Can anyone throw any light on this statement. Has it ever been reported or commented on before? No 7 (REME) Workshop Tel el Kebir After that episode I left the Battery. There was a shortage of qualified Engineers in the British Army serving in Egypt. They checked my pay book and noted that I was an engineer, so I was posted to the Port Workshops in Port Said. This was a Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) location at Tel el Kebir. It was a huge location manned by 40,000 service personnel and 32,000 civilian labourers. I was put in charge of No 7 Workshop. There we worked round the clock in twelve hour shifts. We did a six-hour shift on Sundays in order to change from day to night shift. Our main task in the workshop was to ensure that all the equipment coming into the Desert campaign was ready for use. This included jeeps, trucks and tanks. On many occasions this equipment had been sabotaged before it reached us. It was impossible to determine where or at what stage of the journey to Egypt the equipment had been sabotaged. There were four possibilities; 1. At the factory of manufacture 2. En route to the docks 3. While on board the ship 4. At the Egyptian docks On one occasion, the spark plugs had been removed from a truck, the engine was filled with peat and then the spark plugs were replaced.
On the British Union of Fascists thread http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/general/23868-buf-membership-your-card-marked.html there is mention of 600 plus members at the start of WW2 and some of them turning trator. I wonder how many of these worked in equipment plants??? ! Is there any way to find out?
