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Tuesday, 31st July, 1945

This is an 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.

The Times recounts a shore bombardment of the Japanese coastline near Hamamtsu by HMS King George V:

As the line of warships moved down the coast red and white tracer shells arched through the night sky to the shore, where spotting aeroplanes dropped flares which showed up through the outline of the flat, blacked-out coast through a slight haze. After a fast and undetected approach the bombardment opened at 11.15pm, and soon parts of the coastline showed a red glow. A former musical instrument factory, now believed to be one of Japan's main sources of aeroplane parts, was soon in flames

[This is in fact the last time that a British battleship will ever fire its guns in anger.]

"Souvenir pistols killed 47 pals," bewails the Daily Herald's headline. "Everybody ran to the tent from which a pistol shot was heard - it is the usual story. A British soldier lay dead on his bedding. His best friend,  a comrade through a dozen campaigns, stood crazed and rocking beside him. He had been demonstrating his souvenir German automatic pistol once too often ..." 146 soldiers have been accidentally shot by comrades in occupied Austria since V-E Day. 47 have died. 24 men are awaiting court martial for manslaughter.

End of month accounting: on June 30, 1945, there were 4,653,000 men and 437,200 women in His Majesty's armed and auxiliary forces.

During July, 1945, 59,919 men and 28,771 women were released under the Class A scheme; 2,051 men and 5 women were released under the Class B scheme; with 76,884 men and 32,330 women being released in total (including miscellaneous discharges on compassionate and medical grounds).

Overall, since the start of demobilisation, 109,004 men and 44,024 women have been discharged from HM Forces.

Data from Fighting With Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War (HMSO, 1995).

Monday, 30th July, 1945

This is an 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.

The Times publishes the first aerial photographic view of central London permitted since the war began, showing the devastation surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral (click for a full view):

Also in the Times: the Ministry of Labour has announced that 4,500 undergraduate arts and theological students will be shortly released from the Forces under Class B conditions. As the paper notes, university arts education in Britain effectively ended in the last years of the war against Germany, and there is now an urgent need for qualified men to fill posts in the public services, the professions, and in the administrative branches of industry and commerce. 

The paper provides a eulogy for the Eighth Army, the headquarters of which has been officially wound up (though its troops remain of course in situ, garrisoning their occupation zone in Austria):

No British Army has so forcefully impressed itself upon the imagination of the world or so deeply endeared itself to the British public. It was fighting, with variable fortunes, at times when there were no other British armies in the field. From the moment when the initiative returned to our arms it never knew defeat ... it campaigned always in climates where, in spite of the intervals of snow, rain, and mud, an army becomes "supple as steel and brown as leather." And as such it will ever be remembered.

Sunday, 29th July, 1945

This is an 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.

More on fraternisation, this time by a BLA sergeant in the News of the World:

When we first invaded Germany it was a natural and expected thing that we should not be allowed to speak to the Germans, and most of us did not want to anyway. Now the picture has changed and Germany has been cleaned up - and surprisingly quickly - of the worst Nazi elements, and we can roughly divide the Germans into two classes:

(i) The majority of the people - politically ignorant, disgustingly servile, and willing to be led in any direction, and all more or less infected with Nazi ideas and propaganda; (ii) the few Germans who really were anti-Nazi (and they do exist) who waited with anxious hope for our victory.

It is not enough to punish the Germans - we all know that. We must try to re-educate them as well to democracy and all its ideals. How can we do this? Only by talking to Germans, reasoning with them, telling them the truth, proving to them how they have been lied to for a dozen years - in a word, by fraternising with them ...

Saturday, 28th July, 1945

This is an 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.

The Daily Herald reports on the more than 50,000 applications for help processed by the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen's Families Association (SSAFA) in Germany since October last year: "We had so many requests for houses that we had to put out a notice, not a house agency," according to Desmond O'Neill and Mrs E. Robertson, the BLA organizers. "We can't find them houses because there aren't any. But we give them advice, telling them to get their wives to go to the local council ... most soldiers' marriage troubles would never have happened but for the soldier's long exile away from home. We never obtain evidence for a divorce. Our aim is reconciliation. But if both the soldier and his wife want a divorce we pass him on to the legal aid department run by the Army and Air Force next door." There are between 600-700 new cases a week for SSAFA to handle. The number is increasing.

An RAF Flight-Lieutenant writes in John Bull about 'What They Want When They Leave the Forces':

First, the serviceman wants a job. Not necessarily the job he left four or five years ago, because in many cases his service career has been the means of his discovering new possibilities in himself that he did not previously suspect he possessed. The ex-servicemen expects a grateful government to help him develop these new-found talents either by providing education or technical training.

Men in the lonely parts of the world have dreamed for years of their wives and families. Now they wish to settle down with them in the place of their choosing and expect to be provided with decent houses and household facilities.

The soldier has seen at first hand what a determined Britain can do at war. He is in no mood to quibble with politicians or government departments who cannot or will not provide him with a good place in which to live ...

Friday, 27th July, 1945

This is an 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.

The papers describe Labour's historic victory yesterday in the first general election since 1935. Labour's 159-seat majority in the new parliament will provide an instrument for sweeping change. What extent the switch in government will have on the demobilisation process is not yet clear, however. Certainly, with R.A. Butler's brief occupation of the Ministry of Labour now over, a new man will be in charge; but it will not be Ernest Bevin, the architect of the original plan, who is expected to hold one of the great offices of state in Mr. Attlee's new administration. Could Bevin's fellow trade unionist, Southwark MP George Isaacs, be the man for the job?

