NAAFI Voices
Personal memories from those who served and the families who remember them
"The history of NAAFI is more than dates and documents.
It is the story of the people who made it."
ABOUT NAAFI VOICES
Behind every NAAFI canteen, club and tea bar were thousands of men and women whose daily work helped sustain Britain's servicemen and women throughout war and peace. While official records tell us where they served and what they achieved, they rarely capture the friendships, humour and everyday moments that made NAAFI life so memorable.
NAAFI Voices is dedicated to preserving those personal stories. Here, former NAAFI staff, servicemen and women, and their families can share memories exactly as they remember them. Some are humorous, some are deeply moving, while others offer remarkable glimpses into everyday life behind the scenes. Together they help preserve an important part of NAAFI's history that might otherwise be lost.
Unless otherwise stated, contributions are published substantially in the authors' own words, with only minor editorial changes where necessary for spelling, punctuation and formatting.
Memories of a Portsmouth NAAFI Girl
By Michael Shaw
Mary Shaw (née West) was born in Portsmouth in 1925 and, with the exception of short periods on the Isle of Wight during World War 2, lived there all her life. She left school at 16 and started working in a shop, which she hated. However, in 1943 she was conscripted into the NAAFI, an event that she later described as being “the making of her.” She loved NAAFI life, and unlike many of her fellow conscripts she remained in the service after the end of the War, only leaving in the late 1950s when I inconsiderately arrived on the scene.
Within a year of her joining the NAAFI, she found herself embroiled in the preparations for the D-Day landings, serving in NAAFI canteens in various bases in the Portsmouth area. After her death, I found among her papers two poems addressed to “The NAAFI Girls”, written by soldiers in two of these bases: Royal Marines at Browndown, near Gosport, and members of the 8th Army stationed at Wickham. The latter of these, dated April 1944, has a particularly poignant air, as it appears to be an attempt at making amends for some incident that had caused ill-feeling, by men who knew that many of them might never return to England. On D-Day itself, she was serving in a base on Portsdown Hill, overlooking Portsmouth, and had an unforgettable view of the huge armada departing for Normandy.
Editor's Note
Letters to the NAAFI Girls
Among Mary's papers were two handwritten poems presented to the NAAFI girls serving at military camps near Portsmouth during the preparations for D-Day. They offer a touching glimpse of the affection in which NAAFI staff were held by the servicemen they served. Both survive today thanks to Mary's careful preservation of them.
Handwritten poem presented to the NAAFI Girls by members of the 8th Army stationed at Wickham Camp.
Written just two months before the D-Day landings.
TRANSCRIPTION
To a crowd of girls who serve us well
And laugh at cracks we make,
Who sometimes feel that British boys
Are not the kind to take.
We, the boys that's mentioned here,
Don't mean the things we say,
And these last lines that I have wrote,
Please read, digest and say
To anyone who asks you
What we really think of you:
Just tell them that we love you all,
Because you're British through and through.
From,
8th Army Boys
To
N.A.A.F.I. Girls
3 April 1944
Handwritten poem presented to the NAAFI Girls by Royal Marines stationed at Browndown Camp near Gosport.
TRANSCRIPTION
Thanks to you.
Work in the canteen may be fun
When the day has just begun,
But washing plate after plate
Is worse than we anticipate.
Yet you always seem to smile,
Though dirty cups and saucers pile,
So let me all thank you for the way
You smile and serve us every day.
Yours, S.J.C.
Royal Marines
Browndown
After the War, she seems to have spent most of her time working in Portsmouth Dockyard or other naval establishments in the area. This period gave her a wealth of memories, including the time one of the other girls sliced off a finger while cutting ham, and only realised it when someone asked why all that blood was on the floor! Another memory was of hurrying through the Dockyard with a friend, presumably at the end of a winter’s afternoon, and being berated by an irate naval officer for walking during Evening Colours (Sunset).
Working in the Dockyard, she always had a high regard (I’m tempted to say a soft spot) for submariners. She often recalled how on one occasion a group of submariners invited her on board their submarine. As they passed through the cramped crew accommodation, the curtain was drawn across one bunk, indicating that the occupant was asleep inside. “Watch this,” said one of my mother’s hosts, suddenly pulling back the curtain. Rudely awakened, the occupant – remembered by my mother as “a little red-haired man with a ginger beard) – opened his eyes, saw a woman standing there, and sat up abruptly, banging his head on the bunk just above him! She claimed not to remember what he said!
Perhaps one of her most haunting memories was of a day in April 1951, when she was working in a Dockyard canteen. It was a normal lunchtime – radio playing, dockyard workers and sailors having a few pints before going back to work – when a sailor came in and blurted out that the submarine HMS Affray was overdue in reporting her position. To the end of her life, my mother remembered how everything changed: someone switched off the radio and all the sailors sat quietly, waiting for the recall to their ships that they knew would surely come if time passed with no word from Affray.
On a rather more light-hearted note, the sailors of No 1 Submarine Squadron made quite an impact at my parents’ wedding, with a telegram that said simply “Report position, course, speed and depth at midnight.” My father (himself a NAAFI canteen manager) told me once that he had half expected this as the submariners concerned had been at his stag night. And I remember using throughout my childhood a cutlery set that had been a wedding present from those same submariners.
My mother made many friends in the NAAFI, most notably a formidable lady (at least, to a small boy) always known as Mrs Metcalfe. On one occasion, a group of sailors invited them to go to sea with them on board their minesweeper. Unfortunately, Mrs Metcalfe proved to be unusually prone to seasickness- so much so that the ship had to turn round and return to its moorings before it had even left Portsmouth Harbour.
I am very proud of my parents’ NAAFI service, and I am sure that there must be hundreds like me with similar stories to tell. Why are these stories so often ignored by historians?
(By Michael Shaw)
Editor's Note
The original handwritten poems and the original photograph of Mary Shaw reproduced on this page are now preserved in the collections of The D-Day Story, Portsmouth. We are grateful to Michael Shaw for allowing them to be reproduced here as part of this personal account.
