More than just a Canteen – Part Three
The Ladies in Green – A Partnership Continues
By the beginning of 1946, the war in Europe was over. Millions of servicemen were beginning the long journey back to civilian life, but for the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) and its partnership with NAAFI, the overseas story was far from finished.
During the war, WVS women had followed British servicemen overseas, working alongside NAAFI from North Africa and Italy to North-West Europe. They had worked from clubs, leave centres and mobile canteens, staffed information desks, organised entertainment and brought something less easily defined to places which were necessarily military in character: a touch of ordinary civilian life.
What their presence could mean to the servicemen themselves was captured in a few lines written by an anonymous officer aboard the troopship Queen of Bermuda.
Though yours is as good as any we’ve seen;
It’s not your Canteen, with hot toast and tea,
We’ve had one before, so it’s not that. You see
El Alamein, Mareth, Caen and Berlin
Have left our Morale, well, wearing too thin.
We’re often quite scared, and sometimes we dread
To face our old world; it’s riddled and dead.
So when we feel bad, we just talk to you;
You’re “Civvy Street,” England, just like a preview
Of what we’ll go back to: for you never mope,
You’re bright and you’re gay, you give us fresh hope,
You bring back our memories, our young peaceful dreams
Lost in War’s smoke and dying men’s screams.
It’s lives and not socks. You see what I mean?
We’ll never forget you, dear Lady in Green.
Royal Voluntary Service Archive & Heritage Collection.
The anonymous officer had been watching WVS members surrounded by piles of khaki drill as they sewed and mended for the troops aboard. Yet he was writing about much more than darned socks, hot toast or cups of tea. For men who had spent years living in the very different world of wartime service, the familiar woman in green represented something beyond the practical welfare services she provided. She was, in his words, “Civvy Street” – a reminder of home, normality and the peaceful life to which they hoped eventually to return.
As millions of servicemen journeyed home to civilian life, large numbers of British forces remained overseas. Occupation replaced invasion; permanent garrisons gradually replaced wartime formations; and before long a new international confrontation would emerge from the ruins of the old one. Wherever British servicemen and women were sent, there remained a need not simply for food, drink and recreation, but for their welfare.
The organisation that had sent its first overseas draft under NAAFI auspices during the war would continue sending women abroad in the very different world that followed. Destinations and duties changed, WVS became WRVS, and NAAFI adapted to the changing needs and locations of Britain's Armed Forces. Yet the partnership endured, and the Ladies in Green continued to work alongside NAAFI through the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s.
Eventually, against the difficult economic climate of the 1970s and the changing circumstances of Britain's overseas forces, the long-standing arrangement came to an end. NAAFI discontinued its sponsorship of WRVS overseas members from 1 November 1975.
And so the Ladies in Green continued their journey.
From Germany to the Wider World
Part Two of More than just a Canteen left the Ladies in Green working alongside NAAFI in the clubs and canteens of the British zone of Germany. For many who volunteered for service farther afield, Germany would provide their first experience as a WVS overseas worker.
Before being accepted for overseas service, applicants underwent selection, a medical examination and a period of probationary training with the WVS in London.
Contemporary recruitment appeals give some idea of the preparation involved. In May 1951, the Dublin Evening Mail reported that applicants faced an interview, medical examination and selection board, followed by a three-month training course. By March 1955, The Scotsman described successful applicants undergoing a month's probationary training with the WVS in London before final acceptance. Whether the difference represented a change in the training programme or simply the way the process was described is unclear.
Dublin Evening Mail, 23 May 1951.
Overseas service was also a very different commitment from the part-time voluntary work undertaken by many WVS members at home. By 1955, women accepted for service in Germany signed an eighteen-month contract and were provided with uniform, free board and lodging and a small allowance while working full-time in NAAFI clubs and canteens.
The Scotsman, 7 March 1955.
The work demanded considerably more than simply serving behind a canteen counter. Contemporary recruitment material emphasised the importance of being able to mix easily with servicemen, listen to their problems and organise the social activities which formed an important part of life in forces clubs overseas.
Germany therefore occupied an important place in the overseas scheme. For many WVS workers it provided their first experience of full-time welfare work with NAAFI overseas before they could be considered for more distant postings.
