the Corps and then 14th Army? What was his approach to morale with the troops?
Yeah, he was an intensely pragmatic and practical man. I mean, he was never a theoretician of war, which is one of the reasons why he’s been largely forgotten by historians, military historians and others. But he identified a problem and sat down to work out its root cause and then solved it. Morale was a question of confidence. He recognised in 1942, men had high morale despite the fact that they were defeated in battle. If they still had confidence that their cause was in good hands and in defeat into victory. He describes this regularly. The first thing he had to do in 1942, in March 1942, was demonstrate to the troops that their cause was in good hands. He had a plan to defeat the Japanese and recover the corps and the army and he did that very successfully.
Famous British novelist George MacDonald Fraser, the author of the Fleshman series, who is a young lance corporal in the Border Regiment, described Slim in 1945 as coming to. He met him a number of times. Slim came to talk to his battalion a number of times in 1945 and. And George McDonald Fraser describes them as saying, telling them what would happen and everything he told us came to pass. And in such things we learned to trust him. And I think this is incredibly important. You don’t want as a soldier, and this is my own experience, you don’t want to be talked at by a senior officer about how things are going to turn out. And things turn out very differently to what you expect. Your natural response to that particular officer is to devalue his observations.
And it’s really important, critically important for commanders not to over promise or to over guess. So he was deeply pragmatic, very straightforward and very honest. And this is a really significant feature of Slim’s revival of morale in 1942. He, he wasn’t pessimistic but he didn’t gild the lily. He didn’t pretend that things were better than they were. He explained them. And part of this open communication, it’s really a product of where he was, where he came from socially and culturally, lower middle class in the UK at the time. He was a very good communicator, able to talk to soldiers. One of the most famous quotations about Slim in later life was that he never forgot the smell of soldiers feet. So just another little. Well, it will remind your listeners of those who have done it, like me, of foot inspections of the army.
It’s a way of describing Slim’s affinity with soldiers and his ability to communicate with them and to enable them to have confidence in him. The whole process of rebuilding The army in 1943 was one of creating confidence that the army was in good hands, that there was a plan to take the war to the Japanese and to defeat the Japanese. And that was accompanied and had to be accompanied by visible signs of improvement of more troops coming, of better equipment, of better training, of better information and communication. Newspapers were introduced to the army. In 1943 a newspaper editor, Frank Owen, was appointed from London. He was given no editorial control by Slim. Slim just told him to get on with it and to help improve communication with his army soldiers knew what was going on.
But for your listeners it’s really important to understand actually that we’re not talking about a single army here. The 14th army of course was a single army. It was an army in the Indian army, the 14th Indian Army. And it comprised troops from the United Kingdom, from India. About 87% of them in the Indian army were Indian, but also from Africa. So there are really remarkable challenges here and bringing all these troops from these diverse origins together and to give them a single purpose. And Slim in his book Defeat Into Victory, describes creating this sense of oneness which was the defeat of the Japanese. And the soldiers didn’t need to be persuaded that the Japanese were Effectively an evil empire. And the army was fought very much on righteous grounds.
This is how Slim built up the sense that the army was fighting the 14th army was fighting for the right, for righteousness, for good against evil. In 1943, 44 was a really important part of what he was able to create with the army. And soldiers who had fought the Japanese, who had seen their friends tortured, often quite savagely, didn’t need any persuading that they were fighting a righteous cause against an evil enemy. But their sense that they were able to or they would be able to defeat the Japanese was really incredible. So. So there’s a whole series of very practical, pragmatic, bottom up steps that Slim took to persuade the soldiers in his very diverse army that their future was in good hands. I mean, one very good example is the way in which Slim was able to defeat the scourge of malaria.
1942, for every single combat casualty, 120 men went sick with malaria. Through 1943, quite dramatic efforts were made to combat the malaria scourge. Interestingly enough, none of which were replicated in the Japanese army. The Japanese army was a large malaria casualty in 1944. Quite remarkably, everyone in the Japanese army had malaria. There were no prophylactics and very large casualties were caused as a consequence. Not so in the 14th army where huge efforts were made to prevent troops picking up the disease. And this in itself was a very positive measure for morale. If you knew that the moment you got tick scrub typhus or a nagasaw from a super rating tick bite or you got malaria, you were taken off to hospital, given new malaria treatment, nursed back to health was incredibly positive for morale.
