John Cowans
Sir John Steven Cowans, was a senior British Army officer who served as Quartermaster-General to the Forces from 1912 to 1919, covering the period of the First World War.
Educated at Burney's Academy at Gosport and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Cowans was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1881. He graduated from the Staff College, Camberley, in 1892 and became a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General at Army Headquarters in 1898. In this role he organised the deployment of troops to the Second Boer War. He became Assistant Quartermaster-General of 2nd Division at Aldershot Command in 1903, and went on to become Director of Staff Duties and Training at Army Headquarters in India in 1907. He commanded the Presidency Brigade in Calcutta from 1908 to 1910, when he returned to the United Kingdom as Director-General of the Territorial Force.
Cowans became Quartermaster-General to the Forces in 1912, and in this capacity he was responsible for finding accommodation and supplies for more than a million newly enlisted servicemen at the start of the First World War. He was the only member of the Army Council to retain his position throughout the entire war.
Early life
John Steven Cowans was born in Woodbank, St Cuthbert Without, Carlisle, on 11 March 1862, the oldest of three sons of John Cowans, an engineer who co-founded the Carlisle firm of Cowans, Sheldon & Co., and his wife Jeannie. Cowans was always known as "Jack".Cowans was educated at Burney's Academy at Gosport, a preparatory school for the Royal Navy. It was intended that he should enter the Navy, but, at the age of thirteen, he failed the entrance exam. He was sent on a tour of France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland with a tutor, before returning to Burney's Academy to prepare for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which he entered in 1878.
Subaltern
After passing out near the top of his class, Cowans was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade on 22 January 1881, having secured a nomination from its Colonel-in-Chief, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. He embarked for India on in March 1881 to join the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which was based at Poona and Ahmednagar. Soon after arriving in Poona he became temporary aide-de-camp to Major-General John Ross until a permanent replacement arrived in January 1882, and he rejoined C Company. He passed examinations in the Hindustani language and played cricket. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 July 1881.In late 1883, Cowans returned to the United Kingdom on sick leave and was assigned to the Regimental depot. He married Eva Mary Coulson, the eldest daughter of Reverend John Edmund Coulson, the Vicar of Long Preston in Yorkshire, on 14 February 1884. The wedding ceremony was held in the parish church in Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire, and was presided over by Reverend Henry White, the chaplain of the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. They had no children.
Cowans was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade at Woolwich in May 1887. He was the only married subaltern in the battalion. His fellow junior officers included George Bingham, Ronald Lane, Reginald Byng Stephens, George Thesiger and Henry Wilson, all of whom later became generals.
Staff officer
Cowans decided to further his career by entering the Staff College, Camberley. This was seen as a means of speedy advancement, and competition for places was keen. Cowans managed to narrowly pass the entrance examination, and entered on 1 February 1890. His class of thirty was a distinguished one; half of them later attained the rank of brigadier general or higher. While he was there he was promoted to captain on 3 September.Upon graduation in January 1892, Cowans was attached to the War Office under the Assistant-Adjutant-General, Major-General Sir Coleridge Grove. His section worked on the mobilisation scheme, the first version of which had been issued shortly before Cowans arrived. He was officially seconded to the staff on 13 June 1893. On 1 September 1894, he became the brigade major of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot, which was considered a plum job for a young staff officer who, despite the title, was still a captain.
His appointment as brigade major ended on 1 September 1897, and Cowans departed for India to join the 3rd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which then engaged in the Tochi Expedition. He reached the regimental depot at Rawal Pindi on 28 October, but active service continued to elude him; the 3rd Battalion was on its way back to its station at Umballa, having taken heavy losses, mainly from sickness. He was offered a position on the staff of the British Indian Army at Simla, but, on the advice of Coleridge Grove, he declined the appointment. Soon after, he was promoted to major on 9 March 1898, and reassigned to one of the battalions in the United Kingdom.
