Viscount Slim

Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GBE, DSO, MC, KStJ (6 August 1891 – 14 December 1970), usually known as Bill Slim, was a British military commander and the 13th Governor-General of Australia. Slim saw active service in both the First and Second World Wars and was wounded in action three times. During the Second World War, he led the Fourteenth Army, the so-called "forgotten army" in the Burma campaign. 

After the war, he became the first British officer who had served in the Indian Army to be appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff. From 1953 to 1959, he was Governor-General of Australia. In the early 1930s, Slim also wrote novels, short stories, and other publications under the pen name Anthony Mills. William Slim was born at 72 Belmont Road, St Andrews, Bristol, the son of John Slim by his marriage to Charlotte Tucker. 

He was baptized there at St Bonaventure's Roman Catholic church, Bishopston. He was brought up first in Bristol, attending St Bonaventure's Primary School, then St Brendan's College, before moving to Birmingham in his teens. In Birmingham, he attended St Philip's Grammar School, Edgbaston, and King Edward's School, Birmingham. After leaving school, his father's failure in business as a wholesale ironmonger meant that the family could afford to send only one son, Slim's older brother, to the University of Birmingham, so between 1910 and 1914, Slim taught in a primary school and worked as a clerk in Stewarts & Lloyds, a metal-tube maker.

Despite having no other connection to the university, in 1912, Slim joined the Birmingham University Officers' Training Corps. He was thus able to be commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 22 August 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War; in later life, as a result of his modest social origins and his unpretentious manner, he was sometimes wrongly supposed to have risen from the ranks. He was severely wounded at Gallipoli. On return to England, he was granted a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the West India Regiment.

In October 1916, he rejoined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in Mesopotamia. On 4 March 1917, he was promoted to lieutenant (with seniority back-dated to October 1915). He was wounded a second time in 1917. Having been previously given the temporary rank of captain, he was awarded the Military Cross on 7 February 1918 for actions in Mesopotamia. Evacuated to India, he was given the temporary rank of major in the 6th Gurkha Rifles on 2 November 1918. He was formally promoted to captain and transferred to the Indian Army on 22 May 1919.