By the middle of the 1950s those postings were taking WVS women far beyond Germany. An article in The Scotsman on 7 March 1955 recorded volunteers serving in Singapore, the Japan–Korea area and the Middle East, reflecting a much wider overseas network which stretched across Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Far East.
Germany was not the end of the journey. For many of the Ladies in Green, it was the beginning.
Three Ladies in Green
Recruitment notices and reports can tell us how the overseas service operated, but the experiences of the women themselves reveal much more about what that service could involve. Three of those women – Mary Wallace Holton and the sisters Mary and Billie Burgess – provide very different glimpses of life as a Lady in Green during these post-war years.
A Life of Overseas Service – Mary Wallace Holton
By the time Mary Wallace Holton left Britain for Cyprus in August 1956, she was already an experienced welfare worker. Her years of service had taken her from Britain to Singapore, the Middle East, Japan and Korea, working among servicemen and their families in very different circumstances.
Cyprus was to be her final posting. Barely a month after leaving London, Mary Wallace Holton became the first member of WVS Services Welfare Overseas to lose her life while serving abroad.
The report recalled Mary's years of welfare work at home and overseas following her death while serving at the NAAFI Leave Club in Kyrenia, Cyprus.
The Sunday Post, 30 September 1956.
Mary was already an experienced forces welfare worker before joining the WVS in 1948. She had gone to Germany in 1945 with the YMCA and later ran what a former colleague described as a “very tough club”, buried in the woods some distance from Lüneburg. She eventually became Deputy Senior Woman in 30th Corps Area of the British Zone before returning to Britain and joining the WVS.
After working at a Services Families Camp at Strathpeffer, Mary went to Singapore in January 1951, where her work included both Services Welfare and welfare among Gurkha families.
The Middle East followed. At Tel-el-Kebir she worked among young servicemen, many of them National Servicemen. The W.V.S. Bulletin later recalled how much the men appreciated the “homely atmosphere” of the NAAFI Club and how readily they confided in her.
In 1953 Mary was posted to Japan, where she took charge of recreational amenities at an officers' leave hostel in Tokyo. Officers arriving on leave from Korea were helped to make the most of their brief respite from the conflict, with Mary arranging recreation, sightseeing and hospitality with British and Commonwealth families living in Japan.
She later undertook relief duty in Korea itself before returning to Britain at the end of 1954.
In August 1956 Mary once again left Britain for overseas service. She departed for Cyprus on 25 August, where British forces were then operating during the Cyprus Emergency. About a month later she took up her duties at the NAAFI Club at Kyrenia.
Her time there was tragically short.
On the night of 28 September 1956, Mary was travelling with troops in a lorry near Kyrenia when the vehicle was ambushed. She was killed.
The following month the W.V.S. Bulletin recorded her as the first casualty among members of WVS Services Welfare Overseas.
“Her loss is theirs and ours.”
W.V.S. Bulletin, October 1956.
Mary's death was a reminder that overseas welfare work was not always conducted at a comfortable distance from the servicemen it supported. WVS women lived among military communities, travelled with servicemen and could share the hazards of the places in which they served.
At much the same time that Mary's overseas service was drawing tragically to a close, two other Ladies in Green were preparing for another remarkable posting on the far side of the world.
Two Sisters in Green – Mary and Billie Burgess
Those two women were sisters Mary and Billie Burgess. Like Mary Holton, they were already experienced overseas welfare workers, and their years of service alongside NAAFI had taken them through a succession of British military communities around the world.
Their story also allows us to see something that official reports and recruitment notices rarely reveal: what everyday life was actually like for the Ladies in Green – where they lived, how they worked and how they helped create something resembling ordinary civilian life thousands of miles from home.
By the time Mary and Billie emerge clearly from the surviving records in Korea, they were certainly no newcomers to overseas welfare work. Contemporary newspaper reports would later associate their WVS service with a remarkable range of postings, including Italy, Austria, Germany, Malaya, the Suez Canal Zone and Kenya. The reports do not, however, allow us to reconstruct the sisters' individual movements through these postings with certainty.
What can be followed much more closely is their service together from Korea onwards.
Our next stop is the Ship Inn serving the Commonwealth Division in Korea.
