This is the first entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.
Demobilisation of HM Forces begins today, with the release of men aged 50 and over and older married women. As the Daily Mail and News Chronicle report, nearly 200 service personnel of the British Liberation Army in Germany assembled in transit depots like Release Embarkation Camp No. 1 - 'Hotel Blighty' - in Ostend last night, ready to leave for Dover at 8.30am this morning in the first demobilisation ships to leave the continent. Six trains will henceforth be arriving daily at the Channel ports to bring demobilising servicemen home. Across Britain, staff at the country's various discharge centers have been busy making last-minute checks on the bureaucratic machinery that must ultimately process all of the five-million men and women of the wartime armed forces.
The Air Ministry has announced releases for the second month of demobilisation, starting on July 18 (c/o the Times). Aircrew and most ground crew in Groups 6-8 will be released (though non-aircrew officers with Groups higher than 6 will be deferred for now), and married WAAFs up to Group 37 also discharged.
"There will be grey in the temples of of the first man out of the Forces this morning," predicts Trevor Evans of the Daily Express. "Most of the men released today have been in uniform for more than five years. It is too difficult, and perhaps a little presumptuous, to describe the mental process each man has gone through in the last three months ...
No doubt about the first sense of relief. For many there followed a sense of anxiety, an anxiety which mounted as the day of release got nearer. It will be banished once resettlement leave starts, but to return in many cases before it ends."
Evans comments on one of the big lingering controversies of the release scheme - the lack of any legal requirement for employers to hire ex-servicemen before civilians. "There has been a lot of argument about this," he notes, "but the final decision was based on the obvious difficulty of assessing danger and bravery. There were men in uniform who were posted to bases unmolested by the enemy. There were dockers and railwaymen who carried on all through the blitzes." But, as he predicts - accurately - "I cannot help feeling there will be bitterness about this."
The Daily Mail interviews five ATS wives being demobilized today. For 25-year-old Sergeant Janet Noseworthy of Ayreshire, "All I can think of is going home ... home! I shall never put my uniform on again." Her husband, Jim, is a native of Newfoundland currently serving on a minesweeper. Corporal Phyllis Higgs, who has been a driver for two-and-a-half years, also has few rergets about her release. "The mere thought of wearing flimsy frocks again after spending so long in petrol-stained dungarees is blissful ..."
Meanwhile, the war in the Far East goes on. The Times reports that on Thursday and Friday the British Pacific Fleet attacked the Japanese stronghold of Truk in the Caroline Islands. One Seafire fighter is missing.
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