And for you to be able to see the efforts that were taken to use ddt, for instance, to defeat the malaria mosquito in malaria areas was also very powerful. So, you know, soldiers having a sense that actually the organisation around them was working to their benefit to help them survive all the terrible depredations of fighting in northeastern India and Burma was an incredibly important tonic.
One of the fascinating facts about Slim is that he was a 47 year old major in 1938 he was. In four years time he had been promoted to lieutenant general. What was it that enabled Slim to be promoted to such lofty ranks so successfully, so quickly?
Well, it was the simple answer to that is the war. The Indian army, like most armies, have a very narrow top, very broad base and very narrow top in terms of command arrangements. And there simply weren’t enough brigades and divisions to go around in the Indian army for him to get to the top, even though interestingly enough, you know, he was top student at Quetta in 1936. He then went off to command to Staff College in the UK as the Indian army representative. Actually, just before then, instead of coming back to India to take up his first unit command role as a commanding officer, he actually stayed on because he was very easily recognisable for the power of his mind.
He went on to be a student at what is now the Royal College Defence Studies, the Imperial Defence College in London, which further delayed him doing his job as a unit commander. And he went back to India. He was going to be given a brigade immediately, but because he hadn’t commanded, he was sent off to command the 2nd 7th Gurkha Rifles in Shillong and northeastern Indian Khazi Hills. At that time, you know, he was looking at the end of his career officers retired of course, at the age of 55. And he makes a comment, I think in defeating the victory that or somewhere that he was looking to retire from the army as a colonel and probably retire to somewhere on the southern English Riviera, which is a depressing thought of course.
So the answer to that question, James, is very simply the war came and the army expanded very dramatically. The Indian army was 190 odd thousand in 1939. By 1940 it had risen to just under a million. Actually, by the end of the war, two and a half million men and some women had joined the Indian Army. It was the largest volunteer army in the history of humankind. And opportunities came in 1938. The Chatfield Commission had rebuilt the Indian army on an expeditionary basis or a part of it, and the fourth Indian Division and then subsequently the fifth Indian Divisions were created in order to be able to be sent abroad wherever the British Empire might need them. And the idea was that these Indian troops would backfill effectively British units who might be then sent off to fight more high intensive campaigns elsewhere.
Well, this of course happened in 1940 and the 4th Division and then subsequently the 5th Division, 4th Indian Division was sent to North Africa. 5th Division was sent to Eritrea, where of course Slim gained his spurs. In the Second World War he commanded the 10th Indian Brigade first of all and then in 1941 was promoted to command the 10th Indian Corps in Iraq. But it’s very interesting, he was always known in the Indian army, well known as being top flight, top 5% officers. And when the 10th Indian Division, a gap occurred with the removal of the existing Incumbent Slim was the obvious man for the appointment and he was promoted to command.
So he went from lieutenant colonel in 1937 to major general in 1941, all acting, of course, and then was promoted to lieutenant general when he got his corps in March 1942, again acting. I need to go back and calculate this, but I think he probably ended the war as a. As an acting. Well, he wouldn’t have been an acting Colonel, he would have been an acting brigadier, perhaps. Sorry, a substantive brigadier. And I don’t know whether the Australians have the same methodology, but when you have substantive rank, you’re then given acting rank, which is rank with pay but not seniority. I think he probably would have ended the war as. When he ended the war as an acting General, it would have been substantive Major General probably, or brigadier, but that was very common throughout the Second World War.
With such a rapid rise through the ranks, how was he able to think at the strategic level? Because somewhat as a corps commander and definitely as an army commander, all of that work is at the military strategic and grand strategic level. Was he.
Yes, exactly right, yeah.
Was he big into military history reading?
Yes. Well, I mean, it’s a great question, because the reality is, successful operational and strategic commanders are so because they understand the environment in which they operate, that is the operational environment or the strategic environment or the grand strategic environment. And military history has demonstrated unequivocally to me over the years that where generals fail is because they fail to understand the environment in which they’re operating. That is, are they operating at the operational level of war, that is the campaign level of war? Are they operating at the military strategic level or are they operating at the grand strategic level? And Slim was the product of a number of things. First of all, he was a bright man. He understood intuitively the level of war at which he was fighting. But he was also.