Korea – The Ship Inn
By December 1953 the sisters were working at the Ship Inn, a NAAFI roadhouse situated north of Tokchong and south of the Imjin river. It served men of the Commonwealth Division whose fighting units occupied the hills beyond the river. Here the partnership between NAAFI and the WVS can be seen particularly clearly, with Mary and Billie helping to make the roadhouse something more than simply a place where a serviceman could obtain refreshments.
The sisters were serving with WVS Services Welfare at the NAAFI roadhouse supporting men of the Commonwealth Division.
Photograph: Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum. Australian War Memorial, MELJ0196.
A contemporary newspaper account from December 1953 recorded that a small house had been built for the sisters close to the men's mess. It provides a rare glimpse of the practical side of overseas welfare service: Mary and Billie were not simply working at the Ship Inn, but living within the military community they served.
Seven months later, a series of photographs allows us to step inside the Ship Inn and see what that partnership looked like in everyday life.
There is nothing grand or ceremonial about the scenes. Here the sisters are arranging flowers in the troops' lounge, while another photograph shows Mary putting the finishing touches to a table before the club opened. They are small, domestic touches, but perhaps that was precisely their importance. They helped to make the Ship Inn feel a little less like a military establishment and rather more like somewhere to relax.
One of the small, everyday tasks that helped give the NAAFI roadhouse a more homely atmosphere.
Photograph: Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum. Australian War Memorial, MELJ0198.
Books were another part of that effort. The Ship Inn contained a WVS library where servicemen could borrow something to read during their off-duty hours. Keeping such libraries supplied was itself part of the WVS welfare effort. In 1951, an appeal for books and magazines quoted a letter from a major serving with the Gloucestershire Regiment in Korea, thanking the WVS for reading material sent to the men. Their tastes, readers were told, ranged “from westerns to T. S. Eliot's poetry.”
Billie is assisted by Private Leslie Gillespie while Private John Byrnes selects a book – a glimpse of the everyday welfare services available to Commonwealth troops at the NAAFI roadhouse.
Photograph: Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum. Australian War Memorial, MELJ0209.
Three years after that appeal, one of the photographs taken at the Ship Inn shows Billie Burgess behind the library counter issuing books to servicemen, a small glimpse of that wider WVS service in operation.
There were records to play, board games, books to read and somewhere comfortable to sit. Yet perhaps the most valuable part of the sisters' work was not something which could be placed on a shelf or entered on an inventory. Servicemen could simply talk to them.
It was the same less tangible quality recognised by the anonymous officer aboard the Queen of Bermuda in 1946. The tea, the canteen and the mending mattered, but behind them lay something else: a reminder of ordinary civilian life and of home.
The photographs of Mary and Billie at the Ship Inn capture that idea in wonderfully ordinary detail. Arranging flowers, polishing tables and issuing library books were small things in themselves, but together they help us to understand what “more than just a canteen” could actually mean.
From Korea to Kenya
The next firm sighting of Mary and Billie in the surviving record comes in East Africa. By January 1956 they had exchanged the Korean winter for the palm trees and beaches of Mombasa, Kenya.
The sisters were working at the Silversands Leave Centre, an Army leave and transit camp which had been taken over by NAAFI the previous August. Here British servicemen could spend twelve days' leave beside the Indian Ocean, with swimming, boating and a nearby coral reef providing a very different setting for the sisters' welfare work.
Once again the familiar NAAFI–WVS partnership was at work. The NAAFI centre included a reading room, library, sports store, bar and an outdoor roller-skating rink which could also be used as a dance floor. A contemporary newspaper report recorded that this side of the centre was run by Mary and Billie Burgess of the WVS.
A contemporary report described the NAAFI facilities run by the sisters and recalled their ten years of overseas welfare work “from Germany to Korea.”
Halifax Evening Courier, 25 January 1956.
Dances were held regularly, together with barbecues, treasure hunts and film shows. The surroundings could hardly have been more different from Korea, but the purpose of the sisters' work remained familiar: providing servicemen away from home with recreation, companionship and somewhere to relax during their leave.
The newspaper described the sisters as veterans of ten years' voluntary service and referred to their work with British troops “from Germany to Korea”. By 1956, therefore, Mary and Billie were experienced overseas welfare workers whose service had already taken them through very different military communities.
