Alan Allport's website

Saturday, 6th 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.

"February and March figures of Army demobilisation will be a big disappointment to the boys," complains the John Bull editorial page this week:

Minister of Labour George Isaacs will be the first to say so. Though the main decision on demob rates rests with the service departments, it is Isaacs who has to carry the parliamentary baby.

Everything hinges on the services' claims that they must have 1,900,000 people in uniform in midsummer. If that midsummer figure were reduced to 1,400,000 it would be possible to keep up the winter rate of Army releases. As it is, the Army is going to bear an unfair share of the occupation and other burdens in the next few months ... it is essential to know whether ddiscussions are to take place between the three services to use both RAF and Navy in occupation and police duties.

In the German ports our sailors do good work ashore in guarding dumps and patrolling. Why should their duties be restricted to the ports? The soldier's complaint - that on age and service release he may come out of the Forces months after his comrade in the Navy who joined up at the same time - is unanswerable ...

Sunday, 24th 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.

'Peregrine' for the Observer comments on the differences between the British, French, and American occupation zones of Germany:

One leaves the [British-governed] Ruhr as if one left a grim impasse - with the memory of long food queues amid the ruins and of the earth-coloured and hollow-cheeked faces of Ruhr workers. But one also leaves it with the feeling that some way out of this impasse can be found, that the pulse of life there, though terribly weakened, has not stopped beating ...

[In the French zone] the roads are almost completely empty. There is almost no German civilian traffic, and French military traffic is extremely rare. Both victor and vanquished suffer from the lack of oil and means of transport. The quiet and stillness of the roads on a sunlit springlike afternoon gives one a feeling of deadly desolation ...

After the desolation of Coblenz and Mainz, the hustle and business of [American-controlled] Frankfurt. What a contrast! One sometimes feels as if one had been suddenly transferred into the feverish tempo of life in some American city. The wide square outside the main railway station is packed with traffic; US Army jeeps and lorries mingle with German civilian vehicles. There is an air of activity and even relative prosperity about the place ... the thing that inevitably strikes one is that in the American Zone the topic of food does not dominate all talk with Germans, as it does elsewhere ...

 

Wednesday, 20th 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.

Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery, former commander of the Eighth Army in Italy and General Alexander's chief of staff during the Second Battle of El Alamein, has been appointed commander-in-chief of the British Army of the Rhine in Germany, reports the Times. This new position became necessary because Field-Marshal Montgomery's replacement as commander of all British forces in Germany, Sir Sholto Douglas, is an airman.

The paper also notes that HMS Eagle, an Audacious-class aircraft carrier and currently the largest such vessel in the world at 44,000 tons displacement, was launched yesterday by Princess Elizabeth at the Harland and Wolff docks in Belfast. She is the fifteenth vessel of the Royal Navy to bear the name, her immediate predecessor being the Navy's first large through-deck carrier which was sunk by a U-Boat on the Malta convoy route in 1942. "The rain which had fallen earlier ceased about the Princess, a charming figure in a lime-great coat with hat to match, entered the well beneath the towering bows of the new ship," the Times gushes: " taking the bottle of Australian wine in both hands and crashing it against the bows of the ship, Princess Elizabeth said 'I name this ship Eagle. May God protect her and all who sail in her!' ... she could scarcely be heard for the cheering and the noise of ships' sirens and then the roar with which, at exactly the right moment, flights of Fleet Air Arm aircraft swept overhead and dipped in salute."

Monday, 18th 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.

"Half-way between Dortmund and Hanover, on the main road which has been superceded in part by the Autobahn, is the little town of Paderborn," begins the Times' military correspondent today. "To the north lies an area of heath and pine, with the lightest of soils, which had for some years been used by the Germans for Panzer and Panzer Grenadier training. Part of the Sixth SS Panzer Army carried out the final stages of its training for the Ardennes counter-offensive here." But now the site is used as the British Army of the Rhine's training centre. The reporter comments on a recent demonstration by the School of Infantry's tactical section:

I saw carried out one of the best small exercises I have ever witnessed, an assault on a farmhouse supposed to be occupied by a hostile rearguard, covered by all available infantry weapons - rifles, Brens, PIATs, and mortars - the rattle and roar and the billowing cloud of the smokescreen creating a realism unknown in the training of the past ...

