The Sutlers Supreme

From Mobilisation to Evacuation

NAAFI and the Early War, 1939–1940

PART ONE

Britain Mobilises, 1939

RMS Lancastria in peacetime Cunard White Star Line service. Requisitioned in 1939 and later employed as the troopship HMT Lancastria. Postcard from the author’s collection.

Among the small pieces of ephemera that have found their way into my collection is this simple postcard of the Cunard White Star liner RMS Lancastria.

It shows the ship as she appeared in peacetime service — a familiar passenger steamer, black-hulled and steady at sea, her red funnel trailing smoke across an empty horizon. There is nothing here to suggest war. Nothing to hint at urgency, evacuation, or loss. To the eye, it is simply another proud liner of the late 1930s, carrying travellers on routine crossings in calmer days.

After the outbreak of war the vessel was requisitioned for government service and redesignated HMT Lancastria. During the withdrawal from France in 1940 she was employed in the evacuation of troops and support personnel. Among those carried were members of NAAFI’s Expeditionary Force Institutes, many of whom did not return. Her name would later become linked with one of the darkest maritime disasters of the war.

That story lies ahead.

This first instalment begins earlier, in 1939, when mobilisation was still new, uniforms still unfamiliar, and the future unknowable.

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The Problem of Civilian Status

When Britain moved towards war in 1939, the question of how the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes would accompany the armed forces was not entirely new. The problem of civilian canteen staff operating alongside troops overseas had been encountered before. During the First World War, the Expeditionary Force Canteens and the Navy and Army Canteen Board had both employed uniformed personnel, and NAAFI itself had sent men in uniform to Germany during the Saar Plebiscite of 1934. The principle that canteen workers might require military status in the field therefore already had precedent.

What changed in 1939 was not the idea, but the scale.

The international crisis of the late 1930s — particularly the Munich emergency of September 1938 — forced the organisation to think seriously about mobilisation. By April 1939, plans were being drawn up for the formation of the Field Force Institutes (FFI), and volunteers were sought from among NAAFI’s male staff. These men understood that overseas service would place them under military discipline. When war was declared in September, many effectively took the King’s Shilling, becoming uniformed members of their parent unit the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) and thereafter known as RASC/FFI. Though still paid by the corporation, they wore khaki, trained with small arms, and prepared to serve wherever the Army might be sent.

The scale of the task they faced was considerable. On the eve of war, NAAFI employed some 8,000 staff operating around 720 establishments across army garrisons and RAF stations in the United Kingdom, with a further 359 overseas institutes and 266 ship and shore establishments run by the Naval Canteen Service. Even this represented a substantial peacetime undertaking. Within six years those figures would multiply many times over, as NAAFI expanded into a vast wartime network numbering tens of thousands of staff and thousands of canteens. Mobilisation in 1939 was therefore not merely administrative — it marked the beginning of one of the largest logistical and welfare expansions undertaken by any civilian organisation in support of the British forces.

11 a.m., 3 September 1939. With the declaration of war, mobilisation began across Britain. Within days, NAAFI’s own volunteers would exchange civilian dress for uniform.

Becoming Soldiers

Mobilisation did not simply change what NAAFI staff were called; it changed how they lived and worked. For those volunteers assigned to the Field Force Institutes, the months before the outbreak of war meant learning the rhythms of Army life — parade ground discipline, kit inspections, orders, and the expectation of obedience that civilian employment did not require. Uniform brought legitimacy and protection overseas, but it also brought responsibility. These men were being prepared not only to serve tea and supplies, but to operate as soldiers within a military system.

Training began even before war was formally declared. Facilities were hastily organised at Kennington, Mitcham, and Croydon, where volunteers received basic military instruction intended to equip them for service overseas. The arrangements were practical rather than polished. There was little time to create a perfect scheme, and the training was necessarily compressed and improvised. Nevertheless, it provided sufficient grounding in drill, discipline, and the handling of small arms to allow NAAFI personnel to accompany the Army in the field with confidence.

The intention was clear: when the British Expeditionary Force crossed to France, NAAFI would go with it.

Indeed, preparations moved quickly. Two days before the first elements of the British Expeditionary Force landed in France, Lt-Colonel N. V. Peters, MC, left NAAFI headquarters at Imperial Court with three officers and three other ranks to establish the organisation across the Channel. Even before the main body arrived, the groundwork for canteens and institutes was already being laid.

