19 Facts About Philip Christison

Philip Christison then went on to have a successful postwar career, and lived to the age of 100.

Philip Christison was born on 17 November 1893 in Edinburgh, Scotland the eldest son of five children of Sir Alexander Christison, 3rd Baronet and his second wife, Florence.

Philip Christison was educated at Edinburgh Academy and University College, Oxford where, as a cadet in the latter's Officer Training Corps, he was made a second lieutenant in March 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War that August.

Philip Christison saw action in the battles of Loos, the Somme and Arras.

Philip Christison displayed the utmost courage and determination in pushing back the enemy and clearing the north side of the village.

From 19 April 1920 Philip Christison returned to the United Kingdom and took up the post of adjutant of a Territorial Army unit.

Philip Christison's instructors included the likes of Richard O'Connor, Bernard Paget, Edwin Morris, Harold Franklyn, Henry Pownall, George Giffard and Bernard Montgomery.

Philip Christison was promoted to major on 4 November 1933.

On 1 January 1934 Philip Christison was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel and returned to the Staff College, Camberley as an instructor where he became good friends with a fellow instructor, William Slim.

Philip Christison remained in command of the brigade until 15 March 1940, over six months since outbreak of the Second World War, when, at the relatively young age of 46, he was made Commandant of the Staff College, Quetta in the former British India.

In May 1941 Philip Christison returned to the United Kingdom and, after serving briefly as a Brigadier General Staff, on 17 June 1941 was promoted to the acting rank of major-general and became General Officer Commanding of the 15th Infantry Division, taking over from Major-General Sir Oliver Leese, who had been a fellow student at the Staff College in the late 1920s, and who he would encounter later in the war.

In 1945, Philip Christison assumed temporary command of the Fourteenth Army and deputised for Slim as Commander of Allied Land Forces, South East Asia when Slim was on leave, reverting to XV Corps on Slim's return.

In September 1945 Philip Christison deputised for Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as commander of South East Asia Command, and took the surrender of the Japanese Seventh Area Army and Japanese South Sea Fleet at Singapore on 3 September.

Philip Christison was General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Northern Command from 1946 to 1947; he was then GOC-in-C of Scottish Command and Governor of Edinburgh Castle from 1947 to 1949 He was promoted to full general in August 1947.

Philip Christison held the honorary appointments of aide-de-camp general to the King and Colonel of his regiment, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment.

In 1947 Philip Christison was appointed Colonel of the 10th Gurkha Rifles and in late 1949 he was made Colonel of a Territorial artillery unit.

Philip Christison retired from the army in 1949 and farmed at Melrose in Scotland.

Philip Christison 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.

Philip Christison lived to the age of 100 on 17 November 1993 but died little more than a month later, on 21 December 1993.