General Sir John Steven Cowans, GCB, GCMG, MVO (11 March 1862 – 16 April 1921) 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 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.

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 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.

[4] After passing out near the top of his class,[4] Cowans was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade on 22 January 1881,[5] having secured a nomination from its Colonel-in-Chief, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.

He embarked for India on HMS Jumna in March 1881 to join the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which was based at Poona and Ahmednagar.

[11] Upon graduation in January 1892, Cowans was attached to the War Office under the Assistant-Adjutant-General, Major-General Sir Coleridge Grove.

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.

On 11 May 1898, he was appointed a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General in succession to Major Henry Merrick Lawson at the War Office,[19] working in the movements section (QMG.2).

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.

[22] 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.

[27] In February 1906, Cowans was appointed Director-General of Military Education of the British Indian Army, and was replaced by Colonel Alexander Godley.

[29] 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 (India) when Lieutenant-General Sir Beauchamp Duff was in England.

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.

Cowans returned to India briefly to settle private affairs and hand over command of the Presidency Brigade to Brigadier-General Hew Dalrymple Fanshawe,[36] before he assumed his new post on 7 November 1910, taking over from Lieutenant General Sir Henry Mackinnon.

[37] 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.

Cowans drew up a scheme for the compulsory purchase of horses for both the TF and the Expeditionary Force in the event of war.

Plans had been drawn up before the war for standard 18.3-by-6.1-metre (60 by 20 ft) huts with a wooden frame and corrugated iron exterior that could accommodate thirty men; forty of these could house a battalion.

Major-General George Scott-Moncrieff recommended that priority be given to the facilities, with the men initially sleeping under canvas, but Cowans disagreed, and directed that every effort be made to complete both simultaneously.

As an interim measure, 500,000 blue serge suits were obtained from Post Office stocks, and some units were supplied with nineteenth-century scarlet tunics.

By the later stages of the war the forces in France alone were consuming forty-eight megalitres (ten point five million imperial gallons) of petrol per month.

Storage tanks were established at Rouen and Calais so that fuel could be received from oil tankers sailing directly from the United States.

When he could he left London for the weekend, staying with General Sir Arthur Paget at Kingston Hill or Lord Pembroke in Wilton, Wiltshire.

When she heard that Barrett's friends were seeking to take action, she again wrote to Cowans, who replied that orders had already gone out, adding, "I would fight for you if I had the time.

[67] Cowans abruptly resigned on 15 March 1919 and joined the Shell Transport and Trading Company,[1][68] and soon after set off on a business trip to survey oil production in the Middle East.

[70] His body lay in state at Westminster Abbey and he was buried at St Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, London on 25 April.

They were purchased anonymously by his friends, and Lady Cowans was permitted to retain them until her death, when they were deposited in the United Service Museum.