Like many other young men from Perthshire, Angus and Fife, he saw it as a career, providing excitement and financial security.In an area of Scotland plagued by high levels of unemployment, the lure of the armed forces, and the Black Watch in particular, has long been an escape route from what could otherwise be bleak futures.For almost 300 years, the Black Watch – now threatened by proposed defence cuts – has recruited from the area, earning a reputation as a close-knit family regiment. He joined the regiment straight from Beath High School in Cowdenbeath, aged 16, to become a drummer in the pipe band and play at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. He was already a combat veteran when he was sent to Iraq with the regiment six months ago, having served a previous tour during the war.Although a keen footballer, his greatest ambition since the age of eight had always been to join the Army. His stinging comments were echoed on the regiment’s website.Craig Lowe, speaking outside the family’s home in Kelty, said: “We are all absolutely devastated – our mother is in floods of tears. And so it was for Private Lowe, who found himself serving alongside his brother Craig, 18, and 22-year-old cousin Barry.Yesterday Craig – who was sent back to the UK last month to take part in a training course – criticised the Government for his brother’s death. Their deaths have galvanised critics of the Iraq war and the Prime Minister is facing renewed demands for the withdrawal of British troops, sent north from the British-controlled area around Basra to help the US push into Fallujah.The Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, calling for the troops to be withdrawn, said: “The bravery of those soldiers in Iraq contrasts sharply with the chicanery of the politicians who sent them there in the first place.”At Camp Dogwood, where the 850 Black Watch soldiers are based, the Saltire flew at half mast, and the mood was sombre.But the men’s colleagues, while stunned, were back on duty, resuming their duties in the perilous area along the banks of the Euphrates.

They did so the British way – shunning the hardline, suspicious American approach – mixing with the locals while wearing their distinctive Tam O’Shanter headgear.Private Lowe was a keen volunteer who loved army life. But days before he died, his family said, he told his mother, Helen, that he had had enough of Iraq and wanted to come home. Now, his body lies waiting to be flown back in a flag-draped coffin – a casualty of a war that he believed should never have involved British troops.Private Lowe was one of three Black Watch soldiers killed in action when a suicide bomber attacked their checkpoint in the so-called Triangle of Death close to Baghdad – bringing the number of British troops killed in the conflict to 73.The teenager died on Thursday alongside Sergeant Stuart Gray, 31, and Private Scott McArdle, 22, both from Fife. A pebble-dashed semi-detached house on a council estate in the middle of Fife is a long, long way from Iraq’s desert sands. But it is exactly where 19-year-old Paul Lowe longed to be.
After a six-month tour of duty with the Black Watch regiment, he was due to return home tomorrow.

and to express my pride and gratitude to the Black Watch for the extraordinary and heroic job they are doing there.”. Standing alongside Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, at an EU summit in Brussels, Mr Blair paid tribute to the bravery of the soldiers of the Black Watch: “I would like to express my deep sympathy and condolences to the families … “When we got booed off [against Crystal Palace] I was driving home and I was thinking, ‘Well in the last seven years they’ve had two promotions and five years in the Premiership,’” Curbishley says, “and we’ve had some real good times. For the last two matches, both at home, something unusual has happened His team has been booed off. And it has hurt.
It has hurt so much that Curbishley’s brother, Bill, who works in the music industry, and is the manager of The Who, has revealed that he urged him to walk away in the summer. “I’m trying to contain my anger,” Bill Curbishley said.Alan Curbishley, 16 years Bill’s junior, isn’t quite so direct, partly, as he explains, because he believes in the need for “a clear head when there’s a bit of mayhem”.

But there is irritation that intermingles with the emotion of it all Today there’s an added ingredient. Charlton are away to Tottenham Hotspur, the club Curbishley was constantly linked with last season and would, probably, have joined if the right offer had been made. He even publicly pondered about the fact that he lives just two miles from the Spurs training ground.That journey would be somewhat shorter than the one he has been undertaking since 1991 – from his home in Essex to south-east London.On the other hand, Curbishley does much of his thinking in his car Of late, his mood has not been a happy one. That the rest of football eked out a degree of compassion is no longer any concern of the richest football club in the world.Peter Kenyon should put away his crusader’s sword. In the wrong hands it is a weapon that in the long run can provoke only ridicule.. Alan Curbishley is 47 on Monday and although it may not be one of those landmark birthdays, the Charlton Athletic manager is certainly taking stock right now.