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.
McFee Kerr, Reuter's special correspondent in Hamburg, writes for the People on the recent raids by British military police on German cafes and restaurants in a bid to tighten the enforcement of anti-fraternization regulations. A soldier who was caught up in one of the raids tells Kerr: "In the cafe in which I was having a beer there was no notice that it was out of bounds. We resent these raids - in the first place because of the insinuation that every soldier who goes into a German cafe is only there for one purpose; and in the second place Army welfare facilities in Hamburg are shockingly inadequate." Apparently a queue of disgruntled Tommies a quarter-mile long develops every evening outside the Church Army canteen.
Still, the problem of sex and the single soldier is a real one. The British Control Commission announced this week that venereal disease amongst the German civilian population has increased twenty times according to pre-war records. At the Army prophylactic station in Hamburg the complaint is that the closure of cafes has only displaced the sexual problem into the city's dark alleys. A medical officer interviewed by Kerr blames "delays in demobilisation, the lack of entertainment facilities and decent female company. It can only be solved by the removal of these factors and not by dictatorial restrictions."
Also in the People: a few signs of returning normality. The Bombay-to-London radio telephone service is being reintroduced after six years of suspension. And sweetshops in Copenhagen were able to serve real chocolate yesterday for the first time since the German invasion.
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