Alan Allport's website

Saturday, 23rd 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.

John Bull reports on the temporary 'pre-fab' housing offered in lieu of a permanent home for reunited couples:

Mrs. Mark has had a fearful time. A flying bomb destroyed her home in June 1944. Her husband was in the Navy then. She had a twelve-year-old daughter, Jean. With a badly cut hand a shattered nerves she and the girl found themselves rushed into a hostile Somerset cottage. Constantly the hostess reminded them that 'if my husband were alive he would never have allowed you in.'

Mr. Mark was discharged from the Navy on medical grounds resulting from arthritis in the feet, the result of being torpedoed while on convoy duty to Russia. He also had high blood pressure, and is a pretty sick man.

Back in London after VE-Day, Mrs. Mark and Jean were living in a school rest centre. Mr. Mark has to have a place without stairs as he cannot walk easily. After innumerable calls on the local housing authorities, they finally moved into a three-bedroom Nissen hut and have made it into a cosy little home for themselves.

Mr. Mark is apprehensive about the future. The prefabs and the Nissens are, after all, only a temporary expedient. Ten years for the prefabs. Two years for the Nissens. They like their present home. Jean, now fourteen years old, burst into tears when her father told her that the Nissens would eventually have to be torn down to make way for proper houses. "I don't want to live in a proper house," she wept. "I like living here ..."

 

Wednesday, 13th 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.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Sholto Douglas has been appointed commander-in-chief of British forces in Germany and military governor of the British Occupation Zone (BOZ), reports the Times. He replaces Field Marshal Montgomery, who will become Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

An ex-serviceman writes to the Times concerning housing for the demobbed:

After years of service in the Army abroad, separated from my wife, and most of the time thinking and longing for home, I have recently been demobilised, and have got a job in London. Can I find anywhere to live? No, it is absolutely hopeless. I have tried everything. My name has been placed at the bottom of the list kept by the local borough council. The list contains over 4,000 names already. At the present rate of progress, my name might be reached in about ten years' time with luck.

Can you be surprised, sir, if we are getting just a little impatient and angry about it all?

 

Friday, 11th 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.

Ex-soldier William Donovan pleaded unsuccessfully at an inquiry in Leyton, Essex yesterday to be allowed to rebuild his bomb-destroyed home on a site which the borough council wishes to develop as a community and shopping centre, reports the Times. The town clerk "expressed the council's sympathy with Mr. Donovan, but said they must refuse him ... they were determined that Leyton should be properly replanned."

The Times also reports on further protests by American servicemen overseas about their slow repatriation and demobilisation. About 5,000 GIs assembled in a public park in Calcutta on Thursday to express dissatisfaction with the pace of events. In Frankfurt, meanwhile, scene of protests earlier this week, a delegation of fifty representatives of occupation troops had a three-hour conference with senior staff officers to air their grievances. "we wish you would tell the War Department about some of our ideas on how to get us home," said one.

Thursday, 3rd 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.

The British Legion Journal reports on a decision by the district council housing committee in Walsingham, Norfolk that illustrates the moral complexity of rationing at a time of acute shortages. The committee had before them two families, one headed by a farmworker, the other by an ex-serviceman - but only one residence. The farmworker was serving in a key agricultural job and has a wife and five children, all of whom have been living in two upstairs rooms in another overcrowded house. The ex-serviceman, who was discharged from the Forces in September 1944, has a wife and two children, all of whom were bombed out of their Norwich home during the war and who have been living with his parents. According to the committee's points system the farmworker's family (with thirteen-and-and-half points) had priority over the ex-serviceman's (with eight points). The Journal is clearly unhappy with the decision, but if anything the case suggests how hard it is to prioritize the needs of ex-Forces personnel, however genuine their claims, when so many other worthy applicants are on the waiting lists: as a spokesman for the farmworker points out, he has been in a state-directed line of work every bit of vital to the nation as the ex-serviceman during the recent conflict.

Friday, 14th 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.

For the last 196 days men of the Royal Engineers have been labouring unsuccessfully to defuse a 4,000-lb 'Hermann' bomb which lies in a clay bed forty feet underground in a neighbourhood of South Croydon. Now, reports the Times, the frustrated sappers have had to abandon their painstaking work because the bomb's fuse has broken. Traffic was suspended on nine local bus routes yesterday and local residents evacuated as UXB experts worked for hours to remove the fuse, but eventually had to admit defeat with two-thirds of the fuse still embedded in the bomb. The plan now is to 'sterilize' the bomb instead by removing its 3,000 lbs of TNT; this will take at least twelve hours and is expected to be finished on Sunday. Until then, warned Royal Engineers, the bomb remains "as dangerous as ever."

In other news: George Clark, of Sutton, Surrey, was fined £5 yesterday for demanding a £140 premium for a three-year lease on a house. The illegal practice of requiring so-called 'key money' from new tenants, often ex-servicemen with gratuity payments in hand, has become particularly common in this period of acute housing shortage. A former RAF airman was amongst those who lodged the complaint about Clark's behaviour.

Monday, 29th October, 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.

