大象传媒

"This is Gavin Low of Southmoor Community School, Sunderland entering his grandfather, Robert Low's story, onto the website and they fully understand the website terms and conditions of use".

I was called up at the age of 20 at the beginning of january 1945. Basic training lasted for 3 months and i was selected for entry into the royal engineers. The Royal Engineers training was carried out at the Royal Engineers depot in Aldershot. The Royal Engineers carries out bridge building mine detection and vehicle repair. Training consisted of building pontoon bridges, mine detection and standard military training. On completion the company was sent to Burma where specialised Japanese mine tecniques was to be carried out to days prior to embarcation. I was selected to go on to a special course and was transferred to the Royal Engineers College of military engineering at Ripon.

The specialised traning covered electrical design in War Department buildings and camps. the course lasted 8 monthes and was the longest course of this type in the british army, selection for this course had been carried out throughout the royal enginners an a class of 15 was formed. At the end of this course, I was transferred to the middle east and after a period of time in Suez I was moved to an electrical company based at Hiffa in Palistine. the purpose of this camp was to supply electricity to various camps throughout the area using overhead lines over long distances. Terrorist activity was quite heavy and was carried out by the jewish persons who wanted control over all of the arabs in that section. Attacks on British personnel, vehicles and buildings were quite common and the British army suffered many casualties. The army camp to which I was attached took precautions by setting up 40 ft towers round the perimeter of the camp, which contained a machine gun rifle and search lights. One one occasion, during the night, a guard saw in the distance a light-covered object approaching the gates, he shouted two warnings and got no answer. He fired two rounds and he saw the object collapse, unknown to him it was the camp labrador. The dog dragged itself to the gates and collapsed. The guard was most upset because he knew the dog was loved by all soldiers in the camp, and consequently he wasn't very popular after that.

Troops slept in six person tents and before
entering the tent a check was always made to clear out any scorpions and snakes which may have entered the tent but they still maneged to enter the tent while we where asleep, on one occasion I woke up with an severe pain only to discover that a scorpion had entered the tentand poisoned my left arm by stinging it. I was taken to hospital and it took 3 months to remove the poison from my arm, this was done by the doctors,a hollow quarter inch rod was pushed into the black swollen boil on my arm and the poison was drawn out.

Various sporting activities were carried out between camps and it was most enjoyable to travel possibly 50 miles to play football,supporters from each camp travelled in army lorries which they much preferred to the alternative of general camp duty. In 1948 I was de-mobbed and travelled back by a port sailed in the troop ship Georgic,finally arriving in england I travelled by train from
Southampton to York. At this point I handed in my rifle and ammunition and was given a de-mobbed suit of cloths which was easilly recognisable.

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