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.
Lord Nathan, the under-secretary of state for war, assured the House of Lords yesterday that in future the separation of wives from their husbands serving in HM Forces overseas is to be reduced as much as possible, reports the Daily Herald. The move has been prompted by the rapid rise in service divorces: 48,000 applications from servicemen still await a hearing, while it has been suggested that a further 200,000 marriages involving a soldier, sailor, or airmen are in peril. Speaking in the debate, Lord Elton recounted his experience as a prisoner-of-war in the 1914-1918 conflict. "Ever since then, I have been visited by a vivid and recurrent nightmare," he acknowledged: "I am again a prisoner of war. The war is endless, and I am irrevocably and wholly doomed to exile from my home and family. I always awake from it in acute mental agony."
LAC Brian Poole writes to his American penpal: “I’ve had some very grim news this week regarding demob. My trade is dropping behind in the general release numbers … that sort of smashes my hopes of being out in August into a thousand pieces.”
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