Maj-Gen John Cowtan

Published: 5:44PM GMT 04 Mar 2010

Cowtan (extreme left) with Italian partisans in Oct 1943

In May 1942, Cowtan was portion with 232 Field Company RE (232 FR) in North Africa. On May 31, he was taken restrained circuitously Gazala during a vital Afrika Corps offensive. He was sent to a jail stay circuitously Bologna and, after the Italian Armistice in Sep 1943, avoided being eliminated to Germany by stealing in the roof tiles of one of the stay buildings for twelve days.

He afterwards slipped out of a side doorway and changed south to Monte San Vicino where he assimilated a insurgency organisation consisting of fourteen Yugoslavs and 6 escapers. In the 3 months from Nov 1943, Cowtan and a comrade lay low. They afterwards done multiform attempts to cranky the German lines but were disabled by the weather.

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Warned of a poke by Fascists, they changed to circuitously Monte Gallo to hedge showing before, in Mar 1944, attempting to shun by sea. The plan failed, and in May Cowtan and dual companions motionless to head for the French frontier, successfully creation it to Bardi, south of Milan, by the finish of the month.

There they remained with partisans and took piece in a series of harm missions, floating up railways and bridges. Cowtan schooled of an additional depletion intrigue in Aug but it was Oct prior to he was eventually means to stick on a celebration that guided him to the Allied lines circuitously Lucca. There he was awarded a Bar to his MC.

Frank Willoughby John Cowtan, the son of Air Vice-Marshal FC Cowtan, was innate at Byfleet, Surrey, on Feb 10 1920 and prepared at Wellington and the RMA Woolwich. He was commissioned in to the Royal Engineers in 1939 and went to France with the British Expeditionary Force.

In 1940, he got afar from Cherbourg 3 weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation. In Mar 1942, he was in north-east Libya in assign of sappers from 232 FR who were trustworthy to a mainstay handling opposite the Martuba airfields.

Cowtan was obliged for the construction of an regard tower. He came underneath complicated artillery glow and his lorry was strike by gunnery unit shells 3 times whilst he was in it. The reference for the endowment of an evident MC stated: "His finish negligence for his own reserve was a noble e.g. to us all."

In May 1945 he was posted to 6th Airborne Division in Palestine. It was there that, in Jul 1946, the belligerent Zionist organisation Irgun carried out the deadliest militant conflict of the British Mandate, bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, used as the domicile of the Mandatory authorities.

More than 90 people were killed and most some-more hurt. Cowtan brought in his operative armed military craft and took assign of the rescue work. He was allocated MBE.

After autocratic 56 Field Company RE, in 1952 he was posted to GHQ Middle East Land Forces as GSO2. Command of 60 Field Squadron in BAOR was followed by a move to the Royal School of Military Engineering as band of soldiers vital and afterwards to America as British relationship military officer to the US Corps of Engineers.

In 1960, he ordered 131 Parachute Engineer Regiment and afterwards went to RMA Sandhurst as CO Victory College. After autocratic eleven Engineer Brigade in BAOR and in attendance the National Defence College, Canada, in 1968 he became Director of Quartering (Army).

His last appointments were those of Deputy Quartermaster-General at the MOD and afterwards Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science prior to he late from the Army in 1975. He was modernized to CBE in 1970.

John Cowtan died on Jan 1. He married, in 1949, Rose Cope, who survives him with their son and daughter.