Philip Christison

Philip Christison

Sir Alexander Frank Philip Christison, 4th Baronet GBE , CB , DSO , MC & Bar (born November 17, 1893 in Edinburgh ; † December 21, 1993 in Melrose , Scotland) was a British officer in the British Army who was in charge of his command the XV Corps of the British Indian Army became known in the Burma campaign of World War II and later in the Dutch East Indies .

Life

Christison was born the eldest son and one of five children of Sir Robert Alexander Christison 3rd Baronet, and his second wife. He was at the Edinburgh Academy and the University College of Oxford University trained, where he studied medicine. As a cadet in the University's Officer Training Corps, he was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps in March 1914 . He continued his medical training in Aldershot until a few months later the First World War broke out and he was transferred to the infantry .

He was granted a temporary patent with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders , with whom he served on the Western Front . For his role in the Battle of Loos in autumn 1915 he received the Military Cross . His temporary patent was converted into a regular one in 1916. Later he was used with his unit in the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Arras, among others, and received the repeat clasp for the Military Cross. At the end of the war he was temporary major and deputy commander of the 6th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders .

After the war, he was downgraded to his regular rank of captain and in 1920 accepted an adjutant position with a unit of the Territorial Army . In 1924 he was assistant manager of the British Olympic team at the Summer Games in Paris . From 1927 he attended the two-year course at Staff College Camberley and then worked in the War Office . In 1931 he was promoted to brigade major in Aldershot Command and in 1933 to major . In 1934 he returned to Staff College with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel , where he was an instructor until 1937. He made friends with his colleague there and later superior William Slim . In February 1937 Christison became battalion commander in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and a year later he was given command of the Quetta Brigade of the British Indian Army. In March 1940 he became the commandant of the Indian Staff College in Quetta.

In early 1941 Christison returned to the United Kingdom, where he first became Brigadier General Staff and, in June, commander of the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division , which was stationed in the motherland. He gave up this post in May 1942 to be relocated to India for a new assignment. After working as district commander, he was given command of the newly formed Indian XXXIII Corps in South India in November 1942. On New Years 1943 he was accepted as a Companion in the Order of the Bath .

In mid-October 1943, Christison succeeded General Slim, who was appointed Commander in Chief of the 14th Army , as Commander of the Indian XV Corps, which was scheduled for the second invasion of Arakan Province . With his corps consisting of four divisions , Christison conducted successful operations in Arakan until March 1944, after which it was transferred to the front in Manipur . For his role in the successful defense of the Japanese Operation U-gō at Imphal and Kohima , Christison was beaten on September 28, 1944 to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire . He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his role in the capture of Ramree Island in January and February 1945 . In May 1945 he and his corps occupied the capital of Burma, Rangoon .

Christison was discussed in 1945 as the successor to Slim as commander of the 14th Army and temporarily represented him in the summer of 1945 when Slim was in his home country. After the surrender of Japan in September 1945, he became Admiral Louis Mountbatten's deputy at the South East Asia Command and accepted the surrender of the Japanese 7th Regional Army and the Southern Fleet in Singapore . In October he was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied forces in the Dutch East Indies , where the first battles with the nationalists in the Indonesian War of Independence took place after the Indonesian declaration of independence . He resigned from his post in late January 1946 and returned to the United Kingdom. Here he became commander of the Northern Command and in 1947 of the Scottish Command , which he remained until 1949. In August 1947 he reached his highest rank of general and from 1947 to 1949 was also aide-de-camp general of King George VI. On January 1, 1948, he was raised to the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.

Plaque in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh

Christison retired from active service in 1949 and settled in Melrose in the Scottish Borders . From 1947 to 1957 he was regiment chief of the 10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha Rifles and the Duke of Wellington's Regiment . When his father died in 1945, he had inherited his title of 4th Baronet, of Moray Place in the City of Edinburgh . After the death of his first wife, with whom he had four children, in 1974, he married a second time at the age of 80. His only son died in Burma in 1942 as an officer in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment , so that the baronet lapsed when Christison died at the age of 100 in 1993. There is a plaque for him in Edinburgh's St Mary's Cathedral .

literature

• Richard Mead: Churchill's Lions: A biographical guide to the key British generals of World War II. Spellmount, Stroud 2007, ISBN 978-1-86227-431-0 .

Web links

• CV on britishmilitaryhistory.co.uk (PDF; 55 kB)
• Christison family papers on janus.lib.cam.ac.uk

predecessor	title	successor
Robert Christison	Baronet, of Moray Place 1945-1993	Title expired