Alan Allport's website

Wednesday, 22nd 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.

Major Quintin Hogg responds in the British Legion Journal to the question of preference for ex-servicemen:

It was a common saying during the war amongst civilians that ‘We are all in the front line now’. If this meant that those who lived in our great cities had often to risk death and to undergo a considerable amount of discomfort, and that they did so with conspicuous courage and endurance the saying is, of course, a truism … but if the saying means that there has been in the main any comparable degree of sacrifice or hardship between those who worked in civvy street and those who underwent the rigors of life in the field or the prolonged heartache of separation from their families, I must say I have yet to hear more pernicious and dangerous rubbish.

Friday, 17th 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.

"How do I become someone's 'regular customer'?" complains a John Bull reader in Warrington this week. "Since being demobbed, I need cigarettes and a paper every morning on the way to work. But several shops have told me clearly that they can only serve their regular customers. As I have been unable to be a regular customer anywhere for five years, I am fast being forced into becoming a non-smoker and non-reader."

Another John Bull correspondent is unhappy about career opportunities for ex-servicemen. "My cousin, a corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals, who had had a highly technical training, was looking forward to a job in engineering or radio when he was demobbed. But both the advisory council and the employment exchange were very definite. 'Go back to your old job,' they told him. Now he's back at the provisions counter earning £3 a week. Of course, he has prospects - he may rise to be a manager at £4 a week."

Saturday, 11th 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.

'Dull husbands make dull wives" ... demobbed men are warned by Sally Andrew in today's 'Womansense' column in the Daily Herald:

"The curse of England," said the man on the bus, "is that all the wives have got so dull. Oh, they've been wonderful of course, and had a hard time, but what do they talk about? Queues, rations, babies, coupons, their poor feet ... one long dirge, and all the same as though the gramaphone needle had got stuck. So I go off with the boys most evenings. What do you say Bert?"

"Same thing," said Bert. "That's the way it is, Eddie."

They were returned heroes. They'd faced hardships and horrors their wives knew little of. But they were wonderfully fit on army rations; they had travelled, met new people and seen strange lands: they had various general interests. They may have had a more terrible war than their wives - but not nearly such a dreary one ...

England is full of tired and harassed women. Too many of them have had a hard time without any compensating change and interest ... most adult civilians are not as fit as they were. They've had years of comparatively low and monotonous diet. They have had grim experience, but without much variety.

It is just as silly of Bert and Eddie to run away as it is of their wives to moan. They are taking a defeatist attitude to a problem of the first importance ... go out with the boys sometimes if you want to, but pay your wives plenty of attention. If you don't help in making marriages cheerful, it's a cinch you are bores yourselves.

Monday, 6th 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.

Emanuel Shinwell, Minister of Fuel and Power, yesterday praised the work of ex-servicemen who have returned to Britain's coal mines, reports the Times. The country began the past winter with an eight million ton deficit in coal stocks - so the achievement of Britain's attenuated mining workforce in producing enough fuel to get her through the coldest months was, Shinwell said, nothing short of a miracle. But he warned audiences in Newcastle and County Durham that another 40,000 men were needed urgently for face working.

Reporter James Lansdale Hodson notes in his diary: "A remark made to me by a dweller on the south coast: 'There are not so many burglaries now the troops have gone.'"

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 ... 

Wednesday, 10th 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.

“So far as the Government is aware there is no widespread dissatisfaction within the Services as to the progress of demobilisation. This masterpiece of self-delusion issued forth with Ministerial authority, almost unquestioned, from the House of Commons," complains 'K.B.M.' in the Manchester Guardian today:

Presumably on the basis of this delusion, during the early months of 1946 the speed of demobilisation of the Army has been allowed to slacken. Here in the Far East we are acutely aware of a injustice which has passed unnoticed. Though farthest, and in many cases longest, away from our homes, we have been consistently the last to return and the last in each group to be released. This may have been unavoidable when shipping was the limiting factor in release, but no longer now when it is recognized that speed of release is governed solely by the Government’s conception of national commitments. Nevertheless here we remain, in a country in which we are not wanted and do not want to be …

For many of us, these would have been our most precious years, and every day by which they are prolonged is an atrocious and intolerable waste.

James Lansdale Hodson notes in his diary this vexatious postwar British temperament: "We are suffering as a nation from some malaise - ill-manners, inefficiency, ragged tempers ...

