REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN ARMY

Evening Post Tuesday, 29 April

Up to one million troops faced death, injury and disease every day during the long campaign to push the Japanese out of Burma. They were the Forgotten Army - out of sight and, to most of the British public, out of mind. Their leader, General Bill Slim, is only now being properly remembered in Bristol, the city of his birth. TORBEN LEE tells the story of Slim's Heroes.

Huge distances, appalling weather, difficult terrain, tortuous lines of communication, rampant diseases, the strange jungle environment and the seemingly unbeatable Japanese.That, along with the low priority his campaign held in Allied strategy, is how Bristol-born Bill Slim, commander of the 14th Army, remembered the Burma Campaign of 1943-45.

After the war he wrote in his memoirs: "The epithet 'The Forgotten Army' was taken up by the troops and, before it became a statement of pride, it reflected the fears and frustrations of soldiers thousands of miles from home whose hardships and deprivations were not widely appreciated."



The men with whom he had such sympathy and whom he led to eventual victory, returned his affection.

They knew him as Uncle Bill, a soldier's general, modest about his brilliance and a tough but caring and "democratic" leader.

Earl Mountbatten, who was supreme Allied commander in South-East Asia in World War II, said later: "The reconquest of Burma by the 14th Army under Slim remains a classic in the art of generalship.

"Only a man of the highest judgement, nerve and skill could have achieved this tour de force."

Yet, apart from a plaque outside the house where he was born in Belmont Road, Bishopston, in 1891, there is little in Bristol to remember him by.

Another plaque honouring Slim and the men who fought with him will be put up near the war memorial in the city centre later this year.

But many local people - among them the much-depleted ranks of surviving Bristol veterans, members of the Burma Star Association - have backed the Evening Post's successful campaign for a statue of Bill Slim.

The city council has agreed to put up to £58,000 towards the project. A committee has been set up to look at how the statue should be produced and where it should go.

Slim, who grew up here, moving to Birmingham when he was 12, was the son of an iron merchant.

Very few generals began their careers at the lowest rank - private. But it was as a private that Bill Slim joined up in World War I, rising - after World War II - to the rank of Field Marshal and Commander of the Imperial General Staff, the British Army's most senior officer, before becoming, in 1953, Governor-General of Australia.

He was knighted and later ennobled as Viscount Slim of Yarralumla and Bishopston, before he died in 1970.

After the defeat of Allied troops by the advancing Japanese in 1942, Slim is given credit for driving them back in 1944 and 1945.

Burma, like India to its west, was part of the British Empire. In defending it, Britain sought to ensure the Japanese - who had swarmed as undefeated conquerors across the whole of South-East Asia - did not get their hands on India, the jewel in the Empire's crown.

Burma was also strategically important to the Americans - brought into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 - and their Chinese allies.

Rangoon, Burma's southern port, provided an access route to China and the North along the so-called Burma Road.

When the Japanese drove the Allies out of Burma in 1942, this vital communications route was closed. But by early 1944 the Allies were preparing to launch a full-scale re-invasion of Burma.

The Japanese had an even greater prize in their sights: the conquest of India.

Naturally, their plans were secret. But General Slim, now based at Imphal, close to India's north-eastern frontier, came up with a remarkable scheme to thwart them.

Imphal and nearby Kohima were the Japanese commanders' first targets after their troops crossed the Indian border.

Slim's response would be best summed up today in three words: "Bring it on."

He ordered his officers to stay put and "draw out" the Japanese. The idea was to fool them into extending themselves too far beyond their lines of supply and communication.

It worked. By March 1944, after heavy fighting on the border, the Japanese had been forced back and Slim was spearheading the 14th Army's reconquest of central Burma.

Historian Robert Lyman described the battle of Imphal and Kohima as the largest single defeat of the Japanese on land, leading "to their complete destruction in Burma".

The way Slim outmanoeuvred the enemy was typical, says Mr Lyman, of a commander who was anything but conventional.

Mr Lyman said: "He fought differently, seeking victory by cunning and guile, mastering the complexities of battle through remarkable resourcefulness and ingenuity, starkly different from how the British Army fought its wars at the time."

General Slim encouraged in his army of many nations - including Nepalese, Indians, Chinese as well as British forces - the determined fighting spirit needed to destroy the myth of Japanese invincibility.

Having won the Battle of Imphal, at the Indian border, he took the war to the Japanese, aggressively pursuing them hundreds of miles into Burma. Rangoon was retaken without a fight, its captors having evacuated it in full retreat.

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