So there was an intuitive level to this or part of this, but he was also well trained and well read. He’d spent his entire 20 years in the Indian army from 1919, understanding the nature of War, had been to Staff College as a student, came out top of Quetta, had been to teach at the British Staff College, and Camberley had attended, effectively, the Imperial Defence College, which was a course international relations and military and grand strategy for Brigade and Division 1 Corps Commanders, and understood this intuitively. He was also an avid reader of military history, and you wouldn’t have found a better military historian in the Indian army in the 1920s and 30s or a more avid reader of military history than Slim. So you either have it or you don’t.
I think one of the real challenges for commanders in the Second World War was a failure to understand the operational level of war. We certainly saw that in Malaya in 1941, 42 with Piggy Heath and the three corps, the Indian Corps and the 11th Indian Division, really not understanding at all what the nature of the campaign was about and being, as a result, failing to respond appropriately to it. So I think this is an incredibly important part of Slim’s makeup. Throughout the construction of plans for 1944 and 45, he knew that Burma was an adjunct to the grand strategy, to Allied grand strategy, but still recognised that operational success so campaign success could be achieved, that could then add to the entire narrative of Allied operations, and sought to engineer a place for a successful campaign in Burma because he understood it instinctively.
I use that word instinctively. He understood it because he had been trained to understand it and he knew what he was talking about. He sought very much to create or place divisional and corps commanders in his army who were able to understand this two up sense that you’re fighting an operation that has a military strategic purpose, and that military strategic purpose is defined in terms of the grand strategy. Interestingly enough, I’m sure we’ll get on to talk about Wingate. This is where Wingate failed. Wingate had absolutely no sense of the grand strategic nature of operations in the Far east and tried to apply a tactical solution to what was ultimately a grand strategic and military strategic problem. That is how do you defeat the Japanese in Burma? And this is in part because Wingate himself had never received any higher military training.
He’d been to staff college, but he had never commanded a unit in battle and was very much an individualist operating at the tactical level of war.
So Slim needed to train his corps and then the 14th army for fighting in the jungle, which I think is probably the most difficult of types of terrain to operate in. What was his approach to lessons learned and doctrine development?
Well, through 1943, he built up the intellectual basis of the army. He started with doctrine, and doctrine was based on his experience of fighting the Japanese in 1942. So he started with reality. What does the battlefield look like now? What do I need to do to defeat the Japanese? And how do I actually build up an army that will be able to do that? So doctrine construction in 1943 was really important. In the 14th army, training manuals were created. So doctrine began at a framework level. The sense that you needed to be able to understand the sort of enemy you were taking on to then create force structures that then developed tactical doctrine to deliver to the troops and to train against. But it began as an intellectual exercise and he doesn’t shy away from using that word and defeated a victory.
You come across this time and time again. His army had to think through the problems that it was facing and then it needs to apply that thinking in a detailed sense and in a practical sense to the business of doing. And this is the way it was undertaken. It wasn’t done also on an individual basis, in the sense that Slim thought up these great thoughts. He was a collusive commander, he brought his command team around him and they talked endlessly about the problems they would face. Not just tactical problems, most of the tactical problems were really quite simple and had very simple solutions to them, but also the logistical and administrative problems associated with the army.
So for instance, there was no point coming up with the idea that you might create an all round defence and a redoubt, so a box, which is actually how the battles in Arakan were won in February 1944, unless you had the means to supply them by air. So this is a practical sense that the air campaign came out as a result of the thinking about doctrine in 1943. Slim immediately said, well, we need air, we need large quantities of air in order to be able to supply our troops at the end of a very long and complicated line of communication to enable them to stand fast against fast moving Japanese infiltration and to solve the logistics problem, the logistics challenge. So it was first and foremost, to repeat myself, intellectual and then practical. There was a huge amount of schemes being undertaken.
Now schemes was the old word in the British and Indian armies for what we now know as chutes, tactical exercise without troops. So all of these exercises, these ideas rather were then exercised at brigade, divisional, corps level in a planning sense by war gaming. War gaming over the years has had a bad name in the army because it’s been regarded as something that nerds undertake, hasn’t been seen as professional. But actually war gaming is fundamental to an army’s understanding of what it can and cannot do. And war gaming is a very good way to enable commanders to appreciate the problems that they face. Many, many commanders, when they come across tactical challenges, think about finding a tactical solution. The best commanders realised from the get go that actually tactical problems are often solved by administrative solutions.
