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.
Despite the return of British authority to Hong Kong and other liberated colonial territories in the Far East, law and order in the region remains shaky at best, notes the Times' correspondent. Chinese pirates in armoured junks, equipped with Japanese weapons, are making the East Asian waters unsafe for all but the best defended ships. Last week one pirate vessel boarded the Macao-to-Hong Kong ferry, stormed the wheel-house, imprisoned the almost one hundred passengers in the hold, and robbed them of their clothes and possessions at machine-gun point. Royal Marine Commandos are now reinforcing the understaffed Hong Kong Water Police and the Royal Navy has been drafted in to provide launches, assault craft, and even submarines to locate and destroy pirate strongholds in the notorious Bias Bay area. But the pirates are formidable enemies. Their heavily armed and highly powered junks were constructed under informal Japanese wartime supervision, and their scouts and lookouts are expert at locating the most profitable and vulnerable carges.
The Thunderer also reports on the return to Britain of HMS Formidable, the venerable Illustrious-class aircraft carrier which was launched a month before the outbreak of war and survived the entire conflict (including serious bomb damage on a Malta convoy run and two kamikaze strikes) to take part in the final campaign against the Japanese home islands. She is now back from Australia with 800 demobbing sailors.
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