Before 1956 was over, however, Mary and Billie would exchange the beaches of East Africa for somewhere considerably more isolated. They had been selected for a new assignment some 8,000 miles from Britain, on a tiny coral island in the Pacific.
Their destination was Christmas Island.
Christmas Island – A Touch of Home
If Mombasa had offered palm trees, beaches and a blue lagoon, Mary and Billie Burgess's next posting was altogether different.
Late in 1956 the sisters set out for a tiny coral island in the Pacific. Christmas Island was being transformed into a military base in preparation for Britain's hydrogen bomb tests, bringing thousands of servicemen to one of the most isolated British military postings in the world.
Christmas Island presented a new challenge. There was no established town beyond the military camps, and many of the facilities needed by the growing Service community were still being constructed when Mary and Billie arrived.
Approaching by air, Mary and Billie looked down upon the low coral island which was to become their home for the next nine months.
Waiting to meet them was the NAAFI District Manager, Mr Hislop. Better still, there were familiar faces among the men on the island whom the sisters had previously known in Korea. As Mary and Billie later recalled, they realised that they were not, after all, amongst complete strangers.
From the airfield they travelled about five miles through the coral dust towards the camp and the small bungalow which was to become their home. Even that was only just ready for them: the painters were reportedly leaving by the back as the sisters arrived at the front.
The little bungalow had been built for them by NAAFI. It contained a lounge, bedroom, tiny kitchen, toilet and shower. The accommodation was modest, but for the next nine months it would be Mary and Billie's own small piece of domestic life within the expanding military camp.
There was little opportunity to settle in before the scale of the task ahead became apparent. The WVS Centre which Mary and Billie were to operate was still unfinished, as were the adjoining NAAFI facilities. Their equipment and boxes had arrived before them, but for the time being some of the more valuable items had to be stored in their bungalow.
“Not only was our Centre not completed, but the NAAFI end of it was only in its primary stages.”
Mary and Billie Burgess, writing about their early days on Christmas Island, W.V.S. Bulletin, February 1957.
It is a wonderfully revealing description. Unlike the established Ship Inn in Korea or the leave centre at Mombasa, on Christmas Island Mary and Billie had arrived while the welfare facilities themselves were still taking shape.
The NAAFI Club was due to open on 3 December 1956. There was work to be done.
The Club Opens
On 3 December 1956, the NAAFI Club opened its doors. For Mary and Billie Burgess, the work for which they had travelled thousands of miles was now properly under way.
The surroundings may still have been rough and unfinished, but gradually the familiar ingredients of a forces welfare centre began to appear. There were books and magazines to read, games and competitions, tournaments, quizzes and tombola, while dances and other entertainments provided a welcome diversion from the routine of camp life.
The sisters pictured during their WVS welfare service alongside NAAFI on Christmas Island.
NAAFI News, Spring 1957.
The sisters had even brought entertainment material with them. Their luggage included costumes and material for pantomimes and other shows – useful cargo on an island where recreation could not simply be found outside the camp gates.
The library soon became an important part of the Centre. Books were well used, while games and other recreational equipment were in constant demand and not always easy to replace. But, as at the Ship Inn in Korea, the value of the Centre could not be measured simply by the number of books borrowed or games played.
Men came in to talk.
Sometimes they wanted entertainment; sometimes they wanted sympathy, conversation or simply the company of someone outside the military routine. On an isolated island thousands of miles from Britain, that informal part of the sisters' work assumed particular importance.
Beyond the Club
Their work did not end at the doors of the NAAFI Club. Mary and Billie also became part of the wider welfare network serving the growing military population of Christmas Island.
They made regular visits to the Military Hospital, taking magazines, periodicals, chess sets and games for the patients. There was also time for what the sisters themselves described as a “long natter” with the men – another reminder that welfare work could be as much about listening as providing material comforts.
Most evenings also found Mary and Billie at the NAAFI canteen, where they took orders from servicemen for flowers, chocolates and Christmas presents to be sent to families and loved ones at home. It was a practical service, but one which connected the men on this remote Pacific island directly with the civilian lives they had temporarily left behind.
Nor were the men at Main Camp their only concern. About fourteen miles away was Port Camp, another isolated community which Mary and Billie also visited. Their welfare work therefore extended well beyond the immediate surroundings of the main Centre.
