Alan Allport's website

Friday, 3rd 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.

The News Chronicle reports on the disparity between civilian and military rations in the UK which has created some controversy given the desperate food shortage both at home and on the European continent (in Germany, bread stocks will be exhausted by the end of the month).

Currently a British civilian receives, per week: 14 oz. of fresh meat (including 1.4 oz. of corned beef), 3 oz. bacon, 3 oz. cheese, 8 oz. sugar, 3 oz. butter, 3 oz. margarine, and 2.5 oz. of tea.

A servicemen based in the UK, by comparison, receives 35 oz. of fresh meat, 8 oz. of bacon, 6 oz. of cheese, 13 oz. of sugar, 2 oz. of butter, 8.5 oz. of margarine, and 2 oz. of tea.

Servicemen overseas receive higher rations still, but this is more easily justified by the service departments due to the extra physical duties of occupation. Given the largely sedentary nature of military life in Great Britain currently, the difference between the home service soldier's ration and that of his civilian counterpart is harder to explain ... 

Saturday, 30th 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's Wilfrid Webster has some critical words for the British Legion this week:

"The British Legion has done invaluable work in the past," says Monty, with perfect truth, and adds: "It will be of even greater value in the future." But will it? That depends. The ex-servicemen of today are in a different position from their fathers and have a totally different outlook. If the Legion is to lead again, it will have to be in step with the young veterans of 1946. And to achieve that, it must cast off some of its older traditions and look to the future.

The Legion has been accused of having too many senior officers at the top ... it has also been accused of snobbery, and it has certainly laid itself open to the charge. On a ceremonial occasion some years ago, for instance, the Legion paraded at Hyde Park Corner. The rank and file were in ordinary civilian clothes but, standing in front of them, the headquarters officials were gorgeous in top hats and morning coats ...

The future of the British Legion, despite its great record, depends on a change of heart or changes in personnel - in high places. All traces of autocracy and snobbery must be swept away if the Legion is to rise again.

Thursday, 28th 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.

A letter from an officer's wife in the Times:

I have never understood the Army system of pay and allowances, but I understand it even less when my husband, a regular lieutenant-colonel, informs me that in spite of all I have read in the papers to the contrary I am to have less cash in my purse when the new code takes effect. He explains this by saying that whereas his total loss in pay (yes, he loses pay because he is p.s.c. and in a technical arm) is to be made up by something called the 'rising tide' principle, the loss on his allowances, now subject to income tax, is only to be 'cased.'

You will see that the interests of a bachelor are well looked after. He is to lose nothing. But we, a family of four, with two young children, are going to be poorer.

The paper also notes the need for at least 150,000 additional workers to help with the 1946 harvest. At the end of the war in Europe about 90,000 former agricultural workers were serving in HM Forces, half of whom will now have been demobilised; it's hoped that the majority of them have returned to their former occupations. To expedite the process offers of faster Class B block release are now being made to men with farming experience who have been in military service for at least one year, and so far 6,000 of them have taken advantage of the opportunity.

Saturday, 16th 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.

As the Manchester Guardian reports today, servicemen in the British occupation zone of Germany will be disappointed to learn that their families cannot yet join them. A provisional date of 1st May 1946 had been floated by the War Office some time ago as the date on which dependents could come to Germany, but while the Army stressed at the time that there was nothing definite about this many servicemen and their wives took it to be a firm commitment, and are unsurprisingly upset. As the paper notes, however, with "a calamitous worsening of the food situation and general economic conditions in the British zone" it is unlikely that the decision will be reversed any time soon. Cost is one issue. About 15,000 families have to be budgeted for, and even though furniture and household equipment for the new arrivals could be provided from German resources, inevitably the Treasury would have to accept some of the start-up expenses. And the Army does not want to be burdoned with the responsibility for looking after large numbers of British women and children in a country in a far from settled political state.

Thursday, 7th 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.

Protests in Sydney accompanied the departure yesterday of the former Japanese destroyer Yuizuki after it was revealed that she was carrying over 1,200 persons in far from adequate living conditions, reports the Times. The Yuizuki's mission is to repatriate a large number of Japanese prisoners of war and Formosan and Filipino civilian internees. Her departure from Sydney was delayed for five hours while Australian Army officers protested about the conditions on board the packed vessel. The ship's complement includes over one hundred children and fifteen stretcher cases, including two pregnant women. Yuizuki, which is 440 feet long, would normally carry a crew of 263. Her first port of call will be Finschafen, New Guinea, where she will stop for water.

The Times also reflects on a new White Paper outlining revised pay rates for officers in the fighting services, which is meant to simplify and streamline compensation and provide more attractive opportunities for regular service. The paper's concern is less with the details of pay than with continuing discrepancies in the recruitment styles of the different services:

The Navy, while granting a proportion of commissions to men of the lower deck, is to rely for its future officers chiefly on naval cadets entered through the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth between the ages of thirteen and fourteen ... the Army is to take its officers almost exclusively from the ranks, while the Royal Air Force system is to be something between the two with a leaning towards that of the Army. The anomily that a principle considered of sufficient value to be applied universally in the Army finds no place in the organization adopted by the Navy certainly seems to call for further elucidation.

