Alan Allport's website

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 ...

Thursday, 13th 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.

Are former Land Girls getting a shabby deal on demobilisation? That's the complaint aired in today's Daily Mirror. Ex-members of the Women's Land Army receive little in the way of a clothing allowance compared to their comrades in the auxiliary services. A woman discharged from the ATS, WRNS or WAAF gets £12 10s. in cash as well 56 clothing coupons from their unit and another 90 from the Board of Trade. All that a Land Girl can expect - if she has served a minimum of six months - is that she can keep the greatcoat, one pair of shoes and one skirt she was issued with on her enlistment. "It is a gross injustice to serve Land Girls so shabbily when they have to get back to decent jobs in Civvy Street," complains Mary Ferguson: "How could an ex-Land Girl feel confident and perky when applying for a peacetime job dressed like Little Orphan Annie?"

A letter in the Manchester Guardian from a corporal in the Central Mediterranean Force (CMF) expresses a now-typical complaint about the execution of demobilisation: "Generally, the Services are pleased with the form of the release scheme. All are dissatisfied and disgusted with the tempo at which it is proceeding. The unit of which I am a member has for the last two months done no work whatever – waiting to be disbanded."

Sunday, 2nd 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.

Enid Palmer, shortly to be discharged from the ATS, writes in a letter to a friend: “I am going to miss being in the Army. It’s very strange – but the Army is a vast brotherhood and if you belong to it there is a strange kinship amongst its members regardless of race or creed. Its members help each other etc. I’m only sorry I joined such a bad branch of it … it’s going to take me some time to adjust myself to life again – it’s nearly 3 years since I joined the Army. I’ve not regretted any of it only the last few months which have been so unpleasant, and even they had their pleasant moments."

Monday, 19th 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.

Women have returned from service in HM Forces and war factories with 'war-work bulges', suggests the Daily Mirror. The physical labour of military and industrial life has left the average young British woman taller and bulkier than she was before the war. A typical girl of 5 feet five inches in height would have weighed about 120 lb with measurements of 34-26-36 in 1939; that same girl now has two inches more overall, and sometimes considerably more than that on the hips. New dresses are having to be made with well-padded and balanced shoulders to slim the expanding bustline, and flared and gathered skirts are required to hide widened hips. Shoes, which averaged size 4 - 4 ½ in 1939, are now typically 5 ½ - 6.

Saturday, 15th 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.

"All the attention as regards demobilisation seems to centre on men in the Forces," complains a civilian war worker to John Bull:

Few people give a thought to workers in munition factories and other war jobs who will soon be 'demobbed.' My own job is likely to be declared redundant in the very near future, and I shall be thrown out. There are hundreds of thousands of us in the same boat. There is such a shortage of manpower that people say Oh, you'll have no trouble about getting another job. Probably they are right - but how do I stand if the Ministry of Labour decides to 'persuade' me or 'direct' me or whatever they like to call it into a job which I don't like in a place situated a long distance from my home?

Woman's editorial page also directs attention to the plight of another forgotten minority - the single female demob. “The married women have been getting priority releases from the services, married couples are getting first priority on available homes and furniture. Inevitably the single girl [being demobbed] begins to think that unless she’s a bride pretty soon, in everybody’s eyes she’s a no-account nobody.”

Saturday, 8th 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 two workers at Woolwich Arsenal, recently demobilised, were killed yesterday in an explosion at the technical research department which shattered windows across Plumstead and shook houses two miles away.

Also in the Times: a detachment of the 5th Queen's Royal Regiment, veterans of El Alamein, took part in the four-power Allied victory parade along the Charlottenburger Chaussee in Berlin yesterday. Marshal Zhukov and General Patton were amongst those in attendance.

Sergeant Eve Dunlop of the ATS is asked about 'The World I Want (and the One I Expect) after her demobilisation in the Daily Mail. She is looking for a world "in which there will be no interference, no coupons, and shops plentifully stocked at reasonable prices ... she wants a decent, six-roomed house at a rent of about £150 a year ... she wants to be able to buy a new family car for £250 with real - not imitation - rubber tyres ... she wants to be able to buy 6lb. of tomatoes or a 6lb. joint when she needs it." But she expects "no house of her dreams within five years; no freedom from rationing for two years [she is seven years too optimistic]; no cheap, good stockings (let along nylon) for at least one year." So she is migrating to Malaya with her husband.

Saturday, 4th August, 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.

Food - and more precisely, the disparity in civilian and military rations - is on the mind of John Bull's readers. "I am one of many wounded soldiers in this civilian hospital," writes Trooper R.H. in a Midlands infirmary. "The food has been awful. Instead of getting our Army rations we get the civilian allowance and that is badly cooked. The limit was reached the other day when the ward orderly came in to ask if we had anything to be cooked for breakfast. I had nothing so I was offered the choice of bread and butter or bread and jam."

A sergeant from Devon writes: "I left Germany a week ago and have been telling my wife how much better off for food the soldier is than the civilian. BLA daily rations included 12oz. of bread, oz. of boneless meat and 2oz. of bacon or 4oz. of sausage as well as jam, cheese, cooking fat and dried foods. Any civilian would gladly change places."