Alan Allport's website

Thursday, 9th 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.

"It is an exciting moment for the service girl when she pulls off her khaki cap for the last time and exchanges the khaki tunic and skirt for the new clothes she bought for her return to civvy street," begins the Daily Herald's 'Womansense' column by Cicely Fraser today: but "by the time leave is finished," the paper warns, "she may be feeling less elated ...

The question of a job is looming up. Of course, she can go back to the factory or the shop where she worked six years ago. But very often she doesn't want to. She has been doing an open air job, or perhaps something responsible and dangerous on a gun site. She feels that the effort to adjust herself into the old rut is too much.

Fraser suggests contacting the ATS Ex-Service Employment Office, which is working in liaison with the War Office and the Ministry of Labour to place ex-servicewomen in congenial work positions. "It may be clerical - many factory workers and servants have had clerical training in the Army and want to use it. Or it may be something more glamorous - a mannequin's job or a driver or a ship stewardess." Up to 30 people are interviewed at the Office each day: one ex-corporal said: "this place gives you the feeling that you haven't lost the wartime comradeship you felt in the Army."

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, 5th 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.

Hundreds of ex-servicewomen flocking to London every week to take advantage of the good conditions and wages offered to typists, secretaries and receptionists are struggling to find places to live, reports the News Chronicle. "Many return to their homes in the provinces unhappy and disillusioned because they can find nowhere to live," complains Margaret Brooke of the Central Council for the Social Welfare of Girls and Women in London. A great number are forced to take furnished rooms with rents that their salaries of £4-6 a week are quite inadequate to pay for. "there are undoubtedly cases of young girls and women reduced to tramping the streets," says Brooke. "Eventually they may be taken by policewomen to homes and institutions, but that is no solution. The weary business of hunting must begin again the next day." Some solutions are opening up: London County Council has just opened a hostel in Buckinghamshire to accommodate between 80-100 commuting female workers at a cost of 2s. a night. A hostel is being established at Paddington Station also.

Tuesday, 2nd 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.

The recent case of Gunner David Hay, charged with assault against a senior officer while he erroneously believed he was a demobilised civilian, was brought up in the House of Commons yesterday, notes the Daily Herald. Hay's experience (which was caused by an administrative muddle) may be unique, but it nonetheless raises a wider question: when is a soldier, sailor, or airman legally a civilian again? Most ex-servicemen enjoy several weeks of demobilisation leave immediately following their discharge from the Forces, but despite the fact that many of them return to civilian work during this period, they are nonetheless still technically members of HM Forces and are still subject to military law - something that can have important repercussions but which they may be unaware of. Indeed, demobbed men may be disquieted to learn that even after their leave is over they are still strictly speaking reservists rather than true civilians, and they can be recalled to the Forces at the whim of the authorities so long as the period of 'national emergency' still exists - only an Order in Council can end this.

The Herald also reports a minor milestone on the road to civil equality: Miss Irene Swash, a Land Army girl, became the first woman to wear slacks in the House of Commons when she and a group of other WLA members attended Parliament yesterday to lobby MPs for better conditions for their colleagues.

Monday, 25th 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.

"With a white gown over her khaki uniform and wearing a gauze mask, a 19-year-old ATS private, Rose Williams of Bromley, Kent, left the operating theatre ... she had just seen a major operation and felt that she was well on the way towards a nursing career." The News Chronicle reports today on the vocational training for post-demobilisation careers offered by the Salisbury Plain and Dorset district of the Army's Southern Command. "From cookhouses, AA gun sites, quartermasters' stores and teleprinting offices these girls have come to Salisbury determined to make a successful return to civilian life."  The paper also interviews Private Nellie Smith, a 19-year-old mess orderly from Norfolk, who in pre-war life had been a domestic servant: but, she explained, "I don't want to do that again." She is now in a placement program in a department store learning bookkeeping, accountancy, and retail service skills.

