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Friday, 31st August, 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.

Flying his pennant from the light cruiser HMS Swiftsure, Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt led a joint British and Australian fleet into Hong Kong yesterday to accept the Japanese surrender of the Crown Colony, three years and eight months after its capture, reports the Times. "The tragic episode in the life of the colony which began with its fall on Christmas Day 1941 thus comes to an end ... the curtain which for so long shut off Hong Kong from the rest of the world will be lifted."

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 August, 1945, 88,629 men and 25,292 women were released under the Class A scheme; 6,492 men and 9 women were released under the Class B scheme; with 111,437 men and 30,232 women being released in total (including miscellaneous discharges on compassionate and medical grounds).

Overall, since the start of demobilisation, 220,441 men and 74,256 women have been discharged from HM Forces.

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

Thursday, 30th August, 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 troops aboard a Malayan-bound troopship are living in a floating slum," reports the Daily Mirror from Trincomalee. Over 350 Commandos are aboard the "reeking airless horror" of "Little Belsen," as it has become known: a sergeant complains that

Since the war began I have been on nine troopships. This is quite the worst. The food has been shocking ... weevils are in the bread and the potatoes are black. Each man gets less than one gallon of water a day for all purposes ... there are no electric fans down here and the vents requently break down. The ship is alive with cockroaches ... there is no hope of clean clothes, for there is no water allowed for laundry.

Excluding restricted trades such as the Accounting Branch, most RAF officers and men in Release Groups 22 and below will be discharged by the end of October, reports the Air Ministry (c/o The Times).WAAFs up to Group 33 will be released at the same time.

Wednesday, 29th August, 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.

Captain Alan Harris, writes home from his post in the Allied Control Commission in Munster: "It is difficult to knuckle under to men promoted capriciously of whom you think very little ..."

Added to that, there is not much work to do, what there is is dull … a rumour (well-founded) is going around that Control Commission [demob] will be frozen. If that does happen it will indeed be the last straw. Apparently they can’t get enough civvies to replace us, probably because they aren’t offering enough money. We feel that we have done our job in winning the war, and that to keep on those who have survived at wartime salaries to maintain the peace is iniquitous.

The idea is gaining ground that England regards the war as the soldier’s responsibility from beginning to end. People in England, it seems, pursue the normal functions of life making a packet of dough in the process behind the protection of our gallant soldiers who having beaten the Germans will be only too eager to continue taking it out them at nominal rates of pay. Obviously, of course, there are dangers of sudden release of large numbers of men, but why the million and a half munition workers released while a trickle of soldiers come home? … Apparently the army returns to find all the best peacetime jobs filled by the very men who got safely rich during the war.

A Royal Engineers Lance Corporal, also in Germany, writes to the Manchester Guardian about the recent demob announcements. "After the ‘windfall’ of Japan’ surrender … the promise that groups up to 23 in the Army will be released by January, 1946, has created a feeling of dissatisfaction and disillusionment amongst serving men. It is not generally realized by the majority of people at home that it is not until groups 25 and 26 are reached that the first men called up with the first batch of Militia on July 15, 1939, become eligible for release. At the present rate, therefore, these men will not be released until about March, 1946, making a period of service of over six and a half years.”

Tuesday, 28th August, 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.

Letters of protest pour into the Daily Herald's office after the Ministry of Labour's controversial announcement of the demob 'speed-up.'"We all realise that to flood the labour market with millions of men would result in chaos," writes an airman in Newark, "but what about men who have jobs to return to? The prospect of spending another six months hanging around this camp, cleaning and polishing floors and also officers' cars is not very cheerful." "May a mere wife who has often been very lonely waiting for her husband to be returned to her express her disgust?" complains Mrs. N.C. Hobbs of NW1; while 'Had Enough' of REME insists: "If there is anything more boring than some of the forms Army discipline takes when there is a peace on, then I haven't come across it!"

Gary Allighan of the Daily Mail agrees: "MPs are visiting their constituencies to find themselves going head on into the fiercest blizzard of criticism since the 'shell scandal' of the last war ... the stock of the government has taken a nose-dive - temporary, no doubt - during the past five days."

Monday, 27th August, 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.

Thirty-two-year-old Flight Sergeant Jack Alcock pleaded not guilty at an Uxbridge court-martial yesterday to having aided the enemy - specifically, providing German interrogators with information about RAF squadrons, aircraft, and radar equipment - while held as a prisoner of war in Germany, reports the Times. Alcock, who was shot down over Mannheim, admitted that he had dictated and signed a statement admitting guilt to RAF Special Investigation Branch officers, but claimed that he was "overwrought from mental strain" at the time he was asked to make the statement. "I may have said [to a Luftwaffe interrogator] in general terms that I was proud to be a member of a Halifax squadron," Alcock told the court. "About Monica I may have told him it was for detecting night-fighters, but I knew no more about it." The trial continues.

Also in the Times: In an early response to George Isaacs' disappointing announcement about demob last week, a crowd of about 400 servicemen assembled outside Government House in Gibraltar on Sunday night singing 'why are we waiting?' Before dispersing peacefully, a civilian speaker encouraged the men to ask their wives back in Britain to write to their MPs demanding an explanation for their demob hold-up.

Sunday, 26th August, 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.

"It's enough to make a German laugh," writes a Royal Corps of Signals telegraphist in the British Army of the Rhine to the Sunday Express:

It is Sunday evening in the German town of Minden. There are several hundred occupation troops walking round with nothing to do. These men look very grim. This is why. There are only two cinemas. Both are showing German films, verboten to British troops. Some try to enter, but are turned away by a German attendant who wears a smug look on her face. Passing Germans grin at the sight of British troops being turned away. One can almost sense what they are thinking: 'We'll teach these stupid and docile British that they cannot do as they like in our town.'

