General Sir Michael Gow - Telegraph Gow attended a wartime Royal Armoured Corps OCTU at Sandhurst. Physical fitness was much prized, and he had his nose broken three times in the boxing ring. After being commissioned into the Scots Guards, in July 1944 he landed in Normandy with the 3rd (Tank) Battalion. He was wounded in Belgium in October and evacuated to England, rejoining the battalion in April 1945 and taking over the duties of quartermaster. After the end of the war he served with the Control Commission in Berlin. In 1946 he took his future wife to the Guards Boat Club Ball at Maidenhead with the intention of softening her up for a proposal of marriage. He had planned everything with great care and took her to a punt which he had placed by the jetty in advance. As he cast off, he failed to detect a number of his brother officers who were hidden in the shrubbery and who had removed the bung. The punt rapidly filled to the gunwales, and it was only with great difficulty that they regained the bank. Gow's intended spent the rest of the ball crouched over a brazier in a cloud of steam, drying off. His wife served with the Royal Navy and was a Leading Wren at the end of the war. She and Gow married so young that they had to wait several years before the Army acknowledged their marital status. It was difficult to make ends meet, and they seriously considered moonlighting by hiring themselves out as a cook and butler; Gow even got to the point of visiting Moss Bros to reserve a yellow and black striped waistcoat and a swallowtail coat with large gold buttons. In 1949 Gow went to Malaya as a company commander with the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards on antiterrorist operations during the Emergency. A spell as equerry to the Duke of Gloucester was followed by Staff College and then appointments first as brigade major and subsequently regimental adjutant before he returned to the Staff College as an instructor. Gow commanded the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards in Kenya in 1964 shortly after a mutiny by soldiers of the former King's African Rifles. After a move to HQ London District as GSO1, he commanded 4th Guards Brigade. In 1970 Gow attended the Imperial Defence College, then went to HQ BAOR as Brigadier General Staff (Intelligence). He was GOC 4th Division BAOR for two years before becoming Director of Army Training. Impatient with Whitehall bureaucracy, and never happy to be tied to a desk, he spent the majority of the working week looking at training at home or overseas. In 1979 he was appointed GOC Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. After his tour as C-in-C BAOR, his final appointment was that of Commandant, Royal College of Defence Studies. On his retirement in 1986, with the exception of two very early predecessors, he was the longest-serving member of the Scots Guards since the regiment was raised in 1642. Gow was ADC General to the Queen from 1981 to 1984. He was Colonel Commandant Intelligence Corps from 1973 to 1986 and of the Scottish Division in 1979-80. He was Brigadier, Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland, Royal Company of Archers, and president of the Royal British Legion for Scotland from 1986. Michael Gow was a man who believed that soldiering should be fun. But while he had an easy-going style, he accepted nothing less than the highest standards. In retirement in Edinburgh, he enjoyed sailing, music, travel and reading. He published articles in military and historical journals and was a keen letter writer to The Daily Telegraph. He was appointed KCB in 1979 and GCB in 1983. Gow published Trooping the Colour: a History of the Sovereign's Birthday Parade by the Household Troops (1989); Jottings in a General's Notebook (1989); and General Reflections (1991). He married, in 1946, Jane Emily Scott, with whom he had a son and four daughters. General Sir Michael Gow, born June 3 1924, died March 26 2013