When "Uncle Bill" Slim and his "Forgotten (14th) Army" were charged with the task of driving the enemy back from the borders of India and out of Burma in 1943 many doubted that tanks could be employed effectively in the offensive.
But "Cully" Scoones - who had commanded a machine-gun battery alongside the Camel Corps in Sudan between the wars and had later fought in the Western Desert - believed there might possibly be ways of making good use of tanks.
He talked it over with his brother, Lt-Gen (later Sir) Geoffry Scoones, then commanding 4 Corps in Burma, and set off for Assam to examine the prospects.
As a jockey walks a racecourse before the race, Scoones reconnoitred the jungle in the Kabaw Valley on foot and climbed the hills on the Tiddim Road, terrain which was to figure prominently in Slim's advance with the 14th Army.
Scoones then returned to GHQ in India, where he reported that there was good reason to believe that tanks might operate, albeit in limited numbers, in the Kabaw teak forests and the hills on the Tiddim Road.
After defying the sceptics and winning approval for the scheme, he received command of 254 Tank Brigade, comprising the 3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards and the 7th Indian Light Cavalry. Towards the end of 1943 Scoones moved the brigade and its Lee Grant heavy and Stuart light tanks up to Imphal.
Scoones was renowned in the Army for his thorough preparation and the issuing of clear and concise orders. An impressively lean and hard figure, he also exercised a quiet humour to relax tense situations.
This was needed as the tanks experimented with ways of negotiating swamps, scaling jungle hills and, accompanied by infantry, attacking enemy bunkers.
Scoones's tanks were put to the test the next spring at Nungschigum - a commanding eminence more than 1,000 ft above the Imphal plain - when they tackled the steep slopes in support of infantry.
The tanks, in turn, were supported by Hurricane fighters operating as bombers, Vengeances and artillery. Slipping and skidding, the tanks' tortured engines took them up the hill at little more than 1 mph.
The angle of climb denied the drivers a view of the ascent and their commanders, heads out of turrets, called directions. Up went Scoones's armour, inch by inch, as heavy fighting took place alongside the tanks.
But the commanders were cruelly exposed in the open turrets and Scoones's wireless crackled with reports of the commanders being killed or mortally wounded until five out of six were dead.
Yet the surviving members of their crews pressed on and, together with Indian infantry, took the hill and its defending bunkers.
In a later action, Scoones - forward, as ever, to watch his tanks in action -wriggled alongside a Gurkha in the front line. Amid the fighting the rifleman, tempted by a dove in a tree, let fly with a catapult.
He missed. When he looked over his shoulder, the Gurkha was dismayed to see the red tabs of the brigadier.
Scoones suggested he reload - the rifle, not the catapult - and get on with the war.
Reginald Laurence Scoones was born on Dec 18 1900 and educated at Wellington and Sandhurst before following his father, Maj Fitzmaurice Scoones, into the Royal Fusiliers.
In 1923 young Scoones transferred to the Royal Tank Corps. Five years later he was attached to the Sudan Defence Force, where he remained for eight years, in command of its mobile machine-gun battery.
In 1935 he returned home to become Adjutant of 1 Royal Tank Regiment. By 1938 he had moved up to the Staff of the Mobile Division.
He began the Second World War as a brigade major in Cairo and in 1940 he was GSO 2 of the Western Desert Corps. The next year he consolidated his reputation as CO of 42 Royal Tank Regiment with the 7th Armoured Division in the Western Desert.
Then, after a spell on the staff at the War Office, and as deputy director of Military Training, Scoones headed east.
After the war he resumed his post in Military Training before returning to his beloved Sudan as assistant Kayid (Head) of the Sudan Defence Force.
In 1950 he was promoted to Major-General commanding British Troops in Sudan and Commandant of the Sudan Defence Force. He also served on the executive council of Sudan and as a member of the Legislative Assembly.
But in the summer of 1954 the new Sudanese government suddenly decided to implement the 'Sudanisation' of the Defence Force.
So Scoones, the last British C-in-C of the then 5,000-strong force, duly handed over command to his Sudanese deputy, Lt-Gen Ahmed Mohamed. Scoones's last act before boarding the aircraft at Khartoum back to Britain was to inspect a guard of honour formed by the Camel Corps.
Three years later, having retired from the Army, the general was to be found sitting a London County Council examination, under the pseudonym of 'Mr R Smith', in the running of a public house, complete with questions on how to pull pints of ale.
Although Sir Reginald passed the test with honours, he had, in fact, no intention of keeping a pub. With the thoroughness that had distinguished his military career, he had decided to do the course anonymously in order to brief himself for his new post as director of the National Trade Defence Association - a joint organisation of brewers and licensed victuallers which later changed its name to the Brewers Society. He remained in the job for 12 years.
Scoones was appointed OBE in 1941, CB in 1951 and KBE in 1955. In his younger days he listed his recreations as riding, golf and tennis.
He married, in 1933, Isabella Nisbet; they had a daughter.
