CALCUTTA: There is no reason for any British officer who will have completed three years and eight months service overseas by December 31, 1944, to be despondent about his repatriation “as arrangements are definitely in hand for his dispatch” a high military officer attached to Army Headquarters Calcutta, said in a Press interview.

He added that during the last fortnight or so there had been a considerable stepping up in the collection of statistics regarding men due for repatriation, and [the] issue of preliminary instructions in the matter.

When his attention was drawn to a report of a move by more than a thousand married women in Britain to request the Premier to reduce married soldiers’ overseas service to a maximum of three years, he said that the eight months’ period was not far from what they sought. “Present efforts,” he said, “include the time for voyages to and from India”. On the plea of childless wives of soldiers serving abroad, he commented that it always had been open to officers and other ranks to seek compassionate repatriation when medical opinion regarded it as essential for the health of the wife to have a baby. (Dawn, Delhi)

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2014