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 letter in the Manchester Guardian from a sergeant stationed in the Cocos Islands is a succinct account of feeling amongst serving men in remote garrison stations of empire: there is "utter dismay” at the news of the latest release schedules. “Letters from home have been almost tearful; our mothers, wives, and sweethearts are deeply disappointed. Our families need us, and we want to be with them.”
"I've been away from my wife, in the Navy, for the worst part of three years, and I've been faithful to her," says an ex-sailor in the Daily Mirror. "I took it for granted that I would be, but I find an amazing number of people don't. It's almost as though I ought to be ashamed of it. Some people seem to think that any man who is a man pops into bed with another woman given half a chance ..."
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