Thursday, 26th July, 1945

This is an 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.

British carrier aircraft attacked the east Shikoku-Okayama-Fukuyama area yesterday, says the Times. 21 Japanese aircraft were destroyed on the ground, with another 57 others damaged, and other targets such as hangars, radio and radar stations, and a factory were strafed. The British forces lost eight aircraft and twelve airmen in the operation. 

The Daily Mirror reports on more complaints from servicemen in the civilian building trades that they are being denied release under Class B because of red tape. For example, one REME private, 36, medical category C2, a licensed builder with sixteen years experience, has allegedly been refused Class B categorization for obscure administrative reasons ... "Keep at it," says a letter to the paper from 'The Boys in Germany': "We'll be back soon and then we can say a word for ourselves." An RAC trooper, also in Germany, predicts "trouble in a big way when the lads come home ... we're passing the time by blancoing webbing and polishing boots and buttons like we did in 1939."

Wednesday, 25th July, 1945

This is an 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.

Heavy fighting has been reported in Burma, says the Times. More than 1,300 Japanese troops have been killed and 80 taken prisoner after retreating enemy forces attempted to cross the Mandalay-Rangoon road eastwards and reach the Sittang river. Spitfires and Thunderbolts have been strafing Japanese positions, destroying many bridges and villages.

'I am a serviceman who has just returned to this country after four years overseas, and my first expected reactions were mapped out for me by the overseas newspapers as terrible! Almost hopeless! Very heavy rationing! No this, no that, no the other!" writes a Daily Herald reader:

Why must people grumble? Things might be better, but all the grumbling in the world will not put us back to pre-war standards ... I may be a serviceman without the worries of ordinary rationing, but I have been home for 28 days and the only place I have had to queue for necessities has been in service clubs ... if more people would realise that, like an anthill which has been crushed by a heavy heel, we are only starting to rebuilt a smashed country, they would follow the example of the ants and pull together instead of as so many do in opposite directions.

Tuesday, 24th July, 1945

This is an 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.

A thousand square miles of the bed of the Firth of Clyde are being dragged by 26 minewsweepers in a search for three German moored magnetic mines which were laid by a U-Boat when she penetrated the waterway three weeks before V-E Day, reports the News Chronicle. The search began on 20th April when the 200-ton fishing trawler Ethel Crawford blew up, one of the very last victims of the Battle of the Atlantic ...

A Times reader on 'fratting':

The photographs in the press of British soldiers 'fraternizing' with half-naked smiling German girls are somewhat astonishing if one reflects that all over liberated Europe women have had their heads shaved and their clothes torn from their backs by their own countrymen for smiling upon the invader. What can they and their accusers think of these pictures?

 

Monday, 23rd July, 1945

This is an 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.

Aircraft operating from the carriers of the British Pacific Fleet are reported by the Times to have damaged 24 Japanese junks, destroyed 14 aircraft on the ground, and scored hits on sheds and other airfield installations north of Tokyo. Two British aircraft were destroyed, but their crews rescued.

A Daily Express report seeks to reassure British wives disconcerted by the fraternization rumors coming from Germany (though one wonders how successful he was):

The British soldier ... is being libelled in letters from his womenfolk at home. They seem to think that because he can now talk to the Germans he has suddenly forgotten what the Germans have done to the world and is chiefly occupied in chasing German girls. This is complete nonsense ...

Take it from me, the average British soldier in Berlin is behaving magnificently, though goodness knows he has enough temptations. If a driver, for instance, pulls his car up for more than five minutes, he immediately finds himself surrounded by a group of women. Looking as gay as butterflies against the backdrop of ruins, they come up to the troops, anxious to be friends ... can you expect a healthy young man who has had months of hard fighting, not to find pleasure in the sight of pretty girls who are anxious to be friendly?

A letter from LAC Brian Poole to his American penpal: "It’s CO’s inspection tomorrow. We are real peace time airmen now. Polishing, cleaning and generally doing all the things soldiers do in peace time. It’s grim and I don’t like it at all. I’ve got to get on my hands and knees and make the bedspread gleam."

Sunday, 22nd July, 1945

This is an 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.

"So Monty has lifted the ban, and within a few minutes our Tommies are chatting to German women," writes a Croydon wife to the Sunday Express: "Nice reading for the women back home. If this is how our soldiers react after only two months of peace, I'd say right now we'll lose it - for good." An ex-ATS Londoner agrees. "It now only remains for the stockingless, utility-clad queue-ridden women of Britain to be asked to welcome here the 'attractively gowned, glamorous' German brides of our occupation armies ..."

"All possible is being done to speed demobilisation and get men and women back to employment in civilian life," insists a Ministry of Labour spokesman in the News of the World:

But we still have a big and serious man-power problem in such matters as finishing off the Japanese war as quickly as possible, meeting the urgency of housing ... it was laid down by Mr. Ernest Bevin, when he was Minister of Labour, that the return of men and women from the Forces must be orderly and that everyone must get a fair deal.

It would be comparatively easy to let larger numbers out of the services than the 30,000 a week now being demobilised, but to do so would lead to gross unfairness, inequalities, and complaints.