And there is more fraternisation-related grief for occupation troops, according to the Express: "a friend just back from leave told me that several girls he had tried to speak to had said to him: 'sorry, I can't speak German,' and walked away."

Two teams of Ministry of Labour specialists are experimenting with a scheme which aims at providing bright ex-servicemen with jobs leading to executive appointments, reports the People. 350 troops in occupied Germany have already been experimentally tested to see whether the Ministry's men can successfully identify Britain's future captains of industry. It is not essential for these executive candidates to be officers, notes the paper: "it is felt at Army headquarters that there are many men with high intellectual qualifications who were not necessarily those with the type of leadership required by the Army ... but are likely to prove highly successful in business careers."

Saturday, 25th August, 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.

"World peace was another Atom Bomb," writes Labour MP Hannen Swaffer in John Bull: "It came with dramatic suddenness ... it made as old-fashioned many well-worked out demobilisation plans as were made big battleships ... Atom Bomb no. 1, in destroying a town, caused millions of airmen, bluejackets and soldiers to say: 'Boys, we belong to an era which is now dead.' Atom Bomb 2 - the announcement that the war was over - made all those same millions ask: 'when are we going home?'

But Swaffer complains that "already there are pouring into the postbags of every MP and every newspaper office in the land scores of letters from disgruntled servicemen." He quotes one example from the 'Lost Legion' on a harbour hulk at Rosyth: "Our ship, which cannot go to sea, is just an overflow and transit base where men are held on to do useless and demoralising jobs over and over again. They have no value except to keep redundant officers who have been dug in for years in some sort of a job."

Echoing a similar complaint in an open letter to George Isaacs in the News Chronicle, one RAF officer warns about alleged empire-building by the service top brass delaying demobilisation:

We are [the regular's] empire. Take us away from him and he loses rank. You may find it hard to believe, but when news of the Japanese capitulation came through to the Mess a Group Captain said 'Blast! And I wanted only a couple of months to confirm me in rank. Now it's back to being a Wing Commander!' They are nearly all like that ...

We sank our individualisms while the war went on. We would do so for a while longer to see the country through what will be a difficult winter. But in the name of common humanity, do not leave our future in the hands of the empire-building service chiefs ...

 

Friday, 24th August, 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 Minister of Labour, George Isaacs, confirmed in the House of Commons yesterday (reports the Times) that the demob 'speed-up' following the end of the Pacific war will amount to another 250,000 releases by the end of the year (making one million releases in total). Army Release Group 22 will be out by this Christmas, with Group 23 discharged by January 20, 1946. The Times, while cautiously in favor of the acceleration, warns that with the sudden end of the war and the cut-off of Lend-Lease "reconversion has become an emergency operation in the fullest sense ... there are bound to be frictions, maladjustments, periods of temporary idleness, and local pockest of unemployment."

"Mr. Isaacs, I'm disappointed," writes Trevor Evans in the Daily Express. "No evidence has yet been produced that the priority of peace needs has been asserted over war demands." Evans echoes the commonly held suspicion that Isaacs is the passive pawn of service chiefs who are unwilling to release more men for their own self-interested reasons: "Mr. Isaacs is one of the key ministers of the peace. He would receive great backing if he asserted his right to set the pace [of demob] himself."

Gunner John White and his comrades are equally unhappy about the announcement: "The Labour Party," he writes home, "is being called all sorts of names by the fellows back at the billets!”

Thursday, 23rd August, 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.

“Men coming out of the Services are turning down indoor jobs," reports Union Jack. "The army has taught them the joys of outdoor life, and they want to carry it into civvy street … one tailor, who wanted a salesman with Leeds as his headquarters, received nearly 200 applications – all demobbed servicemen. ‘In nearly every case’, he said, ‘men prefer outside employment and refuse inside jobs.’”

"Do you want to emigrate?" asks former Major Ernest Watkins in the News Chronicle:

It is odd, but one of the first reactions after release from the Army is a desire to get away, and it's a very disconcerting one. The routine of civilian life seems petty. It stretches away indefinitely into the distance without any sign of a break. The people next door are strangers. The town is dull and the one thing that livens up an evening is the thought that you might meet someone else in the same boat and spend the time together talking over the good old days that have just finished.

Is it for you, you say, that I won the war? You will probably find yourself thinking loningly about emigration and a job in the Colonies ...

Watkins cautions his readers, however, that "the days when a Dominion or a colony was a useful dumping ground for the unemployed or the unemployables here (if they ever existed) are definitely dead ... no Dominion wants people will, so to speak, be mentally looking over their shoulder at England all the time. They want you to settle there, to become Australian or Canadian, or whatever it is. If you don't fancy that, then don't go."

Wednesday, 22nd August, 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.

Lend-Lease was formally suspended yesterday, writes the Times' Washington correspondent. This sudden interruption of what has become a vital economic lifeline over the past five years will complicate Britain's transition to peace in the weeks and months to come.

The Commander-in-Chief in India reiterates (c/o the Times) that the delays in repatriation from the Far East that he anticipated two weeks ago are unlikely to be altered by the end of the Japanese war. While military operations as such are now obviously suspended, the dispatch of troops to take over territorties formerly occupied by the enemy will place a great strain on the theatre's transport capabilities; and the return home of tens of thousands of British and Indian prisoners of war must also take high priority.

CQMS Bill Points writes from the Middle East: “we languish hopelessly in the British Belsen, as we lovingly term it, this hellspot in the desert, sand-swept, oven-heated, blistering, waterless, green-starved, soul-killing stretch of nothingness ... what kind of England are we exiles coming back to? I doubt if we shall find it a Utopia or anything approaching it. And if we did I doubt if we should recognize it after wandering for fifty-four months in the Desert of No-Thoughts which we call the Army.”