Rating: 
Summary: Viscount Field Marshall Slim's Defeat Into Victory
Review: I can't make a better review than Newt Gingrich's review elsewhere in this section, and I agree with him that it starts out slow, but I consider it a 5 star book. Like Field Marshall Montgomery (see my review of him), Slim exhibits a level of moral character and courage that we all need as a model now and in the future. The public needs to stop being hypnotized by handsome or pretty faces and start looking for what we used to call "guts". It's the stuff that counts when you're under fire, real or imagined. It's the stuff that our ancestors had when they turned defeat into victory. Defeat either kills you or builds and brings out character. Audie Murphy knew that, fighting when outnumbered "hopelessly" until he became our most decorated soldier. It's not Cool that trains us. It's heat - painful, unpleasant, long term. Slim knew that, coming from the nation and the people that survived things like the bombing of London and the Battle of Britain, just as its predecessors survived Napoleon and Ancient Rome.
Rating:
Summary: Viscount Field Marshall Slim's Defeat Into Victory
Review: I can't make a better review than Newt Gingrich's review elsewhere in this section, and I agree with him that it starts out slow, but I consider it a 5 star book. Like Field Marshall Montgomery (see my review of him), Slim exhibits a level of moral character and courage that we all need as a model now and in the future. The public needs to stop being hypnotized by handsome or pretty faces and start looking for what we used to call "guts". It's the stuff that counts when you're under fire, real or imagined. It's the stuff that our ancestors had when they turned defeat into victory. Defeat either kills you or builds and brings out character. Audie Murphy knew that, fighting when outnumbered "hopelessly" until he became our most decorated soldier. It's not Cool that trains us. It's heat - painful, unpleasant, long term. Slim knew that, coming from the nation and the people that survived things like the bombing of London and the Battle of Britain, just as its predecessors survived Napoleon and Ancient Rome.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable General
Review: In the Reader's Companion to Military History, only one general from WWII holds a spot in it's Top Ten Generals in History: William Slim. I was so intrigued by his inclusion, and the exclusion of Patton, Eisenhauer, Montgomery, Rommel, Manstein, and Koniev. Who was Slim? Right from the preface, you learn that Slim is modest, gifted, clear-thinking: and a delightful writer. From the pages that follow, you learn about his experience in command of the 14th Army. His first act in Burma is to lead the 14th Army (then called BurCorp) on the longest retreat in the history of British arms. From there he retrains, rearms, and completely destroys the finest Japanese field army -- all with little support, as Britain and US were mostly concerned with Europe. Unlike a megolomaniac like MacArthur or Montgomery, the striking aspects of Slim is his military audacity and his humanity . He retains his grave concern for the ordinary foot soldier, even to the point of telling Churchill that he wouldn't be voting for him because he thought Burma/India not worth all those lives lost. He was the ONLY commander, outside of General Marshall, that Stilwell respected. Wedermeyer referred to him as an 'American-style combat commander'. Mountbatten called him the finest general of the war. Great insights into Stilwell, Wingate, and the fact that twice his superiors tried to fire him, only later to surrender their jobs to him -- on merits, of course, because Slim was a definite political outsider. The book is a treasure, this finest war/history book I've read. I just wish I could find his original, unabridged copy. This cover is a little hokey. 'would have been better to just have the title against a dark background, imho.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable General
Review: In the Reader's Companion to Military History, only one general from WWII holds a spot in it's Top Ten Generals in History: William Slim. I was so intrigued by his inclusion, and the exclusion of Patton, Eisenhauer, Montgomery, Rommel, Manstein, and Koniev. Who was Slim? Right from the preface, you learn that Slim is modest, gifted, clear-thinking: and a delightful writer. From the pages that follow, you learn about his experience in command of the 14th Army. His first act in Burma is to lead the 14th Army (then called BurCorp) on the longest retreat in the history of British arms. From there he retrains, rearms, and completely destroys the finest Japanese field army -- all with little support, as Britain and US were mostly concerned with Europe. Unlike a megolomaniac like MacArthur or Montgomery, the striking aspects of Slim is his military audacity and his humanity . He retains his grave concern for the ordinary foot soldier, even to the point of telling Churchill that he wouldn't be voting for him because he thought Burma/India not worth all those lives lost. He was the ONLY commander, outside of General Marshall, that Stilwell respected. Wedermeyer referred to him as an 'American-style combat commander'. Mountbatten called him the finest general of the war. Great insights into Stilwell, Wingate, and the fact that twice his superiors tried to fire him, only later to surrender their jobs to him -- on merits, of course, because Slim was a definite political outsider. The book is a treasure, this finest war/history book I've read. I just wish I could find his original, unabridged copy. This cover is a little hokey. 'would have been better to just have the title against a dark background, imho.
