World Battlefronts: MEN AT WAR: Compassionate Confusion

By last week the affairs of the "Middle East Compassionate Posting Committee" had reached the House of Commons, but still no solution of a delicate problem was in sight.

The committee (better known as "the Baby Leave Committee") was formed when British soldiers who had been in the Middle East for several years began applying for posting to "compassionate leave"* because they "wanted to have a baby before the old woman gets too old." More than 5,000 applications flooded the new committee before it even settled down to work.

About half of these were weeded out. Said a committee member: "Men...

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