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Thursday, 23rd 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 Times responds to the Foreign Secretary's news that a Polish Resettlement Corps will be created to demobilize emigre Polish troops who do not wish to return to their home country:

The absorption into the British community of numbers of men whose total, even without their families, considerably exceeds that of all refugees now in this country will present social, cultural, and economic problems in plenty. But the Polish soldiers are fit men in the prime of life, able to contribute their quota of hard and useful work to the reconstruction of the country which is to become their home. The sooner the Poles can pass through the rather ambiguous but honorable status they will possess as members of the Resettlement Corps, and emerge trained to take their place as ordinary members of the community in its ordinary work, the better for all concerned ...

Meanwhile, a reader writes to Anne Cuthbert in this month's Housewife complaining about the behavior of her five-year-old daughter. During her father's three-year absence overseas on active service the girl has been raised in her paternal grandparents' house, and has emerged spoiled and defiant: “instead of being friendly, she is suddenly very rude to all of us (including me) and spends most of her time pouting in a corner. The family criticize her openly …” Cuthbert suggests putting the daughter “in a really nice children’s hostel” until the father returns and they are ready to move to a house of their own.

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."

Thursday, 14th 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.

Chief Controller Dame Leslie Whateley, Director of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, is being voluntarily demobbed, reports the Times. She will be succeeded early in April by her current deputy, Controller M.J.C. Tyrwhitt, though given the diminished size of the service since demobilisation began the rank of 'Chief Controller' will be suspended. Whateley volunteered for the service in November 1938 and steered it through six years of rapid wartime expansion in which it reached a size of over 200,000 personnel.

The paper also notes a turbulent meeting last night at the Albert Hall of the Vigilantes Action League, the organisation which provoked much commentary (and not a little sympathy) in the summer of 1945 when it began its program of illegally requisitioning vacant houses on behalf of service and ex-service families. Fringe politics has come to overshadow the work of the League since then, however, and the meeting broke up after fifteen minutes when a crowd of Communist Party members stormed the platform, accusing the League of being a pro-fascist organisaion. Shouts of "down with fascism" drowned out speaker after speaker until the police suspended the meeting.

Monday, 18th 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.

The Times discusses the vexing political problem of how to demobilize the considerable number of Free Polish troops currently in Italy, many of whom show no desire to return to their communist-dominated home country. The paper's correspondent comments: "There can be no question of compelling them to [go back to Poland] against their will. Nor can they be turned off to become 'displaced persons.' Even if humanity were not taken into account, it is not desired to add to the displaced and masterless population of Europe ... but humanitarian feeling does, and must, affect the British attitude because so deep a debt of gratitude is owed to these troops."

An appeal from a wife about to be reunited with her demobbed husband in this week's Woman:

Can you possibly tell me how to become intelligent in about three months, lift my conversation entirely out of the housework-children rut, and brush up my general knowledge? My husband is coming back and before he arrives I just must get back onto his level intellectually. I walk about the house doing the work and at the same time rehearsing highbrow conversation pieces , but they’re never really successful.

Tuesday, 1st 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 first day of 1946 is a moment for reflection on the momentous recent past and the uncertain future. Mr. Churchill's New Year's message to the Primrose League is characteristically somber (and none-too-subtly partisan), reports the Times:

After a long and bitter war, the most fateful in our island history, our people purchased victory by the greatness of their nature and by their own unflinching efforts - but in the moment of triumph, as has sometimes happened before, they were beguiled by false promises, and they now stand in danger of losing some fruits of the victory they have paid so much to obtain. We shall only win the peace as we have won the war, by character and hard work. There is no easy path to prosperity.

The Thunderer itself is a little more sanguine, reminding its readers of how recently the news was so much worse than it is today:

Already it requires some effort of imagination to remember that, when the year began, deadly rockets were still falling daily in the streets of London, and the massed German armour was threatening to burst right through the Allied lines in the Ardennes. Little more than four months later the ramparts of the hostile fortress had been breached and swept away from every side; the body of Hitler lay self-immolated in the blazing ruins of Berlin; British, American, and Russian soldiers had joined hands on the Elbe; and the satanic structure of the Third Reich - which so short a while before had loomed all over Europe threatening to blot out all that civilised man had achieved by the slow labour of three thousand years - had been ground into dust. A few more weeks, and the Allied forces, battling by land, sea, and air, had surged forward through the jungles of Burma and over the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean to reduce to abject submission the cold and pitiless despotism of Japan ...

The value of military victory itself is to be measured by the success of the movement for establishing the concert of the world upon abiding foundations ... for this, it is to be hoped, 1945 will be chiefly remembered in history. For if it does not succeed there will be no history to write.

