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Wednesday, 31st October, 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.

"In view of the present acute shortage of teachers, I think your readers may be interested in the fate of nine people, seven qualified school teachers and two university lecturers," begins an letter from India in the News Chronicle:

We are serving in the Army Educational Corps. Since July 25, when we reported to the AEC depot at Wakefield, we have done nothing whatever. We were kept changing about for three weeks before we sailed, and on arrival in this country we have again been hanging around in a depot awaiting posting. We have received repeated assurances from the Army authorities in the past that being in the AEC would in no way prejudice our release ... this promise has now been broken. No fewer than 35 per cent of the troops in India awaiting demobilisation are in Groups 24 to 28. Why in this case have we, who are in Groups 27 and 28, been brought out here after the end of the Japanese war, when our presence can only make the shipping situation worse?

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 October, 1945, 200,700 men and 19,023 women were released under the Class A scheme; 20,598 men and 182 women were released under the Class B scheme; with 266,595 men and 24,006 women being released in total (including miscellaneous discharges on compassionate and medical grounds).

Overall, since the start of demobilisation, 618,579 men and 120,555 women have been discharged from HM Forces.

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

Tuesday, 30th October, 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.

Military patrols in the British Occupation Zone of Germany are searching for a servicemen who is said to have lost his reason and run wild on hearing that his wife was having an affair with another man back in England, reports the Daily Mail. The unidentified soldier is believed to have seized a revolver and shot a military policemen who attempted to stop him after he fled his barracks. He is believed to be the same man who robbed food at gunpoint from a soldier's canteen in Kiel and then fled the area on a stolen motorcycle. Roadblocks have been set up near the city and double guards have been posted on all the approach roads; women transport drivers are being warned not to travel without armed escorts.

Meanwhile, in what one hopes is an unrelated story in the News Chronicle, a young RAF man has gotten himself into trouble by unguarded advances to another man's wife:

[I met her] when I finally came home on disembarkation leave ... on one of our pub crawls at closing time this girl and I found ourselves outside the pub before the others, and I started kissing her. Before we reached [the house in which I was staying] I found myself making love to her, and she said: at last you realise we are both in love ... I don't want to go on deceiving her husband as I know him well, but when I suggest we should break off our little love affair she says I am unfair and starts crying. If and when her husband finds out I am going to get it in the neck good and proper ...

Monday, 29th October, 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.

Five days of near continual gales in the English Channel have finally abated, reports the Times, allowing 18,000 servicemen who had been detained in Calais over the weekend to finally cross over to Britain on leave boats. The aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, carrying 700 demobilizing officers from the Far East, was able to make port after a long delay riding out the storm. The horrendous weather also caused sea mines to drift ashore on south coast beaches; Folkestone and other towns in the area were shaken violently yesterday morning by the explosion of a mine near Dymchurch. Another mine was spotted off Dungeness floating in choppy seas. Over 600,000 sea mines were laid in European waters during the war, and untold numbers remain, a serious danger to shipping; the Allied occupation forces in Germany have even begun conscripting former Kreigsmarine members to help detect and disarm them.

Also in the Times: Housing Minister Aneurin Bevan announced in Liverpool yesterday that up to 100,000 building workers will soon have their demobilization from HM Forces accelerated in order to speed up the repair and construction of badly needed houses.

   

Sunday, 28th October, 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 News of the World offers some advice to ex-servicemen who might be thinking of a future overseas:

There is no future for me in this country, writes one young soldier; perhaps it is inevitable that, at the end of a long and wasting war, some men, whose lives have been torn out of their proper context, should feel like this ... it may be just the fear of settling back into the old routine. In five years the man has outgrown his old job and yet has no definite new job in view. Often things are wrong at home; there is no house, or another man has found favour with his wife. Naturally in these circumstances the thought of the man often turns to emigration ...

But it may not be the right answer. Emigration from a sense of unhappiness rarely is ... [the ex-serviceman] must make sure that he is not suffering from a general sense of depression ... waiting may be very tame, but it is well to remember that not all the emigration after the last war was anything like successful. There were many sordid little failures, because men were in a hurry ...

 

Saturday, 27th October, 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 Manchester Guardian features two letters responding to the recent decision that officers in Groups 20 and higher serving in occupation duties overseas will have their releases deferred for at least four months. Not surprisingly, the news has not been well received:

The timing of this announcement could hardly be worse, and it has been received with justifiable bitterness. It comes on the very eve of release for those who are in the earlier groups, many of whom have already rented houses or furnished apartments on the basis of the earlier demobilisation scheme … those affected feel indeed that they have been betrayed.

And:

You will be aware of the dismay and the bitterness with which we received the news of the deferment of officers’ releases … my own case is far from the worst but it is typical. At 29 I was called up, and I am now 35. This is my second spell of service overseas. My wife and my daughter were planning for my return home before Christmas. My daughter, who is now six, was born a few months before my call-up. The long years of separation have prevented my wife and me from raising the family we so much desire. Are we ever to be permitted to resume the domestic happiness that was torn from us six years ago?

