Demobbed : coming home after the Second World War
"Snapshots of gaiety and celebration - the street parties, the victory speeches - are how some people today think of Britain in 1945. But the years following the end of World War II were far from a 'golden age' of pride and self-confidence. The country was troubled though triumphant, subject to continued rationing and political change. Wracked by social disorder, austerity and disillusion, Britain was exhausted - and it was the return of those men who had fought for their country who seemed to be a root cause of the trouble. Demobbed is the real story of what happened when millions of ex-servicemen returned home. Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labour force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarized by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. Problem veterans preoccupied the entire country. Alan Allport draws on their personal letters and diaries, on newspapers, reports, novels and films to illuminate the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families and society at large."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2009
Yale University Press, New Haven [Conn.], ©2009
History
x, 265 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780300140439, 0300140436
421534544
Now this bloody war is over
So, you're back then
My faithless English rose
What the hell has happened to this country?
Clocking on
They made me a fugitive
Something has gone wrong inside my head