Lieutenant-Colonel C.H.R. Howie
1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment

He was an extraordinary commander. He fought the enemy with a furious passion. He encouraged, enthused, chivvied everyone into attack. ‘Keep going forward. Always go forward.’ When battle was joined it was his custom to site his headquarters well forward; and then himself to go forward of that. He spent more time within a stone’s throw of the enemy than anywhere else. And when things were quiet-he was known to take the humble weapon of the Piat and go hunting German tanks. He told one of our officers it was his ambition to die for King and Country. He achieved this ambition without knowing he had been awarded the DSO.

(Geoffrey Picot, Accidental Warrior, [1994], 98)

Born in British India on 12 February 1905, Charles Henry Roger Howie served four years in the ranks before taking a commission with the King’s Regiment (Liverpool) in 1928. He was promoted to captain in 1938 and made temporary major in 1940. When Lieutenant-Colonel H.D. Nelson Smith of the 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment was wounded on D-Day, and the second-in-command war killed, Howie was assigned as the new commanding officer.

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