Paul Elwell's Story - Part 4 - Aftermath and Adjustment

4. AFTERMATH AND ADJUSTMENT

Most thoughts, including mine, turned to the period of adjustment after the “cessation of hostilities”. Even though war in Europe was practically over, Japan was still fighting. There was, therefore, every prospect of being sent to the Far East, none of demobilisation until Japan also surrendered in August. Plans existed for post-war demobilisation of the Forces and their re-integration into the peace-time economy. Although immediate release was administratively impossible, as everyone knew, the formula, though probably fairly based on age, length of service and overseas involvement, was slow and not accepted philosophically. Compensation sharply favoured rank and seniority. That seemed unfair. Existing payrates already advantaged seniority, whereas few “Other Ranks” could boast pre-enlistment professional qualifications, lucrative jobs or homes to return to. Letters to the New Statesman and News Chronicle advocating compensation according to length of service only, irrespective of rank, at one rate — since sacrifice hardly equated with rank — remained unpublished. Presumably they never passed the military censor!
I was demobilised in July 1946 after 5½ years’ war-service, as an Intelligence Corps sergeant. With accrued leave-entitlement and the “nest-egg” (accumulated from sixpence per day compulsory retention from pay as savings, lest we squander it all!), my total “emolument” was £86! We also received a suit (navy-blue, brown or grey pinstripe made ex-servicemen immediately conspicuous and identifiable), raincoat, shoes, shirt, tie, and a hat to top it all. We could keep army clothing issued or “scrounged” (replacement was normally only by exchange)! Few still fitted into pre-enlistment clothing. There were no low-interest housing-loans or free “repatriation” services. A colleague in Sydney, with similar rank and service with the Royal Australian Air Force, received about Aust£1,200 (Ed. — i.e. just under £1,000 sterling at the then fixed exchange rate), a housing-loan, and lifetime Repatriation benefits! There was, however, a free “Re-Education and Training Scheme” for war-disrupted education or apprenticeships. For this I naturally applied.
But why did discharge come from the Intelligence Corps? After the armistice, my unit moved to Paternion in Austria to comb the mountains — Hitler’s “Alpine Redoubt” — for war-criminals, Nazi party-officials or units, the “werewolves”. The IVth Hussars formed a small section, with one of our German-speaking officers in charge and myself as factotum, to collaborate with a Field Security Section which directed the search-and-arrest operations.

Our night-raids netted — amongst lesser fry — the Gauleiter of Upper Austria, Dr. Rainer, and one of Yugoslavia’s most-wanted war-criminals, SS-Obergruppenführer Globoçnik, who suicided immediately he was positively identified.
We spent the next few months there, and later in Styria, sorting genuine “displaced persons”, often concentration-camp survivors, from Nazi sympathisers masquerading as such. It was more interesting work than humdrum peace-time duties and spit-and-polish. Thus I applied for transfer to the Intelligence Corps. I should have known that my German expertise (and French to a lesser extent) would land me in Trieste, commonly Italian-, Slovene-, or Serbo-Croat-speaking! Hence my repatriation for demobilisation was from there.
New responsibilities and problems followed. After leave granted me from Trieste in January, we expected a child in November, and needed a flat. As the Further Education grant I had banked on was not approved until funds were exhausted and the academic year was underway I needed to find work. Without previous employment and work-experience that was not easy. A fellow-cadet from Sandhurst, now a director of his Hungarian father’s import-export agency, happened to need an assistant. For poor pay, I became his father’s correspondence-clerk (his English and German were equally execrable!).
Most of the sporadic business came from South America, needing Spanish added to more familiar languages. After exactly two months, I was given notice as “ill-suited to commercial enterprise”. Out of “consideration”, dismissal was to take effect one week after the imminent birth of our child. I was desperate, and could barely face Thalia — temporarily with her mother to await the child — or my parents, with whom I was staying meanwhile. Their consternation and reservations when we became engaged now looked justified, my optimism rash and irresponsible. As a matter of poetic justice, the firm went bankrupt shortly afterwards!
Continued rationing, severer than in wartime, affected morale more than when determination to survive and expectation of victory sustained it at high pitch. With most of humanity desperately in need of food, and millions displaced by the Nazi madness requiring resettlement, the Labour government was unable significantly to alleviate shortages. These were inevitable, acceptable burdens. Far less acceptable were the growing rift, the spectre of ever more destructive war between East and West, and the apparently insuperable ideological differences which aggravated unavoidable dislocations.

