The General Wondered Why

Its publication day for Bill Slim's short stories ,1931-1940

I’m very pleased to announce that Sharpe Books have today published the e-book versions of the three volumes of Bill Slim’s pre-war articles and stories which I’ve had the immense privilege to edit.

Between 1931 and 1940 the future Field Marshal wrote a total of 44 articles, extending in length between two and eight thousand words – a total of 122,000 words in all – for a range of newspapers and magazines, including Blackwood’s Magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Express and the Illustrated Weekly of India. He didn’t do it to create a name for himself as a writer, or because he had pretensions to the artistic life, but because he needed the money. As with all other officers at the time who did not have the benefit of what was described euphemistically as ‘private means’ he struggled to live off his Indian Army salary, especially to pay school fees for his children, John (born 1927) and Una (born 1930). Accordingly, he turned his hand to writing articles under a pseudonym, mainly of Anthony Mills (Mills being Slim spelt backwards) and, in one instance, of Judy O’Grady.

Of the 44 articles he wrote, nine remained unsold and therefore unpublished by the start of the Second World War. With the war over, and senior military rank attained, he never again penned stories of this kind for publication. With it died any common remembrance of his pre-war literary activities. Copies of the articles have languished ever since amidst his papers in the Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge.

During the time he was writing these the pseudonym protected him from the gaze of those in the military who might believe that serious soldiers didn’t write fiction, and certainly not for public consumption via the newspapers. He certainly went to some lengths to ensure that his military friends and colleagues did not know of this unusual extra-curricular activity. In a letter to Mr S. Jepson, editor of the Illustrated Times of India on 26 July 1939 (he was then Commanding Officer of 2/7 Gurkha Rifles in Shillong, Assam) he warned that he needed to use an additional pseudonym to the one he normally used, because that – Anthony Mills – would then be immediately ‘known to several people and I do not wish them to identify me also as the writer of certain articles in Blackwood’s and Home newspapers. I am supposed to be a serious soldier and I'm afraid Anthony Mills isn’t.’

Slim would never have pretended that his writings represented any higher form of literary art. He certainly had no pretensions to a life as a writer. He was, first and foremost, a soldier. His writing was to supplement the family’s income. But, as readers will attest, he was very good at it. They demonstrate his supreme ability with words. As Defeat into Victory was also to demonstrate, he was a master of the telling phrase every bit as much as he was a master of the battlefield. He made words work. They were used simply, sparingly, directly. Nothing was wasted; all achieved their purpose.

The articles also show Slim’s propensity for storytelling. Each story has a purpose. Some were simply to provide a picture of some of the characters in his Gurkha battalion, some to tell the story of a battle or of an incident while on military operations. Some are funny, some not. Some are of an entirely different kind, and have no military context whatsoever. These are often short adventure stories, while some can best be described as morality tales. A couple of them warned his readers not to jump to conclusions about a person’s character. Some showed  a romantic tendency to his nature.

We have allocated his stories to one of three volumes. The first contains seventeen stories about the Indian Army, of which the Gurkha regiments formed an important part. The second are eleven stories about India, with no or only a passing military reference. The third, much shorter volume, contains seventeen stories with no Indian or military dimension. I, the Slim family and Sharpe Books, hope that you enjoy this journey into a part of his lifethat he kept hidden from all but a few, but which offer much insight into his own age and personality in an era that seems as remote to us today - Imperial India and pre-war Britain - as the Middle Ages.

The books have been released to the market first as e-books and will be followed later in April 2023 with the paperback and hardback editions.

I hope that you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed rescuing them from their original newsprint and bringing them to a new readership.