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David Lloyd Owen
Summary
Major General David Lanyon Lloyd Owen (10 October 1917 – 5 April 2001) was a British soldier and writer. During the Second World War he commanded the Long Range Desert Group.
Born in Hampton, in the county of Middlesex, England, on 10 October 1917, David Lloyd-Owen, the son of Captain Reginald Charles Lloyd-Owen, was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Upon passing out from the latter, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) on 27 January 1938. He was with the 2nd Battalion of his regiment, then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ross, in Palestine during the Arab revolt. Among Lloyd Owen's fellow officers in the battalion was Michael Forrester, another future major general. He later served in the Western Desert from 1939 to July 1941, during World War II, when he joined the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).
He took part in a number of operations, including the SAS raid on Tobruk in August/September 1942, which earned him the Military Cross. He was wounded in an air raid on the LRDG base at Kufra in October 1942 and nearly lost an arm. He rejoined the LRDG in February 1943, when they underwent training in Lebanon before being sent to the Aegean.
He took command of the LRDG at the end of 1943 after the death of his predecessor Jake Easonsmith during the Battle of Leros. He based himself at Bari in southern Italy from which he mounted a successful raid on Corfu and staged operations in the Dalmatian islands and Yugoslavia. In September 1944, he was parachuted into Albania at night. Shortly after landing he fell 30 ft into a ravine and severely damaged his spine.
Despite being in continual pain, Lloyd Owen directed special forces operations in the mountains for the next three months. Eventually he was evacuated to Italy, was successfully operated on, and told not to return to his former activities. He managed to bluff his way past a medical board and returned to Albania, although this time by boat. The LRDG was eventually disbanded in June 1945.
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