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By Harold Pollins

Towards the end of the war, having been an Unpaid Lance-Corporal, I became a Paid/Local/Sergeant acting as an instructor on the Education Scheme for the Release Period. (The Release Period was the term used to describe demobilisation, which began slowly after the end of the war in Europe.) The unit began to acquire men who had been prisoners of war in Europe. Some had been prisoners since 1940 and were obviously impatient to get home.

When the news came through of the dropping of the atomic bombs in August 1945 someone in the unit suggested we have a talk, as part of the education system, of the meaning of atomic energy and of the bomb. So a lecturer from nearby Leeds University was obtained and on the appointed day a sufficient number of troops were ordered to fill a Nissen hut which was to be used as a lecture room. They were mostly bored ex-prisoners of war. The lecturer started talking but he did not realise the level of knowledge of his audience and he spoke as though he was talking to university students in their second or third year of study. Very quickly the audience became even more bored and fidgeted somewhat. The lecturer plodded on. Towards the end of what seemed an eternity he mentioned, in passing, ‘Well, as you know, E equals MC squared .’ The Signals sergeant, in the audience, nodded, as though he knew; perhaps he did.

A minor post-script. Soon afterwards the unit closed down and I was posted elsewhere. Since I had been a local sergeant I reverted to my substantive rank, which was Private. I removed the sergeant’s stripes and there remained on my tunic the clear impression of where the stripes had been. I was at the receiving end of some temporary notoriety as people concluded that I had been demoted from sergeant to private through some heinous crime. I did not disabuse them.

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