As Christmas approached, the programme of entertainment expanded. Dancing, games, competitions and concerts helped fill the off-duty hours, while the sisters' stock of costumes and theatrical material could be pressed into service for the festive season.
It was an extraordinary contrast. Outside stood a newly constructed military camp on a remote coral island. Inside the NAAFI and WVS facilities there were books, music, games, dancing, conversation and plans for Christmas.
Yet none of this should suggest that life for the two sisters was easy. Mary and Billie were working seven days a week in tropical heat and humidity, amid conditions which could test both people and equipment. Heavy rain could leave parts of the camp waterlogged, the damp attacked clothes and possessions, and the local wildlife had an inconvenient habit of making itself at home.
Living on Christmas Island was another matter entirely.
Life on a Coral Island
An RAF Auster AOP 9, XK410, of the Royal Air Force Christmas Island Reinforcement Party sprays insecticide over the NAAFI. Although photographed shortly after Mary and Billie Burgess's posting, the image provides a striking view of the coral landscape and the NAAFI establishment at Main Camp.
© Crown copyright reproduced under delegated authority from The Keeper of Public Records. Image: IWM (CT 1963).
By the time Mary and Billie Burgess arrived, Christmas Island was being transformed to accommodate a military population numbering in the thousands. Much of that population lived under canvas, while roads, accommodation and welfare facilities were still developing around them. Heat, humidity, coral dust and heavy tropical rain were part of everyday life.
When it rained, it could rain with extraordinary intensity. Parts of the camp became waterlogged, while the persistent damp created problems of its own. Even something as ordinary as a clothes hanger could quickly succumb to rust in the humid atmosphere.
And then there was the wildlife.
Mary and Billie's little bungalow, built for them by NAAFI, stood raised above the ground. Below were some of the island's more determined inhabitants – the large land crabs which wandered freely through the camp. Mice provided another, rather less exotic, domestic nuisance.
For the servicemen, opportunities to escape the routine of camp life were limited. There was no nearby town to visit for an evening and little conventional entertainment. The cinema and the facilities provided through NAAFI and the WVS therefore assumed an importance far greater than their modest surroundings might suggest.
The same isolation shaped the lives of Mary and Billie. Their work was effectively a seven-day commitment, and even an evening supposedly free from duty did not necessarily remain so for long. Men might still come to the club wanting company or simply someone to talk to.
In such circumstances, the smallest details mattered. A book from the library, a game, a dance, a cup of tea or simply somewhere comfortable to sit and talk could provide a temporary escape from military routine and the isolation of the island.
For Mary and Billie, meanwhile, there was remarkably little separation between home and work. Their bungalow provided some privacy, but their days revolved around the men they had travelled so far to support: the NAAFI Club, the canteen, the hospital and their visits to the more isolated parts of the island.
Christmas Island, however, was unlike anywhere they had served before. The enormous military effort taking place around them had a very specific purpose.
In the months ahead, the aircraft, equipment and thousands of men gathered on the island would take part in Britain's first series of hydrogen bomb tests.
Watch the original film
Imperial War Museums' 1957 film
Operation Grapple (AMY 842) includes remarkable contemporary
footage of life on Christmas Island. In Reel 5, the NAAFI sequence
begins at approximately 2:40, followed by footage
of Mary and Billie Burgess of the WVS. The sequence continues until
approximately 3:39.
Operation Grapple was about to begin.
Operation Grapple
During 1957, Christmas Island became the base for Operation Grapple, Britain's series of hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific. For Mary and Billie Burgess, however, Grapple was not an operation studied on a map or reported in a newspaper. It was taking place around them.
The men visiting the NAAFI Club, borrowing books from the WVS library, attending dances, lying in the Military Hospital or simply dropping in for a conversation were among those involved in the enormous undertaking which had brought thousands of servicemen to Christmas Island.
As the tests approached, rumours circulated around the camp. One of the more alarming suggested that an explosion might produce a tidal wave capable of sweeping across the island.
Mary and Billie encountered such anxieties at first hand. Their response was not technical explanation, but the familiar tools of their welfare work: reassurance, conversation and humour.
