THE popular image of Britain after VE day is one of street parties, bands welcoming home proud soldiers from the four corners of the world and happy reunions.

The reality was a bit more complex. While there may have been elation at the end of conflict, many of those returning home were met with sullen resentment by civilians who felt they had borne the brunt of the blitz. One soldier recalled that even the “cat could not wait to go out for a wee” when he returned home after six years.

One of biggest problems was the breakdown of normal family life.

Many returned to find their loved ones had moved on. In one particularly poignant letter reproduced here, a wife writes to her husband saying she is expecting the child of an Italian prisoner of war and begs for reconciliation for the sake of their four children. The husband, Private Cyril Patmore, stabbed his heavily pregnant wife to death, telling police who arrested him: “I hope my children will be looked after. They have had a rough time since I’ve been away”. He was sentenced to five years jail after the jury acquitted him of murder.

The country faced reabsorbing quarter of the male population back into the uncertainties of civilian existence and, as it is shown here, it was an often painful return to normality.