Meanwhile, Woman is concerned with the damage done to previously requisitioned civilian houses by servicemen during the war. "It is hard," the magazine fumes, "to understand what demon of destruction possesses men in uniform and makes them behave so boorishly ..."

Friday, 26th October, 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.

"Something must be done to speed up the organisation of compassionate leave from the Far East," bewails the Daily Mirror:

Many officers and men and their relatives at home are today forced to suffer avoidable anguish because the great military machine has become too cumbrous to speed men home.

I have just returned from Singapore. On the way to Rangoon I flew in company with a captain of the Royal Engineers who told me his story. THREE WEEKS before, he had applied for compassionate leave because his wife was dangerously ill in his home in Stafford. His brigadier rushed to his help. The application went to area command who passed it to corps, who sent it on to army. There for ten days it remained until the captain appealed again to his brigadier. Inquiries were made. It was found that the application had been lost. Four days later authority arrived to let him travel to England. A week elapsed before he was on the flight to Rangoon. But although he was armed with a ticket that gave him a priority for air travel he was told that his application to travel must be submitted to a board at each place of call ...

"I have no idea now what has happened to my wife," he said to me. "I've given up hope of seeing her alive ..."

Dissatisfaction at conditions back in Britain is mounting amongst returning servicemen, reports Union Jack. The Dominion travel offices are receiving over 1,000 inquiries daily from Britons wishing to quit the UK and emigrate abroad.

Thursday, 25th October, 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.

 

In the Daily Mail, MP Garry Allighan protests about continuing muddle at the Ministry of Labour:

Why, now that the war is ended, is the same machinery being used that was created to deal with releases possible while the Jap war was still going on? ... Mr. Isaacs boasted that during the present 'peak' demobilisation 'will be as high as 80,000 a week.' That is no ground for boasting - it is nearly 50 per cent below the maximum. There are nine Army dispersal centres, each able to pass out 1,400 men a day seven days a week - a total of 88,200 men a week. [RAF and naval releases could be another 55,000 a week.] That means that demobilisation should be 143,000 per week ...

Meanwhile, in the Daily Mirror, Mary Ferguson has bad news for any families expecting their loved ones to be released on compassionate grounds: "There has been a great surge of hope in many thousands of homes ... many children who need their fathers and long for them, and many helpless wives who want their husbands' support, are planning happily for the future. So are servicemen with naughty wives who need a restraining hand ...

Stop now, if you are dreaming of a great reunion, because unless your family's case is a very sad one indeed, father won't be home until his demob number is reached. If this comes like a dash of cold water on all your hopes, I'm sorry ...

Wednesday, 24th October, 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.

James Lansdale Hodson, the journalist, comments in his diary: 'X said to me: 'The loss of children in this war has been not only amongst the youth who've been killed. What of those who've been prevented from being born? My sister badly wanted another child; but with lack of domestic help and general overwork it has been impossible. Judith had a miscarriage - the direct result of war nervousness and ill-health.'"

Tuesday, 23rd October, 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.

H.W.F. Charles, still awaiting demob in his apparently interminable military limbo, writes to his mother: “There’s quite a crowd of us hanging around with nothing to do except to conform to the petty and pointless regulations … during the day we get a host of silly jobs to do, most of which occupy about 10 minutes. After that we are expected to ‘keep out of the way’ for the rest of the time. That means we are just hanging about, idling the hours away, unable to do anything useful and with no place to go where we might occupy our minds with reading, writing or study.” Attempts to fill in the time with Army Education programs have not shown much success:

The idea of it was good, but … it was often impossible to put into effective practice … [in this camp] we have only two places we can study – one is our sleeping billet, which is a [former racehorse] stable containing eight men, two or three of whom are generally chatting or whistling or making some other such noise; the other is a small NAAFI where everybody crowds in and where there is a constant racket.

Flying Officer Charles Crichton, biding his time in Palestine, is similarly unhappy with the pace of release. "The RAF ‘speed up’ was a scandal – it is of course Empire Building by regulars to retain their establishments and ranks. Luckily someone with some sense has told them to reconsider it and there is shortly to be a genuine speed-up. The troops stood this insult very well indeed and apart from some hard words have continued work just as before. The patience of the British OR [other rank] is the eighth wonder of the world!”

Monday, 22nd October, 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.

Two letters in today's Union Jack comment on continuing perceived disparities in the demobilisation arrangements. “It is not fair," writes one, "that a man in Group 30 in the Army should still be in the services six months after others in the same group in the RAF and the Navy have been released … it has always been a point of resentment that the RAF should have a maximum term of three years overseas whereas the Army term is four years.” Meanwhile, a Territorial Army sergeant complains that the demob scheme takes no account of pre-war service in the calculation of release order (a longstanding grumble of the Terriers). “All we ask is for fair treatment …”

Complaints are not restricted to the lower ranks. The News Chronicle reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury's son, Lieutenant-Colonel H.A.P. Fisher, has launched a blistering attack on the tardiness of the release arrangements, blaming overstaffed HQs and indifferent commanders. "The Army has been accustomed during the war to a Rolls Royce establishment, and there is no evidence that it has changed its ideas ... at bottom is the feeling that we are still now, two months after the end of the war, powerless in the hands of a military dictatorship."