Expert: Jack Pickup Jr. - 10/9/2007

Question
QUESTION: I'm writing a novel and need to know:  If two men,  after graduating from high school, 18 and 19 years of age, enlisted in the service in Oct. 1944 - one in the army and sent to England; the other in the navy and sent to the Pacfic, how long would they have to enlist for?  Given VE Day and JV day.  Could the time vary?  I presently have the soldier coming back in summer of 1945 after VE Day and the sailor coming back in towards the end of 1945.  Would this have been possible?

ANSWER: If you are an experienced writer, then you will know that you have something called artistic license.  Some of the greatest writers of historical fiction (e.g. Bernard Cornwell) take a lot of liberties while still writing an excellent and believable novel.  Sometimes the story is more important than the facts.  As far as your question is concerned, depending on where you might be deploying them (especially the soldier), he might almost never have seen action being in that late.  As far as when they came home,  if you were deployed that late in the war, you may have been assimilated into occupation forces after the end of hostilities, while men who had been there for a long period of time would have gone home first.  Unless of course your heroes were wounded...  Once again, everything is subject to artistic license!

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Was there a set length of time for enlistment  in 1944-45(like 2 years) are was a discharge at the discretion of the commanding officer?

Answer
Enlistments have always been set to a number of years.  It would be unfair for a commanding officer to determine things like that (just in case the CO doesn't like you!).  How many years, I don't really know, but it was definitely a set amount of time.