occasion Cowans supplied at 48 hours’ notice 80,000 tins of special grease for ‘trench feet’. Tropical clothing and kit was required at short notice for minor expeditions, and the necessities of camouflage caused a sudden demand for special canvas and paint.
As the War went on, the difficulty of maintaining the personnel increased. In 1914 the Royal Army Service Corps consisted of 450 officers and 9,976 other ranks, and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps of 248 officers and 2,273 other ranks. In 1918 these had increased respectively to 11,564 and 2,253 officers and 314,313 and 38,193 other ranks. The demands of the infantry were heavy, and Cowans released from the Army Service and Ordnance Corps all officers born after 1887, and gave no commissions to men under thirty-five. The constant ‘combing out’ of tradesmen was met by employing women and ‘C3’ men. The extension of the war areas continually threw fresh duties on the quartermaster-general. Thus in 1916 responsibility for the operations in Mesopotamia was taken over by the War Office from the Indian government; the operations in the Eastern Mediterranean were based on Egypt; and in 1918 the feeding of the troops and civilians in North Russia, in the Archangel zone, was taken over. In 1914 the ration strength of the army was 164,000 men and 27,500 animals; in 1918, 5,863,352 men and 895,770 animals.
Cowans relinquished the post of quartermaster-general in March 1919. He was promoted general in 1919 and had received the G.C.M.G. (1918) and G.C.B. (1919), besides numerous foreign orders. On leaving the army he became associated with an important oil group in the City on behalf of which he visited Mesopotamia; but the strain of the War had seriously impaired his health, and after some months of illness he died at Mentone on 16 April 1921. He had been received into the Church of Rome shortly before his death, and a public funeral was held in Westminster Cathedral.
Cowans’ achievement can best be judged by ‘the fact that he held the post of quartermaster-general throughout the War, and that in spite of the necessity for expanding the army from a six-division basis to such vast numbers, no breakdown occurred except in Mesopotamia, for which campaign he had no responsibility until in 1916 his services were required to place it on a proper administrative footing, a task he soon accomplished.
Cowans possessed an immense power of work and unusual quickness of perception. His methods were unusual and sometimes surprised orthodox staff officers and officials, but they very soon learnt to appreciate his remarkable powers of getting things done, while his genial and kindly nature endeared him to all those who served with him. Outside his work his chief interests lay in sport and society. Sometimes his recommendations for appointments were criticized, and not without reason; but there is no doubt that the chief secret of his success lay in his power of selecting the best men available to serve him in the really responsible positions. He married in 1884 Eva May, daughter of the Rev. John Edmund Coulson, vicar of Long Preston, Yorkshire, who survived him. There was no issue of the marriage.
A portrait of Cowans was painted by Sir W. Orpen (Royal Academy Pictures, 1917), and another is included in J. S. Sargent’s picture ‘Some General Officers of the Great War’, painted in 1922, in the National Portrait Gallery.
[The Times, 18 April, 1921; War Office records; Mesopotamia Commission Report, 1917; Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire; Sir C. E. Callwell, The Life of Sir Stanley Maude, 1920; D. Chapman-Huston and O. Rutter, General Sir John Cowans, 1924; private information.]
COZENS-HARDY, HERBERT HARDY, first Baron Cozens-Hardy, of Letheringsett (1888-1920), judge, was born at Letheringsett Hall, Dereham, Norfolk, 22 November 1838, the second son of William Hardy Cozens-Hardy, a Congregationalist solicitor in good practice at Norwich, by his wife, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Theobald, of the same city. Educated at Amersham Hall School and at University College, London, Cozens-Hardy graduated at London University in 1858. He took the degree of LL.B. in 1863, and afterwards became a member of the senate of London University and a fellow of University College, London. In 1862 he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, after obtaining a studentship and a certificate of honour. He read in the chambers of Thomas Lewin and James Dickinson, both eminent as equity draftsmen. Between 1871 and 1876 he was an examiner for London University in equity and real property law.
Cozens-Hardy soon acquired practice as a Chancery junior, his nonconformist connexions being of considerable service to him. After twenty busy years he
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