Alan Allport's website

Wednesday, 8th 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.

Lord Nathan, the under-secretary of state for war, assured the House of Lords yesterday that in future the separation of wives from their husbands serving in HM Forces overseas is to be reduced as much as possible, reports the Daily Herald.  The move has been prompted by the rapid rise in service divorces: 48,000 applications from servicemen still await a hearing, while it has been suggested that a further 200,000 marriages involving a soldier, sailor, or airmen are in peril. Speaking in the debate, Lord Elton recounted his experience as a prisoner-of-war in the 1914-1918 conflict. "Ever since then, I have been visited by a vivid and recurrent nightmare," he acknowledged: "I am again a prisoner of war. The war is endless, and I am irrevocably and wholly doomed to exile from my home and family. I always awake from it in acute mental agony."

LAC Brian Poole writes to his American penpal: “I’ve had some very grim news this week regarding demob. My trade is dropping behind in the general release numbers … that sort of smashes my hopes of being out in August into a thousand pieces.”

Friday, 12th 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.

Lieutenant Commander Rupert Lonsdale, ex-POW and former commander of the submarine HMS Seal, was honorably acquitted by a naval court-martial yesterday after an inquiry into the capture of his vessel by the Germans in May 1940, writes the Times. Lonsdale had been accused of failing to engage enemy aircraft which had attached Seal, and of failing to take steps to ensure the sinking of his submarine when it appeared likely that the Germans would seize her. But Lonsdale's defending officer satisfied the court that under the circumstances - Seal had sunk after hitting a mine in the Kattegat bay and had only been returned to the surface with great difficulty, after which she immediately found herself surrounded by enemy forces - Lonsdale had no choice but to capitulate. "A naval captain was [not] expected to indulge in mock heroics with absolute disregard for the safety of his men," he insisted: "[Lonsdale] had got the idea in his mind that he was going to save the crew, and everything he did revolved around that."

“Wanted! A Home of Our Own”, writes Jean Bird in this week's Modern Woman. “Every woman knows by instinct that a happy family life is impossible without a home of one’s own ...

The experiences of the past few years have made this painfully – and in many cases tragically – clear to the young mothers who as evacuees tried to share kitchens with their hostesses, for the war brides who went to live with their mothers-in-law, for the grandmothers who had to squeeze into a bedroom with their children’s children.

Tuesday, 22nd 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.

A disused former RAF transit airfield near the tiny Middlesex hamlet of Heathrow is to be redeveloped to become a 4,000-acre civil aviation hub and London's major airport, reports the Times. The existing main runway will be extended from its present 9,000 feet to 15,000 feet, and "if necessary there will be room for further runways." When completed, it's believed that Heathrow will be second in size and capacity only to New York's Idlewild airport, currently under construction on Long Island.

Also in the Times: today sees the first reunion of the so-called 'British Battalion,' an ad hoc unit assembled from the heavily depleted ranks of the 1st Leicestershires and the 2nd East Surreys in December 1941 as they conducted the long and tragic fighting withdrawal down the Malayan peninsular to Singapore. After the battalion surrendered to the Japanese it remained a single unit in captivity. It is hoped that more than 400 survivors and dependants will attend the commemoration at Chelsea Town Hall.

Thursday, 17th 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.

Another air trooping disaster blights the safety reputation of RAF Transport Command: A Dakota crashed into a hillside near Marseilles on Tuesday night, killing 22 of the 26 passengers and crew. As the Times reports, the aircraft burst into flames on hitting the ground, leaving the victims charred beyond recognition. In an extra tragic twist, the Dakota was en route to Britain from Catania in Sicily and is believed to have been carrying returning liberated prisoners of war from the Far East. The weather in southern France was especially bad on Tuesday, with snow and sleet reducing visibility to a minimum, and condensation of ice on the plane's wings may have been responsible for its crash. This is ninth air trooping accident involving fatalities since the beginning of November.

