HOUSTOUN, Euan Henry OBE 1946-2024
Richard R
He was s of Lindsay Arthur HOUSTON 1920-85 scion of that Scots gentry family of Mayshiel and his former w Pamela 1922-2002 d of Col Howel Gwyn MOORE-GWYN DSO MC 1886-1956 scion of that Welsh gentry family f/o Dyffryn and Winifred 1883-1963 d of Arthur GILBERTSON 1841-1912 of Glanrhyd, Glam by his 25 July 1873 m (Cilybebyll, Glam.) to Ellen 1850-94 d of Francis Edwardes LLOYD (formerly LEACH) c1805-1865 by his 16 Jan 1833 m (Bawdrip, Som.) Harriet Goodwin PAGE 1810-62. He m 1972 Joanna b 1950 reg Q3 Surrey d of Gp Capt Frederick (Freddy) ROTHWELL CBE DFC TD 1917-96 by his 1949 m reg Q2 Suffolk to Audrey Winifred SWITHINBANK 1924-2007, and had a son and two daus as below.
Obit in the Times of 17 Dec 2024:
E X T R A C T
Colonel Euan Houstoun obituary: Grenadier Guards and SAS commander
Commander recognised for gathering vital intelligence before the recapture of the Falkland Islands
… Euan Henry Houstoun was born in 1946 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the eldest of three. His father, Lindsay, had been a Swordfish pilot in Eugene Esmonde’s squadron of the Fleet Air Arm which took part in the hunt for the Bismarck in 1941. In 1953, Lindsay Houstoun, with his wife Pamela (née Moore-Gwyn) and their two children, moved to Rhodesia to work for a brewing company. Euan Houstoun boarded at a prep school in Umtali before the family returned to England in 1956, and then boarded in Sussex. Although his father had been at Winchester, Houstoun attended Bradfield College in Berkshire on the recommendation of his headmaster. At Bradfield, Houstoun, soon 6ft 4in tall, excelled at games and athletics, but to the neglect of academic studies.
His academic results may not have recommended him for Sandhurst and a regular commission, but they were enough for Mons Officer Cadet School and a short-service one. Six months after his 18th birthday, having been recommended to the regiment by a former officer and family friend, Houstoun was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, joining them in Wuppertal, West Germany…
… he met Joanna Rothwell [in Kenya], whose father, Group Captain Freddy Rothwell DFC, commanded the Kenyan Air Force, and they were married in January 1972. After the Sea King crash, Joanna Houstoun accompanied the SAS’s families officer to break the news to each of the widows at Hereford. She survives him, with their three children: Tanya, a head of early years and forest school specialist; Andrew, chief commercial officer with Brightlocal, which supports local businesses in digital promotion; and Laura, a counsellor and psychotherapist…
… For ten years he was president of the Grenadier Guards Association, and in 2013 became president of the HMS Trincomalee Trust. Wallace Houston, a collateral ancestor, had been captain of the Trincomalee, a teak-built frigate launched in Bombay 1817 and restored to public display in Hartlepool, sailing her to Port Stanley in 1852, almost 150 years to the day before Houstoun himself arrived…