Five days of near continual gales in the English Channel have finally abated, reports the Times, allowing 18,000 servicemen who had been detained in Calais over the weekend to finally cross over to Britain on leave boats. The aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, carrying 700 demobilizing officers from the Far East, was able to make port after a long delay riding out the storm. The horrendous weather also caused sea mines to drift ashore on south coast beaches; Folkestone and other towns in the area were shaken violently yesterday morning by the explosion of a mine near Dymchurch. Another mine was spotted off Dungeness floating in choppy seas. Over 600,000 sea mines were laid in European waters during the war, and untold numbers remain, a serious danger to shipping; the Allied occupation forces in Germany have even begun conscripting former Kreigsmarine members to help detect and disarm them.

Also in the Times: Housing Minister Aneurin Bevan announced in Liverpool yesterday that up to 100,000 building workers will soon have their demobilization from HM Forces accelerated in order to speed up the repair and construction of badly needed houses.

   

Thursday, 18th October, 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.

There's bad news for the 4,000 servicemen unloading shiploads of meat, milk, cheese, tea, grain, and palm kernels at the Royal Docks in East London, reports the News Chronicle. Reports earlier in the week that the East and West Ham dockers would return to work today were over-optimistic; only a handful of men voted to end the strike at a union meeting yesterday. In Millwall and other wharves along the Thames other troops are disembarking grain, eggs, and fish.

In other news in the Chronicle, Housing Minister Aneurin Bevan announced in the Commons yesterday that the local authorities will have powers to requisition empty or underused houses from private owners to help ease the nation's crippling homelessness problem caused in part by military demobilisation. This will not mean outright compulsory billeting as occured during the war, but it will mean that property-owners who are underusing space in their properties can hereafter expect the council to step in. 

 

Wednesday, 17th October, 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.

H.W.F. Charles is still hanging around his demob camp, with the army no clearer as to what it wants to do with him. In his regular letter to his mother he writes:

This morning I was up with the lark and ready with my kit packed to parade for departure … I landed up with three other fellows en route to this unit – a tank regiment [in Bury St. Edmunds] … as soon as we arrived here we were told that we weren’t wanted!! The reason – this lot is booked for CMF … they want signals personnel, but only those eligible to go abroad with them … tomorrow we are being sent to a Brigade Signals at Newmarket. What happens there I don’t know …

The Daily Herald's Sally Andrews discusses the fraught domestic problems of many reunited young couples who are having to live in the same house as their in-laws:

This nation-wide calamity is especially cruel for couples and families long separated by war. They are together at last, but they are denied peace and privacy in which to bridge the gap of years not shared. Even if the home is shared with those who are loved - perhaps the parents of husband or wife - the advantage may be mixed. If there is strain, affection makes it more painful because it is more important ... this wretched problem of the ill-assorted household is the world problem is miniature. The women who keep it in hand somehow by tolerance, common sense and humour are doing a job of work in a way that international statesmen might envy!

Thursday, 13th September, 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.

"It isn't always service conditions that worry men and their families - sometimes their worries begin when they get home on leave," suggests Mary Ferguson in the Daily Mirror. She describes the case of a sergeant based in Malta who found when he got home for ten day's leave that his wife hadn't been able to find a bed for them to sleep on: in desperation she bought a couple of single air-raid shelter mattresses for his homecoming. An appeal to the Board of Trade brought help. "What puzzles me is why servicemen's wives don't get this proper treatment in the first place," complains Ferguson: "they are entitled to priority goods. Somebody isn't doing a good job here ... it's high time the local people who deal with applications came off their high horse."

The Daily Express reports on the rampant black market in occuped Germany. "Tonight the purchasing power of the ordinary cigarette reached a new high level on the barter markets of Germany following the news of a ban on duty-free cigarettes to troops on the continent. It rose within hours by 50 per cent ... many British troops are disgruntled at the news. They feel the ban will deprive them of what has become the normal currency here. As one corporal said: 'cigarettes did buy for us the little 'extras' we might need.'"

Saturday, 8th September, 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 that two workers at Woolwich Arsenal, recently demobilised, were killed yesterday in an explosion at the technical research department which shattered windows across Plumstead and shook houses two miles away.

Also in the Times: a detachment of the 5th Queen's Royal Regiment, veterans of El Alamein, took part in the four-power Allied victory parade along the Charlottenburger Chaussee in Berlin yesterday. Marshal Zhukov and General Patton were amongst those in attendance.

Sergeant Eve Dunlop of the ATS is asked about 'The World I Want (and the One I Expect) after her demobilisation in the Daily Mail. She is looking for a world "in which there will be no interference, no coupons, and shops plentifully stocked at reasonable prices ... she wants a decent, six-roomed house at a rent of about £150 a year ... she wants to be able to buy a new family car for £250 with real - not imitation - rubber tyres ... she wants to be able to buy 6lb. of tomatoes or a 6lb. joint when she needs it." But she expects "no house of her dreams within five years; no freedom from rationing for two years [she is seven years too optimistic]; no cheap, good stockings (let along nylon) for at least one year." So she is migrating to Malaya with her husband.