Forgotten Conscripts

About the Book

Forgotten Conscripts: Prelude to Palestine's Struggle for Survival is a book of two parts. The first part is an outline of the events and circumstances leading to a savage conflict that raged from 1945 to 1948. The author was posted to Palestine in 1947. When the British withdrew in 1948 they left 784 British troops in two military cemeteries. He was one of many thousands of eighteen-year-old post war conscripts sent to replace those who had served there during the war years. The Palestine conflict was seemingly forgotten, it was never listed with other post war conflicts and no memorial existed for the dead, yet for over fifty years it was seldom out of the news. In 1998 the veterans formed an association, paid for and erected a memorial. Eric Lowe researched the history of the Palestine-Israeli dispute and collated sufficient information to provide readers with an outline of the events leading up to 1945. The taking of Palestine from the Turks in 1917 had brought closer the dream of a homeland for European Jews.

The main part of the book deals with the last three years of the Mandate and covers the atrocities that created ripples- the explosion that killed 91 people including 63 civilians and caused a change in strategy- a double murder that shocked the world, created a storm in Parliament, caused riots in Britain and saw one newspaper editor in court for seditious libel. During the withdrawal a colonel, a war hero, was tempted to sell weapons to the enemy and two sergeants sold two stolen tanks. Forgotten Conscripts is rich with personal memories and experiences of Palestine camp life and the friendly population.

About the Author

Eric Lowe, born 1928 in Derby attended elementary schools until the age of fourteen then gained a scholarship for Derby School of Art. In 1946, He was conscripted into the British Army and posted to Palestine as a clerk in a Royal Army Ordnance Corp depot near Haifa, working along side Arab and Jewish civilians. On leaving the army he worked as an artist for Rolls-Royce in the Publicity and Publishing Dept. Six years later he left Rolls-Royce to join the Derby Evening Telegraph when he discovered that Rolls-Royce were selling fighter plane engines to Israel and Egypt. After working on the advertisement sales side of various regional newspapers throughout Britain his last job was as the Advertisement Controller for Thomson Regional Newspapers. In 1985 he ran his own marketing and publishing business.

He has written several books on the subject before retiring in 1993. Realising that the post first World War I history of Palestine comprised largely of recycled research, compiled, written and circulated by a literate elite within their own tight circles- seldom leaking out to the general British public. He felt some of his communication skills could create a more easily digestible publication.