Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Carmichael Robert Owen CMG OBE (1866–1941) was a British Army officer who joined the Sudan service in 1903. He was Sudan Agent in Cairo from 1905 to 1908. Owen was then appointed Governor of Mongalla Province in South Sudan from 1908 to 1918. Early life Owen was born in 1866 in Writtle, Essex, England the son of the local vicar the Reverend Loftus Owen and his wife Emma (née Kenworthy). He was educated at Rossall School, where he was a noted athlete. In August 1884 he was commissioned in 3rd Battalion, The King's Shropshire Light Infantry. In 1888 he transferred to The Oxfordshire Light Infantry. India Owen was Superintendent of Army Signalling with the Manipur Expedition of 1891, and in the same year was also with the Wuntho Expedition in Upper Burma. He served in the First Mohmand Campaign between 1897 and 1898 and the Tirah Expedition which included operations in the Bara Valley and the Khyber Pass. He was severely wounded while fighting in the Khyber Pass. Egypt In 1902 Owen was appointed to the Egyptian Army. He held various posts in Egypt including being Director of the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian War Office. In that position, he was asked whether the Bedouin of Sinai would side with Britain or Turkey in the event of a war. His short-sighted view was "...It matters very little to us which side they take in such a case, as if such a war took place (and no one expects it even will). There would be no fighting in Sinai – it would be somewhere else". This was ironic in view of the later exploits of T. E. Lawrence in the Arab Revolt against the Turks. In 1906 Owen was a member of the Sinai Boundary Commission. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) that year. From 1905 to 1908 Owen was the Sudan Agent in Cairo. In 1905 Owen was approached by a Canadian missionary group for permission to work in Bahr el Ghazal. According to Owen they were "the horrible fanatical canting kind of missionary and undesirable". He painted a bleak picture of conditions in the Sudan and "I even went nearly so far as to suggest they might be served up as missionary mayonnaise". The missionaries dropped their request. Sudan IN 1908 Owen was appointed Governor and Officer Commanding