Sir Philip Christison, 4th Baronet

General Sir Alexander Frank Philip Christison, 4th Baronet, (17 November 1893 – 21 December 1993) was a British Army officer who served with distinction during the world wars. After service as a junior officer on the Western Front in the First World War, he later distinguished himself during the Second World War, where he commanded XV Indian Corps, part of Sir William Slim's Fourteenth Army, during the Burma campaign. He then went on to have a successful postwar career, and lived to the age of 100. Early life and First World War 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. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and University College, Oxford where, as a cadet in the latter's Officer Training Corps (OTC), he was made a second lieutenant in March 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War that August. As with so many others of his generation, the outbreak of war in August 1914 saw Christison volunteering for service with the British Army. Subsequently, he was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the 6th (Service) Battalion of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders on 5 September 1914. The battalion, a Kitchener's Army unit created from volunteers, formed part of the 45th Brigade of the 15th (Scottish) Division and, after training in the United Kingdom, departed for the Western Front in July 1915. He saw action in the battles of Loos (where he was wounded and awarded the Military Cross), the Somme and Arras. Promoted to lieutenant on 11 February 1917, in July 1917 he was awarded a Bar to his Military Cross. The citation for this award reads: Promoted to captain on 4 August 1917, three years since the outbreak of war, on 24 October 1918 he was promoted to the acting rank of major, and served as second-in-command (2IC) with the 1/6th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, a Territorial Force (TF) unit, part of the 152nd (Seaforth and Cameron) Brigade of the 51st (Highland) Division. The war came to an end soon after, with the signing of the Armistice with Germany on 11 November 1918.