Philip Christison

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Full General (Alexander Frank) Philip Christison, 4th Baronet (November 17, 1893 - December 21, 1993) was a major British military figure of the Second World War.

Christison was born in Edinburgh, the eldest son of five children of Sir Alexander Christison and his second wife, Florence. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and University College, Oxford.

He joined the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders in 1914 commissioned as a junior officer. During world War I he fought in the Battle of Loos, were he won the Military Cross, the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Arras.

He was assistant manager of the British Olympic team in Paris in 1924.

Between 1940 and 1941 he was Commandant of the Staff College at Quetta in British India (now Pakistan). He was promoted to Major-General in 1941 and Lieutenant-General in 1942. In 1943 he took command of the Indian XV Corps part of the newly formed British Fourteenth Army. He took over the command from General William Slim who was promoted to command the British Fourteenth Army. The Corps made up the Southern Front of the Burma Campaign in the coastal region known as the Arakan. When the Japanese attacked his Corps it retreated into a battle box and fought the Japanese 55th Division to a standstill and then a retreat in the Battle of the Admin Box. This was the first time in the World War II that the British Army successfully defeated the Japanese in a land battle.

In 1945, Christison was given the temporary command of the Fourteenth Army and also deputised for Slim as Commander of Allied land forces, South-East Asia while Slim was on leave. After Slim's return, Christison's again took command of the XV Corps and led them into Rangoon in May of that year.

In September 1945 he deputised for Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as commander of SEAC and took the surrender of the Japanese Seventh Area Army and Japanese South Sea Fleet at Singapore on September 3. From 1946, Christison was Allied Commander of forces in the Dutch East Indies.

He retired from the British Army in 1949 and farmed at Melrose , Roxburghshire , Scotland . During the 1950s and 1960s become Secretary of the Scottish Education Department.

He was married twice: to Betty Mitchell, with whom he had three daughters and a son, from 1916 until her death in 1974; and then to Vida Wallace Smith until her death in 1992. He died in 1993 at the age of 100.