Also in the Times: Robert Henry Symons, a storeman employed by the RAF Comforts Fund Committee, was sentenced to three years' penal servitude at the Central Criminal Court yesterday for stealing 500 pairs of woollen socks and 400 pullovers donated to the service by civilian volunteers. Recorder of London Sir Gerald Dodson said: "This is a story of devoted people who had spent their time knitting these garments, fondly believing they would be used by the RAF, but you made use of their charitable outpourings to enrich yourself."

 

Wednesday, 16th 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.

A correspondent, an Army Welfare Officer, complains to the Manchester Guardian about the difficulties in obtaining the release from military service of skilled men at a time of acute labour shortage: "Hundreds of thousands of men are kept idle and discontented in the Services, and the Ministry of Labour regards with complacency the totally inadequate rate of demobilisation. Recently I tried to assist a master plumber to obtain release of journeyman plumbers, and I found it took nearly three weeks to obtain an acknowledgement of my letter from the Ministry of Works.”

The Daily Herald reports on Private Walter Clifford Burridge's war, which ended yesterday in the dock of the Old Bailey. Burridge, of the 1st Btn. Welch Regiment, was being held in jail on Crete in May 1941 on the charge of shooting his platoon sergeant-major while in a drunken stupor when the German assault began. Every able-bodied man being vital to the island's defence, Burridge was temporarily released and was eventually captured by the enemy. He was sent to Silesia to work in the coalmines, twice tried to escape, and took part in a 1,000-mile forced-march to Bavaria when the Russian advance threatened to overrun his POW camp. Eventually he was liberated, demobilised, and returned incognito to Britain. But after two months the authorities caught up with him. Burridge, now 35, was sentenced to five years penal servitude, the original charge having been reduced from murder to manslaughter.

Tuesday, 8th 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.

A military court on Labuan Island in North Borneo yesterday sentenced to death two Japanese officers responsible for the deaths of over 800 Australian and British POWs, reports the Times. Captain Takakuwa, the former commander of Sandakan prison camp, and his adjutant Captain Watanabe, were charged with having force-marched the prisoners under their charge, at least 400 of whom were stretcher-cases and the remainder sick and starving, through 165 notoriously treacherous miles of jungle after Sandakan was abandoned in May 1945 to preempt its liberation by Allied forces. The march lasted until 28th June, by which time only 83 of the original POWs were still alive; Takakuwa then ordered the murder of the survivors, with sick men forced to crawl to the local cemetary where they were shot and tumbled into open graves. Takakuwa will be hanged, Watanabe shot.

Saturday, 3rd 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.

Captain Eric Horn writes to a friend of a recent visit to his old pre-war office. "Miss Garner was very much in evidence. She started discussing my post-war prospects, which rather annoyed me and I am afraid I cut her short. She passed the remark that ‘she hoped we service personnel didn’t come out of the army too soon as they couldn’t cope.’ I am beginning to realize that now the war is over people are not at all concerned with our fate.”

More frustration comes in a letter to the Manchester Guardian from a former POW in the Royal Corps of Signals:

In a camp from which I write, formerly an American Army hospital, situated in the West Country, are stationed hundreds of ex-PoWs who, because they are in release groups 23 to 29, are not being retrained. They are sent out, sometimes daily, sometimes for periods of a month or more, to do laboring and farming jobs in the neighboring towns and villages. A few days ago a hundred men were dispatched to a farming job.

On arrival, they found they were expected to make themselves at home in Nissen huts in which beds had not been laid and which, in addition, leaked both from roofs and floors. There was no coal or coke in stock with which to make the cookhouse fires … the food provided at this (the men already call it) Kommando is bad. Such a modest commodity as jam has not been seen for days. There are no amenities … the camp is pitched in the heart of mud and rawness. The poor exiles are naturally wondering what they have done to deserve all this preferential treatment … have not the authorities sufficient insight and sympathy to see that ex-PoWs need a complete change from Stalag conditions?

