Alan Allport's website

Monday, 15th April, 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.

Forty educational experts are about to embark on a five-month talent-spotting expedition across Europe, the Near and Far East in order to identify excellent potential teachers amongst serving members of HM Forces, reports the Times. Two interview boards, each consisting of representatives from local education authorities and teachers at the elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels hope to meet with 4-5,000 prospective candidates during their extended tour.

In other news, the paper also reports on a proposal to create a new flying-boat base at Langstone Harbour, in Hampshire. "Whatever the technical merits of flying boats," suggests the Times, "the British public likes them. They are roomy and clean, and they do not have to employ airfields which are hot and dusty in summer and cold and muddy in winter. Perhaps the liking is due to an island people's traditional love of the sea - something which suggests to them holidays and sunshine ..." [sadly, with the rapid increase in the size and performance of land-base aircraft in the post-war era the idea was eventually abandoned].

Monday, 25th March, 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.

"With a white gown over her khaki uniform and wearing a gauze mask, a 19-year-old ATS private, Rose Williams of Bromley, Kent, left the operating theatre ... she had just seen a major operation and felt that she was well on the way towards a nursing career." The News Chronicle reports today on the vocational training for post-demobilisation careers offered by the Salisbury Plain and Dorset district of the Army's Southern Command. "From cookhouses, AA gun sites, quartermasters' stores and teleprinting offices these girls have come to Salisbury determined to make a successful return to civilian life."  The paper also interviews Private Nellie Smith, a 19-year-old mess orderly from Norfolk, who in pre-war life had been a domestic servant: but, she explained, "I don't want to do that again." She is now in a placement program in a department store learning bookkeeping, accountancy, and retail service skills.

The Manchester Guardian includes a reminder from 'F.R.B.' in East Africa. “I doubt whether it is generally realized that many men in the Army who have served for four years still do not know when they will be released.”

Saturday, 23rd March, 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.

John Bull evaluates the Army Vocational Training Scheme for men approaching demobilisation and has mixed conclusions. "The scheme is excellent so far as it goes:

But it is not sufficiently extensive to cope with the ever-increasing numbers. At this stage only a comparatively small number can receive training. A million and a half people have been told of training courses, and on January 18 Mr. Isaacs stated that 6,000 men had been accepted for training and there was a waiting list of 9,000. More recently, the Minister of Labour said that thirty government training centres are now operating and twenty-four new places are planned ...

It is not, of course, a matter of a moment to set up a training centre. A site must be found and equipment secured. More difficult still is the problem of finding qualified instructors. But these obstacles must be overcome resolutely and quickly if the very real benefits to ex-servicemen and to industry are not to be lost.

The centres already established are obviously on the right lines, and doing excellent work. New centres are being organised as rapidly as possible and emergency ones built. But the job cannot be rushed. the standard and quality of the centres and their output of trainees must be kept very high if the scheme is not to fail.

Sunday, 17th February, 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.

More from the Home Chat trio in Punch:

'And the only reason you want Peter to go to this man's school, darling, is that you were with him in the desert?"
"I never said it was the only reason. I said that we all agreed, in the desert, that after the war we should help one another. And part of the undertaking was that, if heaven blessed our unions and we had sons, we would send them to this chap's prep school."
"But heaven had already blessed your union."
"Exactly. That was why I suggested it."
"So, while the others were promising something completely hypothetical, which they could easily get out of, you were deliberately sacrificing our precious boy."
"The man is not a vivisectionist, darling. He is a schoolmaster."
"Just like you men. You go through a bad time in the desert; when it is all over you have a few beers, as you call it, and get all maudlin. Without any proof that this extraordinary individual even knows how to run a school, you calmly agree to let him start in a small way by experimenting on Peter."
"It is NOT an experiment."
"Well, apparently, he will have no boys except those sent to him by people who were with him in the war, and who in return expect him to buy his stocks and shares from them, and let them take his teeth out."
"I should have thought it would give you a glow of satisfaction to know, old girl, that when you go to see the matron she will pay special attention to you because your husband appears in all those photographs in the Head's room."
"The matron will realise this is a deadly handicap. The most we can hope for is that she will not take it out on the boy ..."

Monday, 4th February, 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.

"Ministry of Labour trainign centres, established to fit young unskilled men into labour-starved industries, are being swamped out by the flow of men from the Services," reports the Daily Mail. The Ministry's training plans, which were originally designed on the expectation that the age-and-service release scheme would operate very slowly because of the continuing war against Japan, has developed bottlenecks due to the much more rapid conclusion of the peace. It has been impossible to keep up with demob demand, and many courses have long waiting lists, especially carpentary and plumbing. "Until we have more training centres candidates may be kept waiting," a Ministry spokesman admitted. "We were caught napping." There are currently over 20 training centres across the country, with about 4-500 trainees each. Courses typically last six months, with a 14-month follow-up placement with an industrial employer.

Saturday, 22nd December, 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 the death of General George S. Patton, commander of the American Fifteenth Army and former commander of the US Third Army, who died in Heidelberg yesterday evening from injuries incurred in a road accident near Mannheim on December 9. Despite the general's many celebrated run-ins with British wartime heroes such as Field Marshal Montgomery, the paper's obituary is judicious, calling him "one of the most brilliant and successful leaders whom the war produced:

In spite of many idiosyncrasies, which included the free use of a cavalryman's tongue - "you have never lived until you have been bawled out by General Patton," his men used to say - was a fundamentally serious soldier, offensively minded and bent on the single object of defeating his enemy. He affected a smart and sometimes striking turn-out, and was insistent that those under him should also maintain a smart and soldierly appearance.

The Manchester Guardian comments on the relationship between demobilisation and the reorganisation of higher education. Generous government grants are now available to ex-servicemen for training at university or institutes of higher technical education - £160 per year, with an extra £110 for married men and £40 for each child - but few so far have taken up this offer. Up to October 31, only 7,605 out of the 700,000 eligible had applied.