AS a welcome home from the war, it was a touch on the genteel side. After all, when you’d been dodging Hitler’s bombs and bullets for a few years, you could probably have thought of better things to do on your first night back on civvie street than wander down the social club and listen to a bloke playing a violin.

Even jigging it up a bit would hardly have set the pulse racing.

So it was no doubt the salvation of the newly-formed St Martin’s Social Club in Worcester that after a few months of violin solos, someone took along a gramophone.

And with the gramophone wound up and the megaphone speaker turned in the right direction, the music of Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and all the rest got the place jumpin’ and jivin’ and warmed up the homecoming for many a 1940s wartime combatant.

More than 60 years later, the club is still going strong, although the style of its weekly meetings has changed somewhat and rather than jitterbug the night away, its members now enjoy listening to speakers or playing bingo.

As one pointed out: “We’re not as young as we used to be.”

In all seriousness, the problems for servicemen returning from the Second World War back into civilian life were considerable.

The fond image of daddy walking back up the garden path in his demob suit to an enthusiastic welcome from the family he left behind didn’t always happen.

The children might be three, four, even five years older and his wife would have changed too. As would he.

Readjustments were needed all round and it was to smooth the transition that Worcester’s mayor at the time, Rosina Palmer, suggested forming St Martin’s Social Club, which opened its doors on November 17, 1944 in St Martin’s parish hall in Victoria Avenue.

“The idea was to provide social evenings and events for the Armed Forces returning home so they could settle into post-war conditions with their wives and families,” said Mrs Joan Turley, one of the club’s former secretaries.

Mrs Turley had spent the war as an RAF radio telephone operator usually tasked with bringing the planes safely back into land.

She worked at a variety of wartime airfields and it was while talking down Wellington bombers at RAF Chivenor in North Devon that she met and married husband Harold, who was an RAF fitter.

After the war, the couple made their home in Worcester, where Harold had been born, although his new wife was from Essex.

It was quite a while before they became involved with St Martin’s Social Club, which since its inception had really taken off.

“Notes from the early meetings show it regularly attracted more than a hundred people,” said Mrs Turley. “It was very popular.”

Of course these were the days long before a television in every home.

Another factor was that the parish hall was in the heart of one of Worcester’s residential areas and hence within easy walking distance for a lot of people.

Back then, the family car was an aspiration rather than the norm.

One of the specialities from the early days seems to have been a penchant for fancy dress evenings and several photographs recording such activities were published in this paper when it was called The News and Times.

But times change and gradually the club’s social calendar switched to interesting speakers, mystery trips to Worcestershire locations, evenings at the theatre, bingo, beetle drives and the occasional musical interlude. The annual harvest supper is always popular.

However, membership is becoming a concern. “We are down to about 20,” said Mrs Turley, “and we would love some more. Anyone is welcome.”

If you are interested, her phone number is 01905 764876. You don’t need your demob suit, but if you ask nicely, they might play a bit of Glenn Miller.