FAMILY AND EVENTS
OBITUARIES 6 GRRA DEATHS AND OBITUARIES With great sadness the Association notes the deaths of the following members since the last issue of The Journal. SLIM
Colonel 2nd Viscount John, OBE, DL, who died on 12 January 2019.
STONE
Mrs Jean, widow of the late Lt Colonel Geoff Stone, who died on 3 June 2019.
2ND VISCOUNT JOHN SLIM obe, dl
Viscount Slim in 1945 in Japan
A
s a teenager John Slim spent his school holidays with his father. This might not seem so unusual, until it is noted that his father was the wartime commander of the 14th Army and that the “holidays” were taken near the front lines in India and Burma. There the 16-yearold witnessed the gruelling fighting endured by what became known as the “forgotten army”, as well as its ultimate victory over the Japanese. Unsurprisingly, as soon as he was old enough, the gung-ho young Slim joined his father’s regiment, the
6th Gurkha Rifles. Cutting a swashbuckling figure, square of jaw and bushy of eyebrow, he served as a supernumerary aide-de-camp to his father’s friend Major-General “Punch” Cowan in the final months of the war in the Far East — months in which his father came to be regarded as a national hero. Just as unsurprisingly, this made a deep impression on him. As a 19-year-old subaltern in what was by then an army of occupation, Slim toured the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by motorbike. This could be attributed to youthful curiosity, but it also indicated the restlessness
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