Not, be it said, at “common man” level. There common humanity prevailed, despite different language, cultural background, and mischievous ideological indoctrination, wherever chance mingling occurred.
Discouragement, disillusionment, the continuing threat of insecurity, poverty, misery, even of renewed war, were epitomised in the desire to emigrate to a life as remote as possible from the trouble-centres.
I therefore readily accepted my mother-in-law’s suggestion that her brother in Sydney, the late G.E. (Edward) Clift, might find me employment with Grace Brothers (Ed. — at that time a major Sydney department store and removalists firm; Uncle Ted was the oldest of four brothers, two of whom, Marcus and Sydney, were killed in action in World War I, one in France, the other in Palestine, while the remaining brother, Lawrence, joined the Indian Police between the wars, and became Provost Marshal of South Australia during World War II; Paul's mother-in-law, the editor's maternal grandmother, Dorothy Grace - "Doss" - the second oldest of the five, had herself served during World War I as a nurse in hospital ships, notably aboard "Aquitania" at Gallipoli). Uncle Ted, a nephew of the founders, had joined the firm in 1931. In 1946 he was a director and the Company Secretary. An answer came within days of Derek’s birth, offering the prospect of work, a new beginning, hope. Their London office could engage me, if suitable. Their managing director, expected in London on business in 1947, would give final approval. I could then expect to start in Sydney when a passage became available, but no favoured treatment. It would be up to me to make the best of my opportunity. Thus began my long association with Grace Bros. My salary, more in keeping with my initial functions than with my title of “Assistant Buyer”, kept us out of debt — with occasional inroads on Thalia’s savings — and met the needs of the newly-enlarged family.
Our fuel-ration, two lumps of coal known as “Bartholomew and Mary”, was needed to dry Derek’s nappies. The rest hardly kept our two-roomed basement flat on the “wrong” side of the Finchley Road warm enough to survive the extremely harsh winter. One of the hottest, driest summers ever followed. Even the trickle of bathwater rationing allowed the three of us was re-cycled, with any dishwater, to our tiny vegetable plot for the tastiest tomatoes ever!
Transfer to Australia, subject already to approval, depended also on prior naturalisation as a British citizen. Uncle Ted worried about the anti-German feeling in Sydney. In fact, I had long ceased to regard myself as German. Nor was I technically still a German. By a strange coincidence, I had found several cartons of Staatsbürgerverordnungen (citizenship decrees) in the attic of my Paternion billet after the armistice. Evidently deposited for safekeeping, they formally stripped Jewish ex-residents of German citizenship, the Eichwalds included. My flight to England was Hochverrat (high treason), crime enough without Nazi knowledge that I was actively fighting them as a “Friendly Enemy Alien”! British citizenship was formally granted in May 1947.

We were booked to leave from Liverpool on the "Nestor" in March 1948. A few small packing-cases of essentials — little enough mine — went ahead. We sailed on 19 March, with few regrets after recent uncertainties and hardships, from the identical quay from which, eight eventful years previously, the "Ettrick" had taken me to Canada as a bewildered internee.
This time, however, the future, although still uncertain, lay in my hands. Hitherto, decisions had been dictated by forces beyond my control. How would I now respond to the challenges ahead, the need to make and accept full responsibility for decisions no longer affecting myself alone? What would the future hold, now that I could no longer afford to be the “rash and irresponsible” young man life and circumstances had made me?
When we arrived in Sydney 65 days later, I found myself pitched into “Removals”. A six-month probation turned into a lifetime career. My new colleagues took me for a “Pom”, no more than usually distrusting the “new chum”. I had come from England, been in the Forces and seen action. Any lingering foreign accent had evidently gone. I explained only that my fluent German had been learnt in Germany before the war. I saw no need to divulge more than essential. Management knew more, but aided and abetted my harmless deception. I successfully maintained the illusion, until I chose to disclose my past in a staff-magazine shortly before I retired in 1981.
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IN MEMORIAM
CHARLES PAUL ELWELL
11th March 1920 — 17th November 2004
In so many ways a victim of circumstances, but never a victim.

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