The first Grapple test took place in May 1957, followed by further tests during the weeks that followed. For the men on Christmas Island these extraordinary events formed part of their military service. For Mary and Billie, the welfare routine continued.
The club still had to open. Books were still borrowed. The hospital still required visits. Men still wanted presents and flowers arranged for families at home. There were still dances, games and entertainments to organise – and servicemen who simply wanted somewhere to sit and talk.
Against the extraordinary background of Operation Grapple, much of Mary and Billie's work remained deliberately ordinary. During his off-duty hours, a serviceman might want nothing more remarkable than a book, some music, a game, a dance or a conversation about something completely unrelated to the reason he was on Christmas Island.
For a brief period in June, Mary and Billie themselves were able to escape the relentless routine. After months of seven-day working they were given a week's holiday in Honolulu before returning to Christmas Island and their welfare work.
By then the sisters had become familiar figures within the island community. They had arrived while their own Centre and the adjoining NAAFI facilities were still being completed, seen the camp grow around them, and been on the island as the first Grapple tests were carried out.
The scale of the military operation around them was immense. The contribution made by Mary and Billie was of a very different kind, and much harder to quantify.
An official Operation Grapple handbook issued to personnel found a remarkably simple phrase to describe what Mary and Billie brought to the men stationed there.
A Touch of Home
It would be easy to describe the work of Mary and Billie Burgess on Christmas Island in practical terms. They organised entertainment, maintained a library, visited the hospital, travelled to outlying camps and helped servicemen maintain contact with families thousands of miles away.
Yet a contemporary account found a much simpler way of describing their contribution. Mary and Billie helped to make the men's off-duty hours more pleasant, relieving some of the boredom of life on an isolated military station.
They provided something altogether harder to measure:
“A touch of home.”
The phrase echoed something written more than a decade earlier. In January 1946, an anonymous officer aboard the troopship Queen of Bermuda had tried to explain what the “Lady in Green” represented to servicemen. Beyond the darning, hot toast and tea, she was a reminder of the civilian life to which they hoped one day to return.
“You’re ‘Civvy Street,’ England,
just like a preview
Of what we’ll go back to...”
W.V.S. Bulletin, January 1946.
More than a decade later, on a remote coral island in the Pacific, Mary and Billie Burgess were providing that same precious connection with ordinary civilian life.
At the Ship Inn in Korea it could be found in flowers on a table, a book borrowed from the WVS library or a conversation in the lounge. At Silversands in Mombasa it appeared through dances, recreation and the social life of a NAAFI leave centre. On Christmas Island it might be a game, a hospital visit, an evening's entertainment, a present arranged for someone back in Britain – or simply somebody willing to listen.
Home Again
By September 1957 Mary and Billie were back in Britain after approximately nine months on Christmas Island.
The W.V.S. Bulletin welcomed the sisters home after nine months on Christmas Island and summed up their experience in a few memorable words:
“A tough assignment; which they say they would not have missed.”
W.V.S. Bulletin, September 1957.
Their immediate ambitions on returning home were rather more modest: a proper bath and a visit to the hairdresser.
There was little suggestion that their appetite for overseas service had disappeared. After a period of leave, both sisters hoped that another posting abroad might eventually follow.
Their story matters not because it was necessarily unique, but because it allows us to see the wider NAAFI–WVS partnership through the experiences of two of the women who actually lived it.
Mary and Billie were two among many WVS women who served alongside NAAFI personnel in clubs, canteens and welfare centres across Britain's overseas military communities. The establishments and circumstances varied enormously, but much of the work would have been recognisable: recreation, companionship and the creation of somewhere welcoming beyond the routine of military life.
From WVS to WRVS
Mary Wallace Holton and the Burgess sisters were among the WVS women whose welfare work took them into British military communities across the world. Their individual experiences provide only glimpses of a much larger story – one which continued long after the 1950s.
As Britain entered the 1960s, the pattern of overseas military service was changing. Some garrisons closed, others contracted and new commitments arose as the network of bases and military communities inherited from the war and its aftermath began to change. Yet wherever British servicemen and their families remained overseas, the need for welfare and recreation remained with them.
So too did the partnership which had brought NAAFI and the WVS together.
There was, however, one important change of name. In 1966, Queen Elizabeth II granted the WVS the honour of adding “Royal” to its title in recognition of the organisation's work for the people of Great Britain. From then on, the Women's Voluntary Service became known as the Women's Royal Voluntary Service – the WRVS.
