They had to disband and disarm the German fighting machine, reassemble the country's basic infrastructure, and cope with population on the brink of starvation.
However, a problem soon emerged; goods intended for the troops were being sold to a thriving black market among the local population at highly inflated prices.
The high purchasing power of the pound and its easy transference back to Britain also posed a significant incentive to the black marketers.
After a remarkably brief period of preparation, the first series of 52,400,000 British Armed Forces Special Vouchers (BAFSV), valued at just over 10 million pounds sterling were printed by Thomas De La Rue and officially issued on August 1, 1946.
In due course the ingenuity of the local population and the troops largely circumvented the intention of the first issue BAFSV's to slow black market activities.
By mid 1947 it was decided, under a cloak of secrecy, to prepare a new issue to replace the first, then immediately demonetize the first to limit the conversion of illicitly-gained first series vouchers.
On February 14, 1991, The Ministry of Defence auctioned off their stock of 17 million uncirculated vouchers from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th series to a consortium of dealers.
This series was issued in 1956 for use during the Suez Crisis, the smallest denomination was 3 pence and the highest was 1 Pound.
These were for use in the Afghanistan theatre only and later on were rarely seen as all the Post Exchanges around the KIA area accepted US dollars in payment.