Within days they were followed by larger drafts. Two further parties, totalling sixteen officers and some 450 other ranks, crossed to France to form the backbone of the new organisation. Base depots were established at Brest and Nantes, supported by four Bulk Issue Stores and a network of canteens intended to serve the 41,000 soldiers and airmen of the British Expeditionary Force. From the outset, NAAFI’s presence overseas was planned on a scale that matched the Army it accompanied.

From Field Force to Expeditionary

By the time the first contingents reached France, the new organisation was still known officially as the Field Force Institutes — the initials “FFI” reflecting its original purpose: to accompany any field force sent overseas. On mobilisation NAAFI personnel enrolling for service with the Royal Army Service Corps were recorded under that designation.

Contemporary newspapers still carried the initials “FFI”. A small report from November 1939, noting a Field Force Institute clerk serving with the BEF, shows how naturally the designation had entered everyday service life.

Contemporary press report referring to a “Field Force Institute (R.A.S.C.) clerk” serving with the BEF, November 1939. The term FFI was still in official and everyday use prior to the later adoption of EFI.

Yet the realities of active service quickly exposed the awkwardness of the name.

In October 1939 an order was issued for an “FFI parade” at a sub-area headquarters near Nantes. To NAAFI staff, this meant withdrawing canteen personnel from their posts to attend what appeared to be a formal inspection, forcing canteens across the district to close for the day. On enquiry, it emerged that the Army had not intended a canteen parade at all. In medical terminology “FFI” signified “Free From Infection”, and the parade was simply a routine health inspection.

The misunderstanding was resolved quickly — and with some amusement — but the episode revealed how easily the unfamiliar initials could be confused within the wider military system. Within weeks the title was formally altered, and the Field Force Institutes became the Expeditionary Force Institutes: the “EFI” by which NAAFI in wartime would thereafter be known.

By then the organisation in France was already expanding rapidly, establishing depots, bulk issue stores and canteens to support the growing strength of the British Expeditionary Force. The name had changed, but the purpose remained the same — to be present wherever the Army required them.

Organisation in the Field

The change in title from Field Force to Expeditionary did little to alter the practical task at hand. From the autumn of 1939 onwards, the Expeditionary Force Institutes expanded steadily alongside the growing strength of the British Expeditionary Force. What had begun with a handful of officers soon developed into a sizeable and carefully organised service.

Successive drafts crossed the Channel throughout September and October. Reinforcements were posted forward to establish depots, staff bulk issue stores, and open canteens wherever formations settled. Base depots at Brest and Nantes handled incoming stocks, while Bulk Issue Stores distributed goods forward to institutes and mobile canteens nearer the line.

As numbers increased, the system became more structured. The EFI organisation in France was divided into three geographical areas, each responsible for supporting the units within its sector. In effect, the canteen service mirrored the Army’s own layout: where divisions moved, institutes followed. By the winter of 1939–40, hundreds of officers and other ranks were engaged in this work, operating an expanding network of shops, stores and supply points that stretched across the BEF’s rear areas.

Within a matter of months, what had been a peacetime retail organisation had been transformed into a logistical service functioning on near-military lines. By the time the so-called ‘Phoney War’ settled into its uneasy routine, EFI was already embedded in France as an essential part of the Army’s daily life.

By the winter of 1939–40 the Expeditionary Force Institutes had become a familiar, if seldom recorded, part of the British Expeditionary Force’s daily life. Official documentation of EFI activity during these months is sparse; canteen services and welfare arrangements rarely found their way into formal reports. Instead, fleeting glimpses survive in contemporary newspapers — short pieces about concerts, magazines, and improvised comforts for the troops — their details blurred by wartime censorship, with locations reduced simply to “somewhere in France.”

Yet taken together they suggest an organisation steadily finding its feet. What had begun in haste the previous autumn was becoming routine. Depots functioned, canteens opened, supplies moved forward, and the men of the EFI settled into the quiet, practical business of supporting an army at war. By the spring of 1940, NAAFI had learned much and adapted quickly, establishing a rhythm that, for a time at least, seemed almost ordinary — unaware of how abruptly that fragile stability would soon be tested.

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Sources & References

Howard N. Cole, Naafi in Uniform

Harry Miller, Service to the Services

Bradford Observer, 29 November 1939. Accessed via Findmypast (British Library Newspapers). Reproduced under fair dealing for the purposes of non-commercial historical research and commentary.

Author’s collection: postcard of RMS Lancastria; press and ephemera relating to early BEF and NAAFI deployment.

Part Two continues the story in France, exploring daily life with the Expeditionary Force Institutes during the long months of the “Phoney War”, before the sudden collapse of the spring of 1940 forced NAAFI to move once again — this time in retreat.