ORDER OF THE DAY BY Lt-Gen Sir William Slim, K.CB., C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Fourteenth Army.
Burma 8 April 1945
These are the words promulgated to the 606,000 men of the 14th Army by Bill Slim on 8 April 1945. It sums up better than anything I could ever write the triumph of ‘Slim’s Burma Boys’ in the reconquest of Burma, a feat few outside 14th Army actually considered possible until it happened, ‘shocking our enemies and astonishing our friends.’
‘You have won the battle for Central Burma. It has been no easy triumph. You have won it against the obstacles of nature, and against a numerous, well-equipped and vicious enemy. You have earned victory by the skill, boldness and resolution of Corps, Division and Brigade Commanders, and by your refusal to let difficulties overcome you, by your grim endurance, our unquenchable fighting spirit and by your magnificent audacity.
‘You have advanced for hundreds of miles at unexampled speed over mountains, through jungles, across arid plains, making your roads, cutting your tracks, building your own boats, and always against cunning, fanatical opposition. You have forced the heavily defended crossings of two great rivers. These crossings you carried out with meagre equipment, supplemented only by what you could make with your own hands or capture from the enemy. You have driven seven enemy divisions from long prepared positions of his own choosing, which he was ordered to hold to the last. He has fled, leaving 18,000 counted corpses on the ground and over 300 guns in your hands.
‘Every Corps, every Division, every Brigade has played its part in this Fourteenth Army Victory. None could have done what it did without the help of others.
‘Nor could there have been any victory at all without the constant, ungrudging support of the Allied Air Forces. The skill, endurance and gallantry of our comrades in the air, on which we have learnt so confidently to rely, have never, failed us. It is their victory as much as ours.
‘Every man of the Fourteenth Army and of the Air Forces which have flown with it can be proud of his share in this battle. I cannot tell you of how proud I am of the men I command. That pride is felt too in your homes, in the Britain, India, Nepal and Africa you have defended, and in the Burma you are liberating.
‘We have advanced far towards final victory in Burma, but we have one more stage before it is achieved. We have heard a lot about the Road to Mandalay; now we are on Road from Mandalay. The Japanese are mustering their whole remaining strength in Burma to bar our path. When we meet them again, let us do to them what we have done before, and this time even, more thoroughly.’
Lieut-Gen. W.J. Slim
General Officer Commanding-in-Chief
8 April, 1945.
That man could write!