The Manchester Guardian includes a reminder from 'F.R.B.' in East Africa. “I doubt whether it is generally realized that many men in the Army who have served for four years still do not know when they will be released.”

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.

Sunday, 24th 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 complaint about the inequitable treatment of the 'Land Girls' in the New Statesman and Nation:

I worked for a timber firm in Devon, ina  job previously held by a man, and my successor has just been demobbed from the RAF. When I left Devon I was given a travel voucher to Heysham, and then had to pay my steamer fare to Belfast, £1 14s., as the Land Army only gives vouchers for travel in England and Wales. I had 29 days between leaving the WLA and starting my new job, so I applied for unemployment benefit. At the end of three weeks I was given £1 5s. 6d. which did not cover the cost of my steamer ticket, much less provide a livelihood for three weeks. Had I been a member of any other of the women's services, I would have had my fare home and 56 days' leave.

On demobilisation, members of the Land Army, many of whom have done arduous work for five years, get no gratuity, no paid leave, no grant for clothing, no extra clothing coupons. They have to return their uniform, for which they have surrendered coupons, and which is unsuitable for ordinary wear in any case. The girls in the WLA have worked hard, often far from their own homes, in isolated places and in all weathers, with six days' leave a year. Is their contribution to the war effort of so little value that they deserve no recognition? It must be so ...

Thursday, 21st 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 plea from a demobbed ATS servicewoman reaches the desk of the Daily Mail's Ann Temple:

I'm demobbed, an only child, nearing 30, living at home with my parents, going back to my job here when it is ready. Four years in the ATS have made me more independent, more confident, more able to cope with problems, but I can't solve this one.

We could all be such good pals, but my mother can't see that I want some sort of life of my own. If I escape to my bedroom there are hints about fire and light bills. I'm never asked to help. Mother prefers to do everything herself, but is always complaining about lack of help.

I could help, but feel a strong disinclination to do so while she is doing it. And yet I have a guilty conscience sitting reading or killing time while she works. Is it too much to ask for some life of my own without always being answerable fo all my movements?

Ann answers: "You simply must take a decisive line to end this mess-up of feelings and dutifulness, stifled desires, conscience, and affection. You'll soon have your job. You will be contributing to home funds. Have a plan and stick to it. Work out what help you can give: doing your own room, a few regular small jobs. Turn your bedroom into a bedsitter - pay your share of the light and fire bills ..."

 

Saturday, 19th 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.

Two letters in this week's John Bull discuss very different aspects of the homecoming experience. First, from Macclesfield:

We are told that there are fewer than 12,000 deserters from the British and Allied forces still hidden away in London and the big cities. They dare not come out and earn an honest living and are forced to resort to crime. Cannot the way be opened for them to become good citizens (as once most of them were) instead of hunting them and driving them to desperation?

And from Enfield in Middlesex:

Having served for over five years in the ATS as a teleprinter and switchboard operator and attained the highest possible grades in both trades, I am naturally anxious to find a job in which I can use my knowledge and experience. I had heard of these so-called Resettlement and Advice bureaux and went to make a call. Imagine my feelings when, having given details of my experience, I was told that two or three years of secretarial or clerical work would be necessary before I could hope to hold a worthwhile position in any office. Surely this is an insult to my education and to my common-sense?

Saturday, 29th December, 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.

"All through her years in the ATS Hilda had dreamt longingly of home life – was the reality going to be different than the dream?” In this week's Woman, author Katherine Merson chronicles the discomforting return to the parental home of Hilda, ex-service protagonist of the short story 'Daughter in the House.' “If I were a man," Hilda reflects savagely, "it would be different ..."

I could polish my shoes and brilliantine my hair until the cows came home – yes, and have mother pressing my shirts in the kitchen. Returning warriors – when they are men – are encouraged to make themselves smart, get around and have fun, laze in a chair waiting for the meal that somebody else is cooking. But daughters are just daughters. They come home and, after perhaps a fortnight’s holiday, are expected to settle down immediately into the old, humdrum order of things ...