Alan Allport's website

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 ..."

Thursday, 6th 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.

In a statement yesterday, reports the Times, Minister of Labour George Isaacs announced that the service departments are now engaged "with all speed" on a fresh review of military requirements, with the aim of speeding up demobilisation. In a leader, the Thunderer cautiously welcomes the announcement, but warns: "when the next statement comes at the end of the month, it will have to contain either a revised and speedier demobilisation programme or a full and convincing account of the reasons why greater speed is not possible ...

The government are wholly right in [sticking to Bevin scheme principles.] But inequities in the order of release are not the only possible cause of discontent. If release is slower, or is widely believed to be slower, than it need be, the scheme may be endangered by the sense of frustration of soldiers who do not see how they are serving their country by standing and witing in uniformed idleness.

"Young married heroes who return to their "little known" wives after years of separation would do well to get rid quickly of the phase of post-war glory hunting," warns the Daily Herald in its review of Warren Chetham Strode's topical new play Young Mrs. Barington. "Otherwise ... there is trouble in store for the reunited couple ... there could have been more skill in handling a theme that must interest masses of people," the paper concludes, "but the author strove desperately for laughs, to which the audience certainly responded."

Saturday, 30th 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.

Philip Toynbee reviews J.B. Priestley's new demob novel, Three Men in New Suits for the New Statesman:

I doubt whether Priestley has fully appreciated the immediate problem. The real spiritual and psychological difficulties of the returning soldier will be far grimmer than the mere opposition of the old gang. War, and the wastes of German Europe, must have destroyed many old accepted values, left many wounds and many voids. Priestely's too simple hope is that the soldier has learned what's what and that he must stick by his pals and fight for it. But this fight against the old gang will be a mere skirmish before the real battle begins against the barreness of the human soul ...

A servicewoman reader of Woman complains about the treatment she and a comrade received at a recent dance when dressed in civvies: "Normally neither of us is a wallflower, but on this occasion there we stood, two ATS in mufti, and were completely ignored by the men, who obviously preferred the uniformed girls. When we did get a partner, we found they asked: ‘how did you dodge call-up’ and we finally retreated into a corner, defeated. What a far cry this is from the days of 1940, when men all declared they loathed the idea of women in uniform.”

End of month accounting: on June 30, 1945, there were 4,653,000 men and 437,200 women in His Majesty's armed and auxiliary forces.

During June, 1945, 22,108 men and 9,110 women were released under the Class A scheme; with 32,120 men and 11,694 women being released in total (including miscellaneous discharges on compassionate and medical grounds). No men or women were released under the Class B scheme.

Data from Fighting With Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War (HMSO, 1995).