I agree that Burton cannot be demob suits and my father seemed to use it for hardware. People always 'went West' or 'got the chop', someone being made redundant would also 'get the chop'.
It may also be germane that my paternal grandfather was WWI so my father would have collected WWI slang in his childhood.
After the OED, does anyone have a copy of Brewers' Phrase & Fable to hand?