Alwyn Victor St. Clair Laing
Alwyn Victor St. Clair Laing (1891-1946)
1946 Obituary [1]
Lt.-Colonel ALWYN VICTOR ST. CLAIR LAING, R.E.M.E., whose death occurred at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, on 17th March 1946, was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1940. He was born in 1891, and received his education at the Technical School and the Nautical College in Leith. On the completion of a five years' apprenticeship with Messrs. Ramage and Ferguson, Ltd., shipbuilders, of Leith, in 1911, he continued in their employment as junior draughtsman for a further three years.
He was then gazetted to a commission and as a lieutenant in the R.A.S.C., was on active service in Egypt (where he held special appointments in connection with armoured trains), and also in Palestine and France. He returned in 1919 to Messrs. Ramage and Ferguson to take up the appointment of senior draughtsman, but four years later he became a draughtsman in the Royal Engineers. From 1927 to 1939 he was mechanical engineering draughtsman in the R.A.O.C. workshops at Aldershot, with responsibility for the design of mobile workshop equipment, which entailed special emphasis on experimental work including the designing of recovery vehicles.
In 1939 he obtained his captaincy in the R.A.S.C., and joined the War Department Inspectorate of supplementary Transport. In the year following his transference to the R.E.M.E. which took place in 1944, he was promoted major. His final appointment was that of deputy chief inspector of vehicles, R.E.M.E., with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.