Cowans did not return to his regiment. On 11 May 1898, he was appointed a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General in succession to Major Henry Merrick Lawson at the War Office, working in the movements section. He was involved with arrangements for the deployment of troops to the Sudan for the Nile Expedition of 1898, and for the autumn military manoeuvres in September 1898, the largest military manoeuvres since 1872, with 50,000 troops involved. Cowans had to make the required arrangements for rail and maritime transport.
On 11 October 1899, the Second Boer War began when the Boers invaded Natal. Cowans's section had considered this prospect in a series of conferences in April, May and June. It was calculated that £97,000 would be required to outfit ships to transport a corps and a cavalry brigade, but no provision had been made for this, and the Secretary of State for War, the Marquess of Lansdowne, declined to request a supplementary vote. On 23 September, Parliament provided £25,000. Once hostilities commenced, the Admiralty would provide a ship and fit it out, and inform Cowans when it would be ready to sail. Cowans would then allocate troops to the ship and arrange for them to be moved to the port by rail for embarkation. Between 1 August 1899 and 31 May 1902, he arranged for the embarkation of 98,826 regular and 36,568 auxiliary troops, and more than 90,000 reinforcements. Rail movements involved up to 25 special trains per day.
Some division commanders requested Cowans's services as a staff officer, but the Quartermaster-General to the Forces, Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke, declined to release him. He did, however, promise Cowans that no officer of the Rifle Brigade would be promoted over his head. Thus, Cowans was promoted to the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel on 28 March 1900, ahead of officers on active service. He was involved in arrangements for the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. For this service he was invested as a Member of the Royal Victorian Order on 11 August 1902. The following year, he was promoted to the substantive rank colonel on 16 April and became Assistant Quartermaster-General of the 2nd Division at Aldershot Command.
In February 1906, Cowans was appointed Director-General of Military Education of the British Indian Army, and was replaced in his former position with the 2nd Division by Colonel Alexander Godley, later a full general. He assumed the post on 22 March, but when the General Staff of India was created he became Director of Staff Duties and Training at Army Headquarters in India on 1 April. In this role he was involved with the new staff college in India at Deolali, which relocated to Quetta in April 1907, ensuring that the curriculum was brought into line with that of Camberley. He acted as Director of Military Operations for a time, and as Chief of the General Staff when Lieutenant-General Sir Beauchamp Duff was in England.
General officer
Cowans became commander of the Presidency Brigade in Calcutta with the temporary rank of brigadier general on 5 December 1908. He was promoted to major general on 21 March 1910. A minor crisis erupted later that year when a Chinese expedition to Tibet caused the Dalai Lama to flee to Darjeeling, and it was feared that Chinese forces might pursue him. Cowans was about to depart on four months' leave, and he asked General Headquarters, India whether he should cancel. The reply he received was: "everybody knows you have never heard a shot fired in anger, except by an angry husband, so I don't think you need to forgo your leave."While on leave in Évian-les-Bains in France, Cowans was summoned back to England by Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane, who offered him the recently created position of director general of the Territorial Force, which had come into being as a result of the Haldane Reforms. Cowans returned to India briefly to settle private affairs and hand over command of the Presidency Brigade to Brigadier-General Hew Dalrymple Fanshawe, before he assumed his new post on 7 November 1910, taking over from Lieutenant General Sir Henry Mackinnon.
The TF was administered by county associations, military committees chaired by the lord lieutenants with local commanding officers as members, that handled the raising, recruiting, equipping and supplying of their units. When the units were called up for training, the county associations became responsible for the welfare of the wives and children of the troops as well. Cowans developed good personal relationships with the chairman of the county associations, for whom he was invariably approachable and sympathetic.
Most of their problems were financial, and Cowans had little additional money to give them, but he gave them the benefit of his time, energy, enthusiasm and administrative skills, and was able to secure some additional latitude in spending their funding. He noted that one of the duties of the county associations was to provide the riding horses and draught horses for the TF. Cowans drew up a scheme for the compulsory purchase of horses for both the TF and the Expeditionary Force in the event of war. It was estimated that on mobilisation, the Expeditionary Force would require 42,000 horses and the TF would need 86,000. Cowans was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1911 Coronation Honours on 19 June 1911 in the civil division, as his lack of active service precluded a military division award.