Demobbed: Coming Home After World War Two
By Alan Allport
Yale University Press £20, 288 pages
FT Bookshop price: £16

In his poignant first book, Demobbed, Princeton lecturer Alan Allport explores the problems Allied soldiers faced on their return home from the second world war.

Allport opens with Britain’s chaotic task of demobilising an army at a time of political transition and housing shortages. He depicts soldiers’ discontent at coming home to a broken country and their struggle to find employment.

Families were frequently disturbed by the homecoming of psychologically scarred men after years of absence, strangers in their own homes. There are harrowing moments, particularly when Allport describes the soldiers’ alienation from their children. Cases of courts pardoning soldiers for the horrific crime of murdering unfaithful wives point to some misguided attempts to understand veterans’ trauma. A well-researched debut that gives voice to a tacit majority.