 

Wednesday, 9th 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.

Rainbow Corner, the American Red Cross club in Shaftsbury Avenue, closed yesterday evening for the first and last time since its opening on November 11, 1942, reports the Times.  It's believed that during its more than three years of operation there were 18 million visits to the club by American servicemen seeking shelter, food, and entertainment.

Also in the Times: some grim statistics on the damage the war has done to family relationships. Since 1944, more than 50,000 marriages are believed to have broken down. One in eight children are being conceived outside of marriage. At a speech on Tuesday to the Women's Public Health Officers Association, Reginald Prestell, the joint secretary of the Marriage Guidance Council, suggested that while good homes and a proper health service could do much to rebuild family life, there was also a need for proper sex education of adolescents in schools also. "Marriage is a job for adults," Prestell suggested, and newlyweds needed to be mature and well-informed.

Sunday, 30th 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 People quotes the opinion of Greenwich magistrate J. F Eastwood that the postwar crime wave "is in many ways worse for Britain than the war itself." "Men make up their minds to live a life of crime," laments Eastwood: "morals of quite decent people break down ... there are only two ways to stop it. One is through the courts by giving quite heavy sentences, but that does not go very far until the people and the country realise the position and take their part in trying to stop it."

Speaking of postwar changes, the Sunday Express notes that between 150,000 and 200,000 servicemen and -women are currently on the move within Italy, Germany, and the UK - either going home, being demobilised, or returning from leave; a greater number in transit at any one time than during the fighting itself. At least 25,000 are making the Channel crossing daily, creating a transportation bottleneck. It takes about two days to journey from Belgium to London via the Ostend-Tilbury route, and at least five to get from Britain to Germany or vice versa.

Many complaints are arising of long night crossings made without food or even a mug of tea in boats so crowded that there is not enough room for troops to lie down. An RAF officer who recently returned to Belgium from home leave told Express reporters: "I and my fellow officers were disgusted with the conditions ... everyone had to sit on deck; there was no accomodation at all."

 

Wednesday, 28th 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.

A memorial has been presented to Prime Minister Clement Attlee by General Sir Hubert Gough, Vice-President of the Commonwealth Irish Association, appealing for prompt government action to avert the serious harship of volunteers from Eire who served in the wartime forces or in civilian war industry, reports the Times. All citizens of Eire forfeit the unemployment insurance benefits that they have contributed towards and earned during their war service if they return to their home country, a situation which General Gough believes may affect as many as 300,000 people. Other petitioners include the Archbishop of Westminster, George Bernard Shaw, and Sir Frederick Maurice, President of the British Legion.

Monday, 26th 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.

The Daily Mirror reports on a concern amongst military psychologists that an "alarming number" of men in uniform are feigning mental distress in order to obtain an early discharge from the Forces, deceiving their unwitting unit doctors. Wing Commander Kenneth Bergin has suggested that threats of disciplinary action have produced a suspicious number of miraculous 'cures' amongst patients claiming to suffer from headaches, dizziness, bad memory, and other vague symptoms. "Almost without exception they deteriorate steadily until in desperation they are invalided out," he writes acerbically:

But what transformation between the time they are told they will be invalided and the date of their actual discharge - the lame leap for joy, the blind see, and dyspeptics eat large indigestible meals with no apparent discomfort.

 

Previous patients had my sympathetic attention, but now I refer more and more cases to the executive for disciplinary action with the most surprising and gratifying results.

Others are less cynical, however. Dr. John McCluskie insists that "the majority of men and women discharged from the services for neurosis are still under treatment." He warns that suspicious service MOs are treading on dangerous ground. Not all serious - even suicidal - patients initially exhibit obvious symptoms. "It may be some years before the sufferer joins the ranks of those poor wretches who blow their brains out in the Army or reach the overcrowded mental hospitals."

Sunday, 11th 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.

 

McFee Kerr, Reuter's special correspondent in Hamburg, writes for the People on the recent raids by British military police on German cafes and restaurants in a bid to tighten the enforcement of anti-fraternization regulations. A soldier who was caught up in one of the raids tells Kerr: "In the cafe in which I was having a beer there was no notice that it was out of bounds. We resent these raids - in the first place because of the insinuation that every soldier who goes into a German cafe is only there for one purpose; and in the second place Army welfare facilities in Hamburg are shockingly inadequate." Apparently a queue of disgruntled Tommies a quarter-mile long develops every evening outside the Church Army canteen.

 

Still, the problem of sex and the single soldier is a real one. The British Control Commission announced this week that venereal disease amongst the German civilian population has increased twenty times according to pre-war records. At the Army prophylactic station in Hamburg the complaint is that the closure of cafes has only displaced the sexual problem into the city's dark alleys. A medical officer interviewed by Kerr blames "delays in demobilisation, the lack of entertainment facilities and decent female company. It can only be solved by the removal of these factors and not by dictatorial restrictions."

 

Also in the People: a few signs of returning normality. The Bombay-to-London radio telephone service is being reintroduced after six years of suspension. And sweetshops in Copenhagen were able to serve real chocolate yesterday for the first time since the German invasion.