THE term “a soldiers’ general”, implying one with the interests of his men truly at heart, has become something of a cliché, not least because a general neglecting his men is virtually certain to fail. John Cowley was remarkable for the attention he gave to the manner in which soldiers received and used their pay. He was the architect of soldiers’ banking.

For generations, “pay parade” had combined ritual with indignity — soldiers saluting and collecting their meagre pay at one table and immediately paying part of it back for “barrack damages” or other charges at the next — then, like as not, blowing what was left on a night on the town. It was frequently a struggle for wives to get their hands on housekeeping money before it became seriously depleted between barrack gate and married quarter.

Before becoming Paymaster-in-Chief in 1967, while Chief Paymaster of Eastern Command, Cowley had laid the foundations of his plan to have all but the known improvident men receive their pay direct into bank accounts straight from a central computer. At the time, the scheme was perceived as a gigantic risk by the majority of serving officers, as many spent hours each week trying to resolve the financial difficulties of the less provident men under their command. Moreover, very few junior ranks had a bank account. Cowley argued that closer control of his own financial affairs would make the soldier more mature.

A handful of different types of unit were chosen to run a pilot scheme, including an infantry battalion of thrifty Yorkshiremen. Introduction of the scheme coincided with the change to the “military salary” under which all soldiers were paid a living wage and marriage allowance was phased out. Each innovation proved a striking success and the pay parade became a thing of the past. Central computer accounting for pay lifted a huge burden from the regimental officer and allowed the small Royal Army Pay Corps staff with each unit to devote their attention to advising soldiers and their families on banking, insurance and investment at home and abroad.

John Cain Cowley was the elder son of Philip and Eleanor Cowley, of Ballaquane on the Isle of Man. He was educated at Douglas School and commissioned into the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1940. Almost constantly on active service throughout the war — in Palestine, the Western Desert, Italy and in the North-West European campaign — he saw the significance soldiers attached to their pay and allowances at first hand and during operations. After the war, he attended the Staff College, Camberley, undertook a personnel staff appointment in the Middle East and, as a youthful lieutenant-colonel, was on the staff of the Permanent Under-Secretary at the War Office. He was Chief Paymaster for the Forces in West Africa 1956-59.

Having seen the introduction and success of soldiers’ banking, he took advantage of the Army’s withdrawal from east of Suez to concentrate the administration of pay services in five pay offices in the United Kingdom and began a process of rationalisation of pay across the three Services. He also pioneered a simplified system for the audit of public accounts.

He was not slow to appreciate how the computer age would open up the possibilities for wider employment of RAPC officers and warrant officers in posts throughout the Army, a trend that had already seen an increasing number of the Corps’ officers in “straight” staff appointments. Soon they became involved in computer projects on a wide scale, and were represented in manpower and material management staff work on the General Staff, as well as in the administrative posts previously perceived as their natural outlet from the confines of “Pay”. His five years as Paymaster-in-Chief, which he began at the unusually early age of age of 49, marked revolutionary changes in a Corps hitherto regarded as essential.

On retirement from the Army in 1972, he joined the stockbrokers de Zoete and Bevan for five years. He was Colonel-Commandant of the RAPC, 1974-79, and vice-president of St Catherine’s Hospice in Crawley — of which his wife was chairman — from 1981 until his death.

He married Rosemary Stewart in 1948. She survives him with their three sons.

Major-General J. C. Cowley, CB, Paymaster-in-Chief of the Army, 1967-72, was born on July 17, 1918. He died on November 18, 2002, aged 84.