The name had changed, but the familiar overseas welfare work continued. WRVS members could still be found working under NAAFI auspices in unit canteens, junior ranks clubs, leave centres and town clubs during the 1960s and into the early 1970s.
Forty WRVS members working in NAAFI clubs in Germany gathered at the United Services Officers' Club, Rheindahlen, to meet Lady Reading. The photograph provides a striking glimpse of the NAAFI–WRVS partnership continuing into the later 1960s.
NAAFI News, June 1967.
A Changing Military World
By the 1960s and 1970s the world in which that work was carried out was very different from the one encountered by the first WVS women who had followed British forces overseas during the Second World War.
The great wartime movement through North Africa, Italy and North-West Europe was history. The occupation of Germany had developed into the established military communities of the British Army of the Rhine, while elsewhere Britain's changing commitments gradually altered the map of overseas service.
Yet the need for welfare remained remarkably familiar. Whether a serviceman was living in a large established garrison or at a smaller, more isolated posting, off-duty hours could still bring boredom, loneliness and worries about home.
A welfare club offered somewhere different. There might be games, television, refreshments and entertainment, but there was also something which had been present from the earliest days of the partnership: someone outside the immediate military routine with whom a serviceman could talk.
The NAAFI–WRVS partnership did not, however, continue indefinitely. As George and Anne Forty later recorded, changing circumstances and rising costs eventually led NAAFI to give notice that its sponsorship of WRVS members overseas would be discontinued from 1 November 1975.
That date marked the end of the particular NAAFI-sponsored arrangement which had carried WVS and later WRVS women into British military communities overseas for so many years. It did not mark the end of WRVS Services Welfare itself, which continued to support members of the Armed Forces under different arrangements.
More than just a Canteen
And that brings us back to where this story began.
When WVS women first began working alongside NAAFI and EFI during the Second World War, nobody could have known how far that partnership would eventually travel.
We have followed the Ladies in Green from the clubs and leave centres of North Africa, through Italy and North-West Europe, into the occupation of Germany and onwards to British military communities across the post-war world.
We have encountered grand establishments and improvised ones: clubs in major European cities, a NAAFI roadhouse in Korea, a leave centre beside the Indian Ocean and an unfinished welfare centre on a remote coral island in the Pacific.
Within those establishments, NAAFI and the WVS worked together in complementary ways. NAAFI provided the organisation, supplies and facilities, while WVS women added their own distinctive contribution to the welfare of the men and families who used them.
Sometimes that meant arranging flowers.
Sometimes it meant lending a book, organising a dance or visiting a serviceman in hospital.
Sometimes it meant listening to a young serviceman who wanted to talk about home.
And sometimes it meant travelling halfway around the world simply to be there.
In 1946, one serviceman called it “Civvy Street.”
A decade later, on Christmas Island, it was described as
“a touch of home.”
Perhaps those two descriptions explain the partnership better than anything else.
Mary Wallace Holton, Mary and Billie Burgess and the many other women who undertook Services Welfare work overseas complemented the practical work of NAAFI. Within its clubs, canteens and welfare facilities they contributed something which could not be shipped overseas in a crate or entered on a stock sheet.
They brought a little of civilian life with them.
WVS became WRVS, and the world in which its Services Welfare workers operated continued to change. The ending of NAAFI sponsorship in 1975 did not, however, bring Services Welfare itself to an end. In different forms and under different arrangements, that work continued in support of serving personnel.
Across all those years and very different surroundings, the practical details changed. The need for companionship, recreation and a connection with ordinary civilian life did not.
It was always more than just a canteen.
Sources, References & Image Credits
This article has been compiled from contemporary publications, archival material, newspapers and published sources. Image sources and credits are acknowledged below.
Image Credits
- WVS volunteers wanted for overseas service: Dublin Evening Mail, 23 May 1951 (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- “WVS Work with the Forces – Volunteers Wanted”: The Scotsman, 7 March 1955 (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Mary Wallace Holton – “W.V.S. Worker Who Had Served All Over The World”: The Sunday Post, 30 September 1956 (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Mary and Billie Burgess arranging flowers at the Ship Inn, Korea: Australian War Memorial, photograph MELJ0196, 18 July 1954. Photograph by Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum.