Rating:
Summary: Best Business Book You Can Read Today
Review: It has become fashionable inside the business community to laud the efforts of certain military leaders and their emulation as a route towards supposed success. And so we have biographies on Patton and Schwartzkof purporting certain lessons that "business people" can learn from the greats --- though in the case above, the one a prima donna, and the latter achieving the military equivalant of a heavywieght prizefighter beating up a toddler, one wonders what we are learning.
Slim will probably never figure in a business seminar, but he certainly should. He was a person schooled in utter defeat and the lessons it teaches people. These lessons expressed in Slim's downhome, honest self-effacing style are really things that one can imbibe -- and learn a great chunk of military history to boot.
Slim was wary of theory over experience. Even in defeat he tried things first to see if they would work after making plans to implement then. During his retreat from Burma in 1942, he ran a test convoy up the roads with exactly the same wieght vehicles as he would withdraw in the future. This allowed him to see what would happen when he eventually had to retreat down the same road -- the importance of the dry run.
For Wingate fans you will find no blind adulation. Slim rightly recognised from a aerial perpective the waste of inserting men 100s of mile behind Japanese lines, rightfully insisting that they be better used and less expensively equipped as a regular fighting division. In the end he was proved right. A lesson in efficiency planning --- getting the best bang for you buck.
Slim kept a lean chain of command and did away with several levels inside his Army HQ, he refused to have a Chief-of-Staff as had recently been adopted by the British from the Americans. He was able to also cobble together chains of command that may have looked wierd on paper, but worked. His relationship with "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell the ascerbic American General who hated "limeys." Makes great reading. Slim alone in the entire British Command could handle him.
Personal courage was also not found wanting. He was frequently near the front and made it his duty to make sure that he had strong intelligence of the Japanese and a personal respect for them as fighting "insects." Noticably disturbed by Japanese attrocities against prisoners and wounded, he continually uses words of respect when describing Japanese resistance which was fantatical, yet "magnificent." Others, such a Wingate would learn this later in hard lessons.
Besides the fighting, Stillwell had to supply an Army spread over 800 miles of Jungle at the end of supply lines thousands of miles long, with virtually no roads, in some cases only jungle tracks operating as the lines of communication. He did this a large part with American help and British self-sufficiency. But is was Slim's decisions that allowed those best suited for the positions to get on with the business of supply. And where he could not purchase such equipment, they improvised, such as in rivercraft and jute parachutes.
Most importantly he recognised that one can never insist on 100% perfection in battle (nor business),both are adaptive to the situation and one perpares as best as one can, but it is more important to plan for imperfection and dealing with situations, rather than to insist on everything going to plan. Slim knew that the Japanese in Arakan and Imphal would cut off the forward British/Indian Army elements. He made no plan to hold at all places. He realised however that if British troops could pull into tough defensive positions supplied by air that mobile forces striking from the rear would eventually exhaust the Japanese offensive as they outstretched their lines of communication.
Slim has probably the ultimate recipe to maintain espirit de corps: it is well laid out and easy to understand. He identifies it as a common goal that everyone can buy into. He states that the material needs of troops for good morale are "last, important, but clearly last." He realised that fancy weapons, or fantastic incentive programmes can only supplement morale, the cannot built it.