According to B, who served in the WAAF for four years, girls in uniform got precious little courtesy from men in uniform and had to hump their heavy kit-bags and luggage about as best they could. 'I've been at RAF dances' ,she said, 'when WAAF have sat round the room without partners most of the evening while RAF officers have danced with somewhat scruffy civilian girls picked up in the nearest town' … in some messes run by Group Captains who hated the WAAF, they were not allowed to speak to male officers, and if B wanted to conduct a conversation with a fellow officer sitting in the same room she had to pass a note or go back to the WAAF site to use a telephone ...

Friday, 22nd 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.

The New Statesman considers whether compulsory military service ought to be continued in the indefinite postwar future:

The present lack of knowledge of the government's intentions is cruel to the young men who are being called up, and whose education or apprenticeship training is being interrupted for an indefinite period; and before it can decide whether to approve the prolongation of conscription into peacetime, the country is entitled to know what length of compulsory service is contemplated.

The argument that military service does a young man good will carry no weight. Apart from the interruption to civil life, time spent in 'square bashing' and in the atmosphere of a barracks room is much more likely to demoralize than to improve. This country will accept peacetime conscription only if it is convinced that it an absolute necessity and that service is confined to the minimum essential period ...

Saturday, 16th 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.

An 'Ever Loving Wife' writes in John Bull:

Bert has only been demobbed three weeks, but it seems longer. When he came home he called me his ever loving wife, and said he was my ever loving husband. I think he read it in a book. He seems to spend more time with his ever loving pals Tom, Alf, and Ernie. They were three years abroad in the Army together and to hear them talk you wouldn't know there was a war on when they were in it. Life was all beer and skittles, but mostly beer.

When he first came home he said he was going to get up in the morning and bring me a cup of tea in bed. I found out his idea of early morning tea was about ten o'clock, so I took his tea to him, got the children off to school, and was in the fish queue by nine ...

He says he is very pleased to have a nice home to come back to, but he doesn't see much of it except the fireplace. In the cold weather he used all the coal ration in two days. He said he's used to an Army hut, where they have a stove and pour hundredweights into it day and night ...

Sometimes I think it's better when Bert's out with Tom and Alf and Ernie. At least everything happens outside. Last night I found him in the sitting room with a garden syringe and some paraffin showing the kids how a flamethrower works.

Anyway, in about three weeks he'll have to start work, and then, perhaps, not being used to it, he'll be too tired in the evening to do anything but sleep ...

Wednesday, 30th 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.

Garry Allighan reports on the recent disciplinary problems in the RAF in the Far East for the Daily Mail. "Britain's airmen are not on strike for nothing," he claims: "these men do not approach the boundary of mutiny without what appears to them to be good cause ...

They are dissatisfied with the way the Air Ministry is operating the release scheme in the RAF. Airmen are frankly sceptical when the Air Ministry state that lack of transport is the cause of delayed demobilisation. They have become thoroughly convinced that in the RAF the age-plus-service principles of the release scheme have been betrayed. Air Ministry clumsiness in dealing with the effects of the exceptional release system in the RAF have been a basic trouble.

A Manchester Guardian leader excoriates the RAF strike leaders as having “soiled the good name and imperiled the discipline” of the service. But, the paper adds: “A scheme which is simple on paper and just in its application has become complicated and sometimes apparently unjust by the need for differential treatment of specialists” – hence the misperceptions that fuel discontent.

Meanwhile, far from being insubordinate, the News Chronicle claims that the demobbed are "bringing politeness back to London." Returning servicemen "are coming home to win a campaign against the bad manners and frostiness that have developed since they went away," claims the paper's reporter, citing the example of men like Mr. H. Peters, a former soldier of the 7th Armoured Brigade who has returned from Italy to take up his old job as conductor of a Number 35 bus. "I've been back two months," he reports, "and I like a bit of cheerfulness in life now. If I can do anything to produce it I'm going to. It all depends on how you treat other people, you know."

Saturday, 26th 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.

John Bull raises the plight of colonial troops who came to Britain during the war but who experienced - and continue to experience - all kinds of tacit colour bars when dealing with ordinary private citizens. Two Indian soldiers who were decorated with the VC were, it's alleged, recently refused admission to a London restaurant. "You would think the war would have cured us of a colour complex," bemoans the magazine: "The wholehearted help of the coloured peoples in the Empire and the United States during the war should have made a difference. Yet today the colour bar still exists in Britain, not quite so openly as before the war ... but it is still there in the hearts and minds of a lot of people." The problem is not resticted to civilian society either. A Western Indian member of the ATS was refused a new issue of shoes by her officer, who added: "at home, you don't wear shoes anyway."