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 reports that thanks to new regulations, all released ex-servicemen and -women will be entitled from the beginning of their final leave to free medical attention and other benefits under the existing wartime national health insurance scheme (exactly what the permanent postwar healthcare system will look like isn't yet clear, though both the major parties in the upcoming general election are committed to introducing some kind of comprehensive scheme which will be free at receipt of treatment).
"The Brighton vigilantes who commandeered an empty house on Friday night for the wife and two children of a petty officer intend to take over more," reports the News Chronicle. "They are not a secret society; they prefer to call themselves a 'direct action' society," according to an interview with their leader, a "tubby Brighton businessman." At least a dozen vigilantes were present at the meeting attended by the Chroncle's reporter, including "a former drum major of the Royal Fusiliers who was twice wounded in the last war, an airborne man who dropped at Arnhem and an Eighth Army man who fought throughout the desert campaign."
Feeling on the housing issue is strong. "From Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and Egypt," claims the Daily Mirror, "letters giving the views of Britain's servicemen and servicewomen on the housing muddle are streaming into this office ... scores and scores of letters from the men who smashed the Fascist terror only to be faced with the dread that they and their loved ones will be driven into the streets."
The Mirror also reports on a police drive to stop gun-running in London's West End. The police are appealing to publicans, gunsmiths and cafe proprieters to help stop the sale of souvenir revolvers picked up on the Continent and passed into the hands of criminal gangs. The military authorities are reportedly tightening up on the examination of kitbags troops are bringing home on leave or for demob.
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