- Mary Burgess putting the finishing touches to a table at the Ship Inn, Korea: Australian War Memorial, photograph MELJ0198, 18 July 1954. Photograph by Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum.
- Billie Burgess issuing books from the WVS library at the Ship Inn, Korea: Australian War Memorial, photograph MELJ0209, 18 July 1954. Photograph by Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum.
- Mary and Billie Burgess at Silversands, Mombasa: Halifax Evening Courier, 25 January 1956 (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- The NAAFI at Main Camp, Christmas Island, c.1959–60: Imperial War Museums, photograph CT 1963. © Crown copyright reproduced under delegated authority from The Keeper of Public Records. Image: IWM (CT 1963).
- Mary and Billie Burgess on Christmas Island: NAAFI News, Spring 1957.
- The Ladies in Green – Germany, 1967: forty WRVS members working in NAAFI clubs in Germany gathered at the United Services Officers' Club, Rheindahlen, to meet Lady Reading. NAAFI News, June 1967.
- Imperial War Museums: Operation Grapple [Main Title], 1957, film no. AMY 842, Reel 5 (AMY 842-05). Contemporary footage of the NAAFI and WVS welfare facilities on Christmas Island, including Mary and Billie Burgess, appears at approximately 2:44–3:39. View Reel 5 at Imperial War Museums .
Primary Sources
- W.V.S. Bulletin, No. 75, January 1946 – “The Lady in Green”, written by an anonymous officer aboard HMS Troopship Queen of Bermuda.
- W.V.S. Bulletin, No. 202, October 1956, pp. 3–4 – “Mary Wallace Holton”.
- W.V.S. Bulletin, No. 206, February 1957 – “Early Days on Christmas Island”.
- W.V.S. Bulletin, No. 213, September 1957.
- NAAFI News, Spring 1957 – Mary and Billie Burgess on Christmas Island.
- WRVS News, No. 24, May 1986.
- NAAFI News, June 1967 – Lady Reading's visit to Germany and WRVS members working in NAAFI clubs.
- Dublin Evening Mail, 23 May 1951 – WVS overseas recruitment and “Books for Korea” (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- The Scotsman, 7 March 1955 – “WVS Work with the Forces” (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- William Courtenay, “Troops are new and fresh but Korea is unchanged,” Western Mail, 4 December 1953 (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Halifax Evening Courier, 25 January 1956 – Mary and Billie Burgess at the NAAFI Silversands Leave Centre, Mombasa (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- The Sunday Post, 30 September 1956 – Mary Wallace Holton (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Daily Express, 17 September 1956 – Mary and Billie Burgess and their forthcoming posting to Christmas Island (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Bradford Observer, 3 October 1956 – Mary and Billie Burgess and their overseas service (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Birmingham Daily Post, 3 October 1956 – Mary and Billie Burgess and their Christmas Island posting (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Bristol Evening Post, 3 October and 6 November 1956 – Mary and Billie Burgess, their Christmas Island posting and preparations for entertainment on the island (British Newspaper Archive via Findmypast).
- Australian War Memorial Collections, photographs MELJ0196, MELJ0198 and MELJ0209, 18 July 1954. Photographs by Donald Albert “Tim” Meldrum.
- UK Parliament, House of Commons Debates, 17 June 1975, Written Answers – Women's Royal Voluntary Service. Question by Mr Trotter; answer by Mr Robert C. Brown.
Other References
- George and Anne Forty, They Also Served (1979), p. 120, “The Women in Green” – the later NAAFI–WVS/WRVS partnership and the ending of NAAFI sponsorship from 1 November 1975.
- Royal Voluntary Service Archive & Heritage Collection – digitised issues of the W.V.S. Bulletin and material relating to WVS Services Welfare overseas.
- British Newspaper Archive (accessed via Findmypast).
- Nic Maclellan, “The WVS Ladies—Mary and Billie Burgess,” Grappling with the Bomb. Includes material quoted from Operation Grapple 1956–57, Handbook for UK Personnel (1957).
- Royal Voluntary Service, Our Patron – the granting of the title “Royal” to the WVS by Queen Elizabeth II in 1966.