Friday, 23rd 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 Times comments on the less-than-satisfactory arrangements for service voters in last July's general election, a final statistical analysis now having been published by the government. The scheme promised well at the outset in May, when 2.9 million names of servicemen and -women were placed on the military register, but after the original registration flaws quickly began to emerge. Over 425,000 applications for postal votes were denied because the names of the applicants were not on the service register, and 14,000 votes were refused because the voter forgot to include a declaration of identity. About 58% of service voters were ultimately included, but it is hard to know how many were undeservedly excluded from the franchise because of errors in red tape. "The circumstances were inevitably difficult," conceded the Times ...  

This was a first attempt to collect the votes of citizens serving in three continents and on the high seas half way around the world. The lost votes are attributable to so many causes, including hostile action, that the responsibility does not rest anywhere in particular. Clearly, however, the arrangements for collecting service votes in another election in which, as may happen, substantial forces are still serving abroad must be more reliable as well as more expeditious.

Friday, 27th July, 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 papers describe Labour's historic victory yesterday in the first general election since 1935. Labour's 159-seat majority in the new parliament will provide an instrument for sweeping change. What extent the switch in government will have on the demobilisation process is not yet clear, however. Certainly, with R.A. Butler's brief occupation of the Ministry of Labour now over, a new man will be in charge; but it will not be Ernest Bevin, the architect of the original plan, who is expected to hold one of the great offices of state in Mr. Attlee's new administration. Could Bevin's fellow trade unionist, Southwark MP George Isaacs, be the man for the job?

Thursday, 5th July, 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.

Voting takes place in Great Britain today in the first general election for ten years. The result will not however be known for three weeks; once the polls close tonight all ballot boxes will be sealed until the postal votes of servicemen and -women overseas have been received. During this "curious interregnum," as the Times calls it, the Conservative caretaker administration will continue to govern.

Yesterday, reports the Times, the advance units of the 7th Armoured Division arrived in Berlin to take their place as one of the four Allied occupation forces stationed in the German capital. For the Desert Rats, "it must have seemed a far cry from Tripoli and Tunis as they came to their journey's end, the first British troops in history to enter Berlin as conquerors." They arrived "under the stony but none the less interested gaze of a fairly large crowd of Berliners who lined the route into the city from the west of Spandau."

Other news from Germany: in Minden, a 37-year-old RAOC officer pleaded guilty at a field general court martial on a charge of fraternizing with a German civilian (c/o the Times). According to the charge, the officer 'went for a walk in the woods' with a 23-or-24-year-old German woman, a soujourn that ended in sexual intercourse and (ultimately) arrest. His defence counsel noted that his client had been in Germany for some time and that "he did what many people might do if their strength of character was not sufficient to resist this temptation."

Wednesday, 4th July, 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 Times reporter in Basingstoke reports on an interesting perceived split in the voting preferences of the services. "One finds a widespread belief that the Royal Air Force will back Labour, mainly, while the Navy will support the government and the Army vote will be split amongst all parties ... most service voters have a better developed political instinct than the average civilian voter ... housing and whether he will find a job in 'civvy street' are the things to which the service voter pays most attention, and as far as one can learn he is not dissatisfied with the government's proposals for dealing with these questions." As the Times notes, support from servicemen might prove critical in some constituencies: the Forces vote in the south "is large enough virtually to decide the result."

Tuesday, 26th June, 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 reminds its readers, as if they needed reminding, that voting in the general election is barely a week away. All candidates have now been nominated. 637 of the 640 seats up for election will be contested, a new record. A large number of candidates are current or ex-service men, some with distinguished records; Mr. Bevin, for instance, the architect of the demobilisation plan, is being challenged in his Central Wandsworth constituency by Brigadier-General J.G. Smyth, VC., whose command of the Indian 17th Division in the 1942 Burma campaign ended in controversy. Mr. Churchill was to have been opposed by a Trooper Arthur Yates of Derby, currently serving in an armoured division in Austria, but Trooper Yates withdrew at the last minute because of lack of time. Attempts to organize an (apparently anti-Labour) 'Ex-Service Party' seem to have come to naught.

As for the ordinary soldier's hopes for the future, there is, according to a letter in the Manchester Guardian from the British Occupied Zone of Germany, “much anxiety about the prospect of finding the physical fabric of a home, to say nothing of finding of furniture … British soldiers who have been stationed in homes of the less destroyed German towns have been impressed by the high standards of housing in many and they are not likely to be content with homes of their own in England that seem to them less comfortable than houses in the country they have just defeated.”