STRATHBLANE WORLD WAR 1 PROJECT: 9 ALEXANDER LOWE, SAPPER ROYAL ENGINEERS, AGED 25
“The letter spoke in the highest praise of Sapper Lowe for his abilities and attention to duty, and how he was held in high esteem and respect by his comrades in the Army.”
Stirling Observer October 31 1919.
The ninth and last name on the first panel of Strathblane War Memorial belongs to Sapper Alexander Lowe. Of the 27 local men who died in the First World War and feature on the memorial, he is the only one who died after the end of hostilities, the victim of a tragic accident in Germany.
He is also the sole Royal Engineer. Of particular interest is the fact that between the two rolls of honour (hung in the local Parish Church and the former UF Church), three other members of his immediate family also find a place: as well as Alex and his brother James, are his sister Margaret and his wife Effie. Both women joined the war effort and Effie was honoured by King George V for her service. The Lowe family’s story is a reminder of the huge sacrifice made to the war effort by ordinary individual families, a sacrifice that overshadowed every Scottish town and village right across the 20th Century.
The Lowes had strong local connections. Alexander’s grandparents, Andrew Lowe, a farm servant, and Elizabeth Benson, were living at Kirkland in Strathblane when they married in 1858. Alexander’s father, Daniel, the second of eight children, was born there in 1867. The family later lived in Campsie village, where the 1881 Census recorded Daniel as a 14-year old printfield labourer. However, by the time he married Alexander’s mother, Helen Vessie, in 1893, he was back in the parish, working as a gardener and living in the Netherton area.
Alexander Risk Lowe was their first child, born in February 1894 at Arlehaven on the Edmonstone estate. By 1901 the Lowes were living at the lodge to Parklea (now Blanefield House care home), a house built by Anthony Park Coubrough, proprietor of Blanefield Printworks and subsequently occupied by the three Gairdner sisters. The house was also known as Gateside. Alexander, now seven, had been joined by James, aged five, and two-year old Margaret.
In the early years of the 20th century, the Lowe children crop up in the Strathblane school log. In September 1902, eight-year old Alex was punished with another boy for being in a room without permission when a key went missing, though he was later cleared of blame. In 1904 he is recorded as having won the Bible Prize and in 1906 was awarded a three-year council bursary, presumably to enable him to continue his education. Maggie and James were also prizewinners. The Lowe children seem to have been a bright bunch.
In the 1911 Census the whole family was still living at Parklea Lodge but by now Alexander was working as a railway porter. Five years later, in December 1916, he was described as a railway clerk, when he married Euphemia (Effie) Matheson, the daughter of a gamekeeper from the Isle of Skye. They married at the UF Church in Blanefield (now a private house). At the time she was working as a table maid, at Corriedale, across the road from Parklea. The house had been built in 1910 for Glasgow wine merchant Arthur Booth.
By this time Alex was working for the North British Railway Department at Queen St Station in Glasgow and the newly-weds probably realised that the time left to them was short before Alex would be conscripted into the war effort.
In 1915 the Railway Operating Division of the Royal Engineers had been formed to operate the railways in the many war theatres. Its personnel consisted largely of railway employees.
The railways were the motorways of their time and the Allied war effort was crucially dependent on steam trains to transport everything – men, horses, munitions, supplies, even tanks – to the front line. Initially, the British used the French railway system to move men and equipment from the Channel ports to divisional railheads, then relied largely on horse-drawn transport and marching to reach the front line. To overcome the problem of maintenance on these roads and tracks, light railway companies came into existence from 1916, laying light-weight narrow gauge prefabricated track, which required little ground preparation. New units were formed to operate the new system.
Alex was duly called up and became a sapper (the equivalent of a private) in the Railway Operating Division (ROD). Though we do not yet have a call-up date for Alex, it is possible that he volunteered in late 1915 under the Derby Scheme (see 3) and had a long deferral on his call-up until late 1917, due to his job being a reserved occupation. The strength of the ROD quickly rose to around 5,500, including officers.
Trains were also used to evacuate French civilians from the big German push in 1918, when the German Army almost broke through at several points along the Western Front. When the tide turned, the pressure was on to restore operating efficiency on track that had been temporarily lost to the enemy, then extend the lines to keep up with the advancing armies.
Alex must have been keen to get home as soon as possible after the Armistice in November 1918 but there was still much work to be done restoring the communication lines that now extended deep into areas formerly held by the Germans. These repairs were still going on in the autumn of 1919.
Alex must have been close to demobilisation when disaster struck. In early October 1919 he was working over the border in Germany. A report in the Stirling Observer on October 31 takes up the story: “A telegram received by Mrs Alex Lowe states that her husband, Sapper Alex Lowe, has met his death by accident on the railway in Germany. A letter from his Captain came to hand two days later saying that Sapper Lowe had been run down by a light engine. He was taken to hospital but his injuries proved fatal. The letter spoke in the highest praise of Sapper Lowe for his abilities and attention to duty and how he was held in high esteem and respect by his comrades in the Army.” He had died on October 9, nearly a year after the Armistice.
Alexander Lowe is one of only four Commonwealth burials from the First World War at Verviers Communal Cemetery in Belgium. In what some would regard as a final indignity, the gravestone describes him as “Anglais”.
Alex’s brother James and sister Margaret also appear on the Roll of Honour in Strathblane Parish Church. James was a private in the Scottish Rifles, reported wounded in April 1917 in the Stirling Observer. He had just returned to the front when he was reported missing in action on September 1. It is hard to imagine the relief his family must have felt when a postcard arrived on September 29, informing them that he was a prisoner of war in Germany. James survived the war.
Margaret and Alex’s wife Effie both joined Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The QMAAC grew out of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, founded in July 1917. Members would serve both at home and in France and Flanders as clerks, telephonists, drivers, administrators, waitresses, cooks and instructors in the use of gas masks. This was to free up for fighting the soldiers doing these jobs.
Though it was a uniformed service (khaki jackets and skirts no more than 12 inches from the ground), the women were not given full military status or rank. Officers were known as “officials”. Effie, who was involved in catering, became a “forewoman”, the equivalent of a sergeant. All members of the corps were encouraged to keep fit by doing physical exercise every day, including dancing and hockey.
In April 1918, in recognition of having exceeded expectations during the big German push in the spring of that year, the service was renamed Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps with the Queen as Commander-in-Chief. It was not disbanded until September 1921 because at the end of the war priority was given to demobilising men. More than 57,000 women served in the WAAC/QMAAC. Together with the many other women who took civilian jobs at home, their service probably made the granting of the vote to women an inevitability.
The fact that Effie received an honour for her service, suggests she served at the Western Front. An entry in the Edinburgh Gazette in January 1920, lists Effie’s award of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (later the BEM) “in recognition of valuable services rendered in connection with military operations in France and Flanders”.
There is a delightful photograph of Effie in her khaki uniform held by the Imperial War Museum. She is looking straight at the camera with a slightly quizzical expression and holding what appears to be a ferret. It would be good to think that Effie and Alex were able to meet up on the Continent before she received that fateful news in October 1919.
Effie never remarried and in 1952 died aged 67 in Skye, where she had been born. Alex’s father Daniel passed away aged 75 in 1942 at the height of World War II in the Edenkiln area of Strathblane. However, his mother Helen lived on to her 94th year, dying in September 1961. She outlived her elder son by 42 years. Alex, Effie, Daniel and Helen share a gravestone in Strathblane Churchyard.
Sapper Lowe did not die in combat but he was as much a casualty of World War I as those who did. The role of the Railway Operating Division may have been an unglamorous one but its importance to the British war effort can hardly be overstated.