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 rate of release from the services is being revised - downwards - reports the Times. Before the end of February the government will announce new proposals slowing the demobilisation of the latest Release Groups. The reason, however, is because military discharges in the first weeks of 1946 have greatly exceeded forecasts. It was originally supposed that in the first half of this year 1.6 million men and women would be released from HM Forces, bringing the overall total to 3.1 million. But more than 100,000 personnel have been discharged per week in January, and if that rate were to continue unaltered then the total by June 30 would be almost one million higher than anticipated - leaving the standing Army, Navy, and Air Force too weak to fulfill their global commitments.
The Times also reports that two soldiers were killed on Sunday night in a three-train pile-up at Potters Bar junction on the main LNER line twelve miles north of London. The Hatfield-to-London train, running several minutes late, hit buffers at the end of the platform, and its leading coaches were thrown right into the path of the King's Cross-to-Newcastle express. The disaster site was further thrown into chaos when the Bradford-to-King's Cross train collided with one of the derailed engines and it too came off the line. Gangs of men worked throughout Sunday night and Monday morning searching for survivors in the wreckage and clearing the tracks, using flares and the light of the moon to see.
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