And that was certainly the experience of the 14th army in 1944 and 45 the Japanese were beaten because in 1944, 45, not just because the Allies were better at fighting. But that fighting was the product of better logistics, better administration, better medicine, better food, better antimalarial prophylactics and all these things. And that was, in my view, where Slim was an absolute genius. He was able to see warfare as a human activity of a holistic kind. It wasn’t simply the business of throwing grenades, chucking grenades and fixing bayonets. It was much more than that. And against a Bushido Dr. Enemy like the Japanese, which sought battle every time because it was only in battle that your valour as a soldier could be exhibited, Slim always had the advantage.
He knew that the Japanese would throw themselves time and time again against a resolute defence because they needed to demonstrate their martial prowess in battle. And Slim thought, well, I can defeat that. All I need is resolute soldiers who stand their ground and fight off these repeated banzai attacks from Japanese troops whose commanders have run out of ideas about how to defeat me. Going back to the original point, it’s about understanding your enemy. It’s why, of course, we failed collectively in southeast Asia in 1941. We had no sense of the nature of the enemy that were going to be confronted with. And when were confronted with this new type of enemy, were completely discombobulated, psychologically and militarily. Slim wasn’t going to learn that lesson twice.
So once he’s gone through that intellectual process for doctrine development and synthesising the lessons learned into a way to fight the Japanese, you then need to train the individual soldiers and the junior officers. So what was his approach to training at the corps and army level?
Well, to repeat myself a little bit, there’s a lot of chutes, a lot of war gaming and a lot of conversations. How are we going to do this? The operations in Arakan in February 1944, a really good example of how the entire 15 Corps in Arakan came together and tutored through the challenges of dealing with this Japanese offensive. And it worked. It was really quite remarkable. Ultimately, unit commanders, so this goes all the way down to battalion level and armoured regiment and artillery regiment level commanding officers were responsible for the training of their men. And they did it on the basis of this template that they had inherited from above. By 1944, there are whole sets of really profoundly helpful pamphlets.
So the outflow or the result of the doctrine development that had taken place in 1943, some of which had actually emerged from Kananga, from the Australian Army’s experience in New Guinea. In fact, I think the Australian army was probably throughout the whole campaign in 1943-44, about six months ahead of the British and Indian armies, a delegation was sent to Kanangra to interrogate the Australians on the tactical lessons they had learned from fighting the Japanese in New guinea of huge advantage. And about 168 battle experienced Australians actually ended up in the Indian army in 1944 doing training. Training the Indian army in 1944 was the key to the success of the Indian army in battle in 44 and 45. I’ll just give you some examples.
I left Australia in early 1981 to join the British army and I undertook my effectively combat infantry training at the Light Infantry Depot in SHREWSBURY Starting in February 1981. And it took 29 weeks. So at the end of 29 weeks, I passed off the parade and received my green beret as a light infantryman and then went on to phase two, training 29 weeks in the Indian army in 1943. Indian soldiers were recruited in 42, 43 and given nine months of combat infantry training. Now, there’s a number of reasons for that which we don’t have time to go into, but one of them was the need to raise the calorific profile of the Indian soldier.
At a time when the calorie of the average Indian was hovering around 1,000 calories a day, it needed to go up to between 3 and 6,000 calories a day for combat infantrymen. And the process of building up soldiers physically was very important. But once that nine months was undertaken, they then went away. They passed off the parade ground after nine months. They then did two further months of special jungle training. So by the time a soldier ended up fighting the Japanese, he had 11 months of training behind them. And that’s quite extraordinary. It was very similar to the training undertaken by men in the British Army. Joining the 21st Army Group in Normandy in 1944. They had been in short trousers in 1939, had been recruited in 1942, trained 43, went into battle in 44.
The similarity actually between the British army in Normandy and the Indian army in Imphal Kahima, they are really remarkable parallels. Someone needs to write a book about them, because the same learnings, the same lessons that have been learned in 1940-41 about the failure of professional armies actually to prepare people for war, for future war, was really profound. Both armies had failed in 1941. Well, the British army had failed in 1940 to really understand the nature of modern warfare. And it took a couple of years of hard knocks to bring it back to a position where it could take on the Wehrmacht and win. And it was the same with the Japanese, the Indian army against the Japanese in 1944. So training was at the root of it. I go back to my command structure. Slim recruited men who he knew were good trainers.
Being a good trainer, even in my service in the British army, was always the mark of un, of an officer who knew what he was doing. You have to be a good trainer.
