BACK TO THE LAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 7 June 1945, Page 7

BACK TO THE LAND

DEFEATED GERMAN SOLDIERS London, June 4. After a week of high-speed planning, ‘Operation Barleycorn” is now in action and to-day the first 300.000 defeated German soldiers will get demobilisation papers and be sent back home in British Army lorries. To restore smooth working in the production of German food stuffs a military group from the British Second Army is working on a 24-houi basis to get the Wehrmacht back to agricultural occupations and take over the tasks which after the past four years have been done by slave workers. Fourteen centres have been set up in northern Germany where most of the German uniformed services have been herded in special concentration areas during the past month. Each centre can handle 1000 men a day and from the time a German soldier is called into the centre until the time he is back at farm work is not expected to exceed three days. No officers are being discharged and special security measures have been taken to ensure that no war criminal who may be hiding in the concentration areas slips out by obtaining discharge papers from a man passed as' an agricultural worker. The 300,000 Germans ‘will not be free from British military discipline until they are back on the land and even then will be under control of the Military Government through the local burgomaster. The Germans will be clad in utility suits with a yellow and green patch on the jacket.