Robert Charles Lowson MM

 Robert Charles Lowson MM

 The Liverpool Scottish, Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders (TA)

The Trustees of the Liverpool Scottish Regimental Museum have heard, with great regret, of the death of Bob Lowson MM, at the age of 92, on 2nd August 2013. He was believed to be the last surviving member of the gallant group of Liverpool Scottish soldiers that volunteered for service with the Commandos in WW2. Previously he had been employed as a clerk and was living in Rock Ferry in the Wirral

He was a pre-war member of the 1st Battalion, The Liverpool Scottish, Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders (TA) and was mobilised at the beginning of the war in September 1939. By April 1940, he had volunteered for ‘special service’ and was posted to No. 3 (Liverpool Scottish) Platoon of No. 4 Independent Company under the command of Major JR Paterson, also of the Liverpool Scottish. In May 1940, he went with ‘Scissorforce’ to serve in Norway with the North-West Expeditionary Force until they were outflanked by the German Army, returning from Bodo to the United Kingdom in June 1940.

After serving in Scotland and the south of England on home defence duty against the possibility of invasion, he transferred to B Company of No. 1 Special Service Battalion in October 1940 and went to the Mediterranean as part of ‘Force X’ where he served in Malta with the Special Boat Service. On moving to Egypt by submarine, he volunteered for the Special Air Service as a member of No. 2 Troop, Special Raiding Service. In October 1943, he received shrapnel wounds in the chest and arms at Termoli in Sicily and returned to the UK in January 1944. He moved again to France in 1944 with C Squadron of the 1st SAS and, in September of that year, two SAS jeeps met a German column of troop-carrying lorries with an escort of armoured cars on the Nevers road, going northward towards Orleans. The SA party, including Acting Sergeant Lowson, engaged to convoy, inflicting a high number of casualties before making a rapid withdrawal in in the face of the arrival of more German armoured cars. For his bravery in this action, he was awarded the Military Medal.

He was later attached to the Intelligence section at Geleen, outside Maastricht, seeking those who had collaborated with the German invaders. In this work he received a serious gunshot wound to the thigh and had to be rescued by two friends with whom he had served in the Liverpool Scottish, Dougie Arnold and Billy Stalker. He was evacuated to the UK and spent two years in hospital, undergoing several operations to repair a leg that was to give him trouble for the rest of his life. He was demobilised in 1946.

Bob Lowson had written the foreword to the book ‘Special Service of a Hazardous Nature’ by Dennis Reeves, telling of the contribution that the Liverpool Scottish made to special operations during the Second World War. He paid tribute to the dedication, daring and bravery of his contemporaries who had volunteered to take part in such hazardous duties. It is ironic that his death coincides with the publication of a limited second edition of this book that records the part taken by Liverpool Scottish soldiers in such operations as the St. Nazaire Raid as well as those in which he himself had been involved.


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