Alan Allport's website

Monday, 13th May, 1946

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.

Most serving soldiers dream about civvy street. Morningside man Alexander Harding was so unhappy with life outside the Army that he pretended to be his brother, Christopher, a deserter, and turned himself in; even a spell in the glasshouse was preferable to continued life in mufti.

This is the strange tale told by today's Daily Mail. In 1941, Harding had been discharged from the RAMC on medical grounds after two years in uniform. He was unable to find a civilian job and attempted several times to reenlist. Last January he 'surrendered' to the Glasgow police on the pretence that he was his brother, and was sentenced at a Catterick court martial to two years' hard labour. But the sentence was quashed when the truth became known. Richmond magistrates, noting that Harding had already been in military detention for three months, sentenced him to a single day in jail. Which meant that he could walk straight out ... to civvy street.

Saturday, 19th January, 1946

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.

Two letters in this week's John Bull discuss very different aspects of the homecoming experience. First, from Macclesfield:

We are told that there are fewer than 12,000 deserters from the British and Allied forces still hidden away in London and the big cities. They dare not come out and earn an honest living and are forced to resort to crime. Cannot the way be opened for them to become good citizens (as once most of them were) instead of hunting them and driving them to desperation?

And from Enfield in Middlesex:

Having served for over five years in the ATS as a teleprinter and switchboard operator and attained the highest possible grades in both trades, I am naturally anxious to find a job in which I can use my knowledge and experience. I had heard of these so-called Resettlement and Advice bureaux and went to make a call. Imagine my feelings when, having given details of my experience, I was told that two or three years of secretarial or clerical work would be necessary before I could hope to hold a worthwhile position in any office. Surely this is an insult to my education and to my common-sense?

Thursday, 29th November, 1945

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.

Captain John Baird, Labour MP for Wolverhampton East, made an appeal for amnesty in the House of Commons yesterday for soldiers convicted of desertion in the face of the enemy, reports the Times. Baird argued, based on his own experiences, that most men charged in this way were between the ages of 19 and 24 at the time and "failure of nerve" explained their behavior; while these men might have been failures as soldiers in wartime, there was every reason to think that their civilian lives might be more successful, and to handicap them so severely now that the war was over seemed unjust. Baird was challenged from the opposition benches by Perth MP Colonel Sir Alan Gomme Gomme-Duncan, who took exception to the possibility of an amnesty, arguing that if servicemen knew such an act of forgiveness would be generally applied after future wars then military discipline would become impossible. Jack Lawson, Secretary-of-state for War, responded for the government that there had already been a substantial concession to such men by the repeal of the death penalty; of the 3,156 under sentence for desertion on V-J Day, 59% hade already been released [all wartime deserters will finally be forgiven in a Coronation amnesty in 1953].

Friday, 22nd June, 1945

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 Times reports from the Eighth Army in occupied Austria:

These are pleasant times for the Eighth Army ... their task as an army of occupation, even if it is not always light, is at least peaceful, and, indeed, friendly ... almost every hotel and villa, and the grounds as well, have become some unit or other's 'rest centre.' The rest is well-earned - bathing, boating, fishing ... our troops on garrison duty have [an] air of freshness, superb health, and good spirits.

However, soldiers are "puzzled and discontented" by the strict non-fraternisation rules being enforced by the Allied Miltary Government (a far cry from the Eighth Army's recent experiences in 'friendly' Italy, where endless off-duty fraternisation caused, amongst other things, an epidemic of VD).

Gary Allighan of the Daily Mail reports that "unpleasant stories of ex-servicemen being treated harshly at work" are reaching his demobilisation help desk. "I have been told of young foremen making 'ex' men look foolish before the rest of the workers because they were not so adept with their tools ... that kind of attitude is despicable. It is hard enough to come back from the Forces and find that their pre-Service subordinates have become foremen without having to be humiliated." Allighan has a word of advice for the demobilised: "Don't, for your own peace of mind, come back into civilian life with any illusions. This is still a hard world. It would have been much harder had Hitler won."

The Daily Herald and News Chronicle claim that thousands of Irishmen who deserted from the Eirean Army in order to serve in HM Forces during the war dare not return home for fear that they will be arrested. One such case is Private Patrick Mortimer, 22, of Dublin, who joined the British Army in July 1943 and served as a paratrooper in Normandy and the Rhine crossing. He would not have deserted from the Eirean Army, he told a Court Martial in the Irish capital, had his pay of 16 shillings a week been enough for him to support his parents and seven siblings; as a paratrooper he earned two guineas a week plus 14 shillings in family allowance.