A HELPING HAND RETURN OF EX-PRISONERS OF WAR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 8 September 1945, Page 6

A HELPING HAND RETURN OF EX-PRISONERS OF WAR

JOURNEY BACK TO "CIVVY STREET.

SINCERITY AND SYMPATHY: NOT PITY

(By James Lonsdale Hodson) j London, Aug. 27. | I spent some hours yesterday at Hat- J field House, the Seventeenth Century , home of the Marquis of Salisbury, l where 150 returned prisoners cf war are being helped to make the journey back to “Civvy Street.” We lunched in the armoury—shields, arquebuses and old helmets on the wall. One dormitory I saw—about 70 yards long—was a portrait gallery. The marquis occupies one wing of the house; the rest is given over to this work which Britain’s War Office has begun. Nine centres of this sort are busy; soon ther c will be 20. We need them. As proot 4 of our 100,000 returned prisoners from Germany and Italy, about half have said they are willing to take a course of four to twelve weeks (usually foui to six, however) and at the moment 8,000 are lined up waiting. This admirable scheme began at the end of May. If we put ourselves into the position of the average or typical returned prisoners of war, we shall see how necessary this plan is. For months, or more often, years (sometimes for five years), we have been isolated from normal life. This Britain to which we come back has changed greatly; taxation is very high; everything is needing a new coat of paint; everybody is shablfy—rationing is widespread with coupons—not too many of them —for this and that. INVISIBLE SPECTATORS We are uncertain of our former skill as professional men or craftsmen; sometimes uncertain too of ourselves in company or with womenfolk for we have not been near them for so long. This new world we are plunged back into is a bit of a jungle, or it seems so. We are worried about our health for we have not had enough to eat; we are worried whether we shall get a job; whether folk will be hostile to us because we have been prisoners of war. At the same time we feel that those who stayed at home have had a better time in the war than we have. Each of us has his own troubles—maybe concerned with wife or children, or need for a house, or difficulty in concentrating or remembering. We would rather like for a while to be invisible spectators of this strange world to see it and watch it without it watching us. Anyhow we want a lot of advice on what jobs are going and what rates are paid. We would like to look into some of those factories we see. talk to actual workers there or find out what it is really like behind the counter of a small shop (a business ot our own might suit us fine). We would like to visit a market garden or a chicken farm and get the “Ipwdown” on it. We would like some workshops to play about in—to try our hand at laying bricks or carpentry or doing metalwork —generally showing we can be (or are learning to be) a good "man about the house” again.

If any prisoner of war thought out what he wanted in that way. he would find most of what he is looking for at Hatfield House or starting from there. He does not come at all unless he wants to; if he comes he finds himself in life halfway between Army life and "Civvy Street." There is only one parade: pay parade; only one chore: to make his bed. He goes home every week-end if he likes in civilian clothes. He sleeps in sheets, his food is rather better than usual. Radio, films, dances, brains trusts and talks —these are part of the set-up. If he wants to see a doctor he sees him as he would his private doctor —if he wants to talk about one or other of his problems he can do it with an expert—vocational officer or psychiatrist or professional social worker, men who have patience and imagination, men who know how the repatriated man can suspect' a racket in everything, can look at things with a suspicious or “reconnaissance” eye. The commanding officer (before the war Secretary of a London University College) was himself captured at Calais in 1940 and the H. Q. Vocational Officer was captured at Salerno. They know what they are talking about, The commanding officer said to me “It is like coming out of a world where everything is dim, to one where it is floodlit —you see it but you do not believe it. What we are trying to do is to build a passage down which a soldier ca n walk from one to the other passage getting lighter all the time. We do not push him or hold him but we can help him “over the hurdles.” He said it is pretty easy to see improvements after six weeks. When the men come they are mostly a little or more than a little suspicious or shy with a trick of dropping a curtain down in front of themselves (sometimes inadvertently shutting them off from life) but after six weeks they are more alive with greater awareness and the curtain is dropped far less often. AN IDEALISED PICTURE The Medical Officer holds the view that soldiers returned from Burma, or say Persia, are similar in some Psychological ways to prisoners of war. For one thing they have usually built up an idealised picture of the country and home they had and the harsher realities are found hard to grow accustomed to. After the first three of four weeks of festivities another “crisis” period can develop. One reason can be that instead of being at once accepted as “cock of the walk,” a husband may find that his wife has gained new authority by added war responsibilities on behalf of the children, struggling with blackout and bombing and perhaps, on top of that, earning good wages in a factory. He may secretly or openly resent this. She, on the other hand, may be jealous of his life overseas which, despite its hardships strikes her as rather glamorous. Much tolerance and understanding are needed on both sides so that in “resettling” the soldier it is important to resettle the wife and family too. I asked a psychiatrist whether he thought the problems of men who had been captured by the Japanese would b° different from, or worse than, those taken by the Germans. He replied that he thought in one sense they mifht be better as so many soldiers looked on the Japanese as subhuman or animal and that capture by them could be regarded as just bad luck and might not leave the same mental sting as capture by the Germans so that their minds might be more at ease in consequence. That “mental sling” is felt most, I gather, by men with decorations. The intake at Hatfield House is about sixty a week. Immense care and thought have been given to it. Addresses of welcome are very short. Fuss or “blah” are the last thing the men want. They may even resent an appearance of geing mobbed with too much material and comfort lest that cloak in•sincerily. After a day or so spent locking round they are encouraged to divide up into syndicates (the word syndicate was carefully chosen too) and encouraged among other things to discuss life in general. Doing this they may well discover that some problem they thought .theirs alone is that of most others —a fact which, in itselr. makes them feel better. A man arranges his day more or

less himself from nine to five—visits to factories, technical schools, offices, market gardens and the like. lie goes behind the counter at the Labour Ex- | change to sec how it works and realises i how they try to be human and friend- j ly, or to the Goyernment Training Cen- j tre to find out about courses. He can attend talks on housing, or furnishing, j or jobs, or what was happening in j Britain while he was away. Those who ! v/ant light physical exercises and I games can have them. Maybe he | wants a refresher course on his form- | er trade or profession or to go on with | a broken apprenticeship or start a correspondence course for a better job. All this can be arranged. If he is troubled about his Army pay or gratuity or post-war credits or income tax in his new strange world the sergeant in the Pay Corps is there to help him. What delights him is the contact with actuality playing at being back in “Civvy Street.” An accountant, for instance, has found immense pleasure by serving for a while in a small shop, having people coming to him and feeling he is on the inside not the outside. If a man who has been, let us say, a mechanic, is keen on chicken farming, he is encouraged to have a second string to his bow for fear that the chicken farm proves impracticable. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE This resettlement course looks at first glance to many a man, who has been as he thinks “mucked about” for several years, too good to be true. But soldiers to whom I spoke at Hatfield House were pleased. One was a former meat salesman who wants to be a writer, another was a paperrhill worker who wants a business of his own, a third, a milk roundsman who wants a better job, a fourth, a South African who is going back to goldmining, a fifth, a gardener-chauffeur who does not feel up to taking on the nursery he has a chance of and wants to be a carpenter. A sixth said frankly he can’t quite face up to a regular job. Perhaps he has magnified freedom into something it never quite is, perhaps his expenditure of spirit has been very great and has left him exhausted. It is realised that it will take many men fj;om three to nine months to settle down and digest that “raw lump of experience of being a prisoner of war.”

What struck me was that, to a greater or lesser degree, nearly every soldier, sailor or airman going back into “Civvy Street” would profit by a course such as this at Hatfield House. But no doubt that is an impossible ideal. At all events what we are doing is a big advance on anything we did after World War I.