What makes someone a good trainer, then? Like, for someone who’s coming up for unit command, what should they be thinking about to get the best out of their soldiers and preparing for combat?
Well, in defeating De, Slim described his training model very simply, and he said, it all starts with the individual soldier. They need to be able to learn how to march before they run. They need to be fed, they need to be given the right equipment, and they need to have confidence that the plan in which they are operating is a good one. So they need to have their physical needs met, they need to have their spiritual needs met. And Slim described this as recognising that the army they were fighting was an evil one that treated people very badly and killed lots of Asians. And Slim, of course, is dealing primarily here with an Indian army. How do you persuade Indian armies to fight the Japanese? Well, you.
Ultimately, you didn’t have to persuade them very much because they could see with their own eyes what they were fighting against. You needed to train people at a practical level. So it started with the individual soldier knowing how to shoot accurately, how to undertake all their personal drills, their tactical drills, at an individual and at a section level. Slim, when he was observing the Battle of Mechtila in March 1945, made the observation he was watching a Gurkha assault and you could see the Japanese in their trenches and he could see the Gurkhas laying down covering fire and they’re advancing into the assault. And he said he was horrified at the poorness of their musketry, which is the phrase we in the British army use for weapon skills. The musketry was very bad.
And it’s a product of the fact that when you’re in combat, unless you’re training every day with your rifles and you’re on the range once a week, you have to be on the range once a week, your skill at arms are going to degrade. So this constant refrain around musketry, around personal drills about fitness, is absolutely critical. One of the reasons the British army was so successful against the ira. And, yes, the British army was ultimately very successful against the IRA is that we never allowed the IRA to do any weapon training. I was actually engaged by an IRA gunman in 1983 in Belfast and this bloke fired six rounds from an arm light at me at very close range, about 80 yards. And he missed. I mean, for goodness sake, if he’d been one of my soldiers I would have sacked him.
You don’t miss when you’re firing an armour light at 80 yards and yet this guy did and they failed because they weren’t able to do any weapon training. So this is really fundamental for a soldier. You need to be on the range every week, you need to be running every day, you need to be practised, practising training. You need to be not just doing the physical stuff but at a section level. You need to be sitting down and walking through in a classroom environment your basic section level tactics and working out how that section operates in the battalion. I had the privilege many years ago commanding a Milan platoon anti tank platoon in my battalion. And the Milans were the key firepower for that battalion. So as the Milan battooing commander you were actually delivering a battalion command.
And the experience of being a young lieutenant of commanding milan’s in the battalion, where everyone else in the battalion was basically protecting you in anti tank screen, was really quite profound for my understanding of the need for good training. The need for every soldier to understand what they were doing and how they fitted in with the battalion as it operated as part of the brigade plan was really key. This is why it’s really critical that we don’t just take on anyone in the army. Just because someone you know is fit and strong doesn’t mean they’re the right people for being good soldiers. You need intelligence, adaptability, proactivity. You need to be a good worker. That’s why, you know, recruitment in peacetime in many armies often fails because we tend to recruit the wrong.
This is one of the reasons why the British army didn’t do very well in between the wars. We recruited people who ultimately weren’t very good soldiers. They joined the army for reasons other than having to fight a war. They joined the army because they could see the world. And this is how recruitment was presented. Same with the American Army. Immediately after the Second World War, Americans joined the army between 1945 and 1949 in order to go to university. So that when the Korean War emerged, we had an army in America that was unable to fight. And this is something that Slim recognised. He had the ability to do in 1942 43, which is start again.
We’ll leave the interview there. Another excellent interview with Robert, who has shared his wisdom and knowledge of Slim and his experiences. Slim is widely recognised as one of the best British generals ever and the best field commander of the Second World War. It’s important to remember that everything that he did with the 14th army against the Japanese he did in a theatre. That was at the bottom of the list of priorities for resources. The Allies had a beat Germany first strategy. Not only was he fighting the Japanese, but the main thrust against the Japanese would come from the Americans. And it’s important to remember that the Chinese were doing an incredible amount of fighting and pinning down a huge number of troops in China.
Because of the scarcity of resources, Slim certainly had to innovate and we’re going to look at how he innovated throughout theatre to achieve everything that he did in the next part of our three part interview with Dr. Robert Lyman about Field Marshal Sir William Slim. 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.
2 comments
Thanks guys great work
Quality work well done cheers