Lt-Colonel Mike Lowry MC RIP

Kyt · Oct 1, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4862708.ece

Mike Lowry was a lean, tough and imaginative infantry commander, as devoted to his soldiers as to the job in hand. He won the Military Cross in unusual circumstances during the communist insurrection in Malaya, although contemporaries believe he had earned it earlier fighting the Japanese at Kohima in April 1944.

The campaign against the predominantly Chinese communist terrorists in Malaya had begun to turn in 1955 under the policy of the High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald Templer, of housing the landless rubber tappers in protected villages. This system, although not impossible to outwit, reduced the scope for the terrorists to extract food and support by coercion. Intelligence on terrorist intentions was also improving, because of information that surrendered terrorists were glad to offer. A tip-off about a large-scale terrorist food lift from the village of Kebun Bahru gave Lowry an opportunity to disrupt it while striking decisively at the local communist cell in southwest Johore.

Commanding D Company of 1st Battalion The Queen’s Royal Regiment, Lowry made a close reconnaissance of the village by small patrols at night and one by day, disguised as a Public Works Department sanitary inspector. As the date for the terrorist operation approached, he infiltrated his company into a patch of secondary jungle near the village. They remained concealed for eight days, kept alert by mind games Lowry devised.

When the moment came to move in, Lowry led the way. All the terrorists were taken alive except for two who dodged the main assault group only to be killed by a cut-off party. The food lift was foiled and the two terrorists killed turned out to be senior officials of the local communist cell, the rest of which surrendered shortly afterwards. The success of the operation was attributed solely to Lowry’s thorough planning.

Michael Alastair Lowry was educated at Uppingham and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into The Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1939. He served with 1st Queens on the North-West Frontier, being wounded in action against Waziristan tribesmen in 1940 and mentioned in despatches in 1942.

His battalion was moved to Burma after the Japanese invasion. Lowry was again mentioned in dispatches for his service in Arakan in 1943. In March and April 1944, he fought first at Imphal then at Kohima, as the Japanese 15th and 31st divisions threw themselves at these obstacles to their planned invasion of India. Lowry’s courage in both battles earned him lasting respect but no decoration.

Essentially a fighting soldier, Lowry eschewed staff appointments, although he served as military assistant and military secretary to the general commanding British troops in occupation of Austria from 1951 to 1952, living for a time in a house that Gustav Mahler had used in Vienna. He commanded a troopship during the 1956 Suez campaign and was second-in-command of the Somaliland Scouts from 1958 until appointed to command 1st Battalion The Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment, following amalgamation of the Queen’s and East Surreys.

He took his battalion to Aden in 1961, then in the early stages of the unrest that led to British withdrawal in 1967, and to Hong Kong. Finally, he commanded a wing of the School of Infantry, Warminster, until leaving the Army in 1967. He farmed and worked on behalf of the Conservative Party and the European Union. He was appointed MBE in 1983 and was present in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, on the night of the IRA bomb outrage in 1984.

His wife, Rua Thesiger, predeceased him. He is survived by a son and two daughters.

Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Lowry, MBE, MC, infantryman, was born on January 30, 1919. He died on August 24, 2008, aged 89
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Lt-Colonel Mike Lowry MC RIP

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