The outstanding characteristic of modern Army training is the effort made to interest and attract the soldier. The trainer of today is avowedly something of a showman. He employs all the arts of the advertising agent and, like him, he has something to sell. Whether or not he is a trifle too popular, flags the walls with too many slogans, and turns out too many pretty and amusing gadgets in his shops, may be left to the discussion of the experts; but he succeeds in what he sets out to do. He does catch the soldier's attention ...

Sunday, 17th 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.

About 5,600 Army vehicles surplus to military requirements will be 'demobbed' by auction at Great Missenden in Berkshire in a few weeks' time, reports the Observer. The sight of enormous numbers of unused vehicles mothballed in Army depots across the country, at a time of acute shortage of civilian transport, has naturally provoked some public criticism recently. But as John Wilmot, Minister of Supply and Aircraft Production, has pointed out, many of the vehicles are fit only for scrap and will be sold for that purpose. Civilian bidders hoping to pick up a decommissioned Jeep or Bedford MW need to be warned, however; although the vehicles be will sold with enough petrol to drive them off the lot, it may be extremely hard to obtain the ration coupons to get much further than that ...

The paper also comments on the uncertain political position of the Polish emigre forces still stationed in the German occupation zone, and the effect that this large body of armed Poles abroad is having on their countrymen at home. "Inside Poland it has been regarded as an Army of civil war, both by its supporters and its opponents. Its supporters have looked to it with hope, believing that if the British support it then they surely mean to encourage civil war in Poland. This belief by itself has been a powerful inducement to terroristic activities on quite a large scale. The Warsaw government too, has tended to act on the same belief, and it has found in it justification for acts of suppression to which it would otherwise probably not have resorted."

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.

Friday, 15th 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 Defeated People, the celebrated documentary-maker Humphrey Jennings' new film about conditions in occupied Germany, is reviewed by the Times today in advance of its release in London on Sunday. The paper's views are mixed. "The camera is eloquent and discriminating, and imagination is made the richer by the scenes which show Germans storming the trucks of a train and by the director's insistence on the vast number of people in the British zone who are looking for friends and relatives or who are themselves lost ... there is much that is admirable about A Defeated People and it bursts with good intentions, but, while it makes a parade of answering questions, it really does not do much more more than pose them, and a film of its quality might have found more original symbols than destroyed armaments factories on the one hand and dancing children on another ..."

Wednesday, 27th 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.

Three RAF stations in Palestine were attacked last night by Jewish insurgents, reports the Times. At a little before nine o'clock twelve Halifaxes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair by explosive devices planted under the wings at Qastina Transport Command base; guards discovered a group of intruders within the aircraft dispersal area but were forced back under a hail of machine-gun fire. Around the same time at Petah Tiqva, there was an explosion in the middle of the aircraft dispersal area as a Spitfire burst into flames; another six Spitfires were destroyed in the ensuing fire, and again RAF sentries were pinned down by automatic gunfire. One hour later, the lights failed at Lydda Transport Command station and shortly afterwards assailants who had mingled with the crowd leaving the camp cinema threw grenades at parked aircraft, destroying two Ansons. A radio broadcast today from the Jewish insurgent forces acknowledged responsibility for the attacks, accusing the RAF of in intercepting ships carrying illegal immigrants to Palestine. Curfews have been introduced around all three bases.

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?

 

Thursday, 7th 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.

A British Army officer and an East African sentry are said to have been killed by Jewish guerrillas in a raid on a soldiers' camp near the township of Holon, reports the Times. Three of the raiders were killed in the firefight, which broke out when the insurgents attempted to seize arms from the camp. The sentry was killed by an exploding hand grenade. Ben Zion Shenkar, a well-known textile manufacturer in the town, is also reported to be amongst the dead [the Times' story is confusing, but it was later alleged that British colonial troops, angry at the attack on the camp, rampaged through Holon shooting at random].