There is also the combat story between the covers and Slim's personal confrontation with his inner being, failure has a way of stripping away a man's defences and forcing him to look at what he really is... and Slim was obviously on the edge at least once. But then he pulls it together and soldiers on... one is enlightened by his honesty and the plain humanity of the man, a trait almost never found in the overt ego-feeding extravaganzas of business and military biographies stocking the shelves of bookstore "Business Sections".
A great biography that entertains with majesty and adventure and teaches us something about the rigours of command and how good leaders lead, without the theory, without the ego -- just Bill Slim, simple teacher from Northern England who found himself a soldier and, through Defeat turned his forgotten Army and forgotten campaign into the western allies greatest Victory....but if the US could come close to producing leaders half as great.
Rating:
Summary: DISGRACEFUL - OUT OF PRINT
Review: My father (now deceased) has read this book many times and said that it was one of the finest books he had read. My father was one of the "Forgotten Army" fighting in terrible conditions for years against an inhumane enemy, suffering what they now call post-combat syndrome. I wanted to read this book to "feel" what they felt and understand even though there is a huge generation gap and anyone under 40 cannot understand WAR.
Rating:
Summary: A Military Masterpiece
Review: Slim's handling o the Burma campaign was a military masterpiece. His account of those events is no less a shining achievement. Written with humanity, clarity, insight, and no little modesty, this book is enthralling and illuminating. Slim's style is down-to-earth, never overly philosophical or political and, as someone who grew up in the same city as Slim can testify, typical of the "Brummie" outlook (Brummies are englishmen/women from Birmingham). The great example that Slim sets through this book is less how to command armies or devise superior strategies (though in both, he was exemplary). Rather, it is a shining example of how to lead men. Slim inherited a broken army, fighting in difficult terrain and on foreign soil, composed of many nationalities (British, Indians, East Africans, Gurkhas, Burmese) and reinstilled them with self-confidence, discipline, and a will to win. To do this, Slim drew on a huge well of human empathy, showing on numerous occasions an ability to place himself in his soldiers' shoes. To me this is the greatest lesson of the book that should be applied by leaders in whatever field they do battle. A must read.
Rating:
Summary: Best WWII general's book. How to fight with little and win.
Review: The best personal experience book by any WWII leader. Filled with insight into how to lead troops, devise strategy and fight in difficult conditions. I can't believe this book is out of print.
Rating:
Summary: Slim - Second to None
Review: William Slim is a wonderful writer, and seems to be a wonderful person as well. He has a tremendous empathy for people of all stations, backgrounds, and temperaments (except the Japanese who were his enemy, and it's hard to blame him there). He gives very satisfying accounts of morale and motivation, and the fact that he can do so without the use of modern buzzwords (like proactive and empowerment) serves to highlight how little we have gained from the proliferation of jargon. He conveys very movingly his sense that every part of an enterprise makes a vital contribution to the whole, so that the reader comes to cheer the administrative triumphs just as much as the military advances. There is something godlike in Slim's ability to bring the same measure of steadiness and intensity to both the smallest details and to the grandest strategies. What this book is ultimately about is how to build order and hope where there was chaos and despair, and how to make life worth living by doing something of service to the world, and doing it with dedication, compassion, and imagination.
Rating:
Summary: A God of Small Things and Large
Review: William Slim is a wonderful writer, and seems to be a wonderful person as well. He has a tremendous empathy for people of all stations, backgrounds, and temperaments (except the Japanese who were his enemy, and it's hard to blame him there). He gives very satisfying accounts of morale and motivation, and the fact that he can do so without the use of modern buzzwords (like proactive and empowerment) serves to highlight how little we have gained from the proliferation of jargon. He conveys very movingly his sense that every part of an enterprise makes a vital contribution to the whole, so that the reader comes to cheer the administrative triumphs just as much as the military advances. There is something godlike in Slim's ability to bring the same measure of steadiness and intensity to both the smallest details and to the grandest strategies. What this book is ultimately about is how to build order and hope where there was chaos and despair, and how to make life worth living by doing something of service to the world, and doing it with dedication, compassion, and imagination.
|