James Lansdale Hodson, meanwhile ponders one of the psychological problems of the transition to civilian life: "One of the problems before us is to invest the days of peace with some of the thrills and high adventure which war, as a by-product of its murder and horror, affords."

Tuesday, 2nd 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.

An ex-POW liberated from Germany reflects on life after release in the Manchester Guardian today:

[Back in Britain] I found all the relief I had been looking forward to. Everything, even a London street, seemed unnaturally clean. I slept in a comfortable bed. I could eat as much and as often as I liked. I saw women. I enjoyed meeting people. I could be alone whenever I liked. And yet as I wrote the words ‘it is over’ in my diary I had a sense of misgiving. In Germany I used to feel I was being reshaped by my experiences. There is a certain detachedness and an increase of sensibility which is one of the few compensations of a prison camp. I had hoped to carry this through with me into normal existence. I felt that I should be the richer for it there.

I had only been back in England a few days when I found that there was a conspiracy to make me feel unchanged. I was one of the chief conspirators. I did the old things easily, unself-consciously, as if I had never been away. On the first day I was constantly catching myself at not being surprised at my own normal behavior. Then even this stopped and I was prepared to take everything for granted. People gave every help to the conspiracy. They told me about their little worries until I too began to see them as important. They told me about the ‘doodle-bugs’ until it was difficult to remember that I had been a prisoner during that time. They asked people I had known before to dinner to meet me, and they came, sometimes a little grayer, but always talking in the same way about the things they had always talked about before. And I talked back as if I was the same person as I had been then.

Sometimes I fought furiously against what was happening to me, like a naughty child being dragged backwards through a crowd. I wanted desperately to hold on to what I had found. I now see that it was a hopeless struggle. To live satisfactorily in the ordinary world you have got not only to act but to see things much as the other people who live in it. I just haven’t learned to do it yet, that’s all … be sympathetic to [PoWs] minds as well as their bodies and don’t just think that because a man is behaving normally he is perfectly at ease.

Friday, 28th 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 the first of 40 ships carrying 60,000 former Far East prisoners of war and civilian internees from Singapore docked in Suez yesterday. "It was a memorable scene when the ship docked at the gaily decorated pier, where a band played 'Rule, Britannia' ... as they filed down the gangway, all the men and women received a special news pamphlet, 'News from Britain.' They then boarded a train consisting of first-class coaches for the short trip to a rehabilitation camp on the fringe of the desert at the foot of barren Mount Ataka. Here they were guided through reclothing depots."

More than 1,000 War Office soldier-clerks, some with 10-20 years of military service, have been ordered to learn to salute again, reports the Daily Herald. "The order has aroused widespread bitterness and discontent," an anonymous NCO told the paper yesterday. "We have passed through all stages of military training, including modified commando courses and street fighting. Some have fought overseas. Most branches are overloaded with demobilisation work. Now working hours will be cut into by this unecessary training."

Thursday, 27th 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' military correspondent ponders some of the competing demands on transportation that are slowing down repatriation and release of British servicemen based overseas:

The governing factor is shipping ... apart from the British Army, there is a large Canadian force, together with small Australian and New Zealand forces, awaiting repatriation from Europe. There is another large Indian force, chiefly in the central Mediterranean, to be sent home, though the ships which take the Indians east can be used to take the British troops west. There are great numbers of colonial troops all over the world, including the Africans who have done such valuable work in Burma. African troops are known to suffer exceptionally from home-sickness, but these are being given no privileges in repatriation or allowed to get out of their turn. On top of all this there is the maintenance of the 'PYTHON' scheme which in the Far East means repatriation after service of three years and four months ...

"Wear your best frock, use lots of lipstick," suggests Diana Gibson of the Daily Mail to wives and sweethearts of homecoming ex-Far East POWS who are expected in Britain soon. "There is nothing wrong with th vast majority of these men that good food, quiet, and a quick return to normal home life will not put right ... let them eat what they want and do what they like. Let them talk of their experiences without encouraging them to dwell on them, and above all help them to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible."