We Will Remember Them
Each November, the familiar words We Will Remember Them are spoken at memorials across Britain and around the world. They call to mind the millions of servicemen and women whose lives were lost in war. But among those who shared the dangers of the Second World War were others whose names can be much easier to overlook.
They were the men and women of NAAFI.
They served in ships at sea, travelled with armies overseas and worked in places that ranged from canteens close to the fighting to seemingly safer establishments on military bases at home. Yet wherever they served, war could bring danger unexpectedly close.
Some NAAFI personnel wore uniform and came under military authority; others remained civilians. Whatever their status, war did not distinguish between them.
Research for The Sutlers Supreme Roll of Honour has so far identified 560 men and women associated with NAAFI, the Naval Canteen Service and Expeditionary Force Institutes who lost their lives during the Second World War. The list is still a work in progress, and the circumstances of many of those deaths remain to be discovered.
Some died through enemy action. Others were killed in accidents, succumbed to illness or died while prisoners of war. Their graves and memorials can be found across the world.
The first five names on that Roll of Honour share the same date.
On 17 September 1939, just fourteen days after Britain declared war on Germany, the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was torpedoed in the Atlantic.
Among those aboard were five civilian employees of NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service:
Walter Henry Copley — Canteen Manager
Harold George Matheson — 1st Canteen Assistant
Edward George Bishop — 2nd Canteen Assistant
Edgar Patrick Wallace — 3rd Canteen Assistant
Arthur George Quirk — 4th Canteen Assistant
All five lost their lives.
Five civilian employees of NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service were serving aboard when she was sunk on 17 September 1939.
Royal Navy official photograph. Imperial War Museums, Q 65692. Public domain.
They were the first NAAFI personnel to die in the Second World War.
In this Remembrance, The Sutlers Supreme tells their story — and through them remembers the many hundreds of NAAFI men and women whose service during the Second World War cost them their lives.
HMS Courageous — 17 September 1939
HMS Courageous had already lived one naval life before becoming an aircraft carrier. Built during the First World War as a fast, lightly protected battlecruiser, she was converted at Devonport between 1924 and 1928, emerging with flight decks and hangars capable of operating up to 48 aircraft.
When Britain went to war with Germany in September 1939, Courageous was assigned a new and dangerous role. German U-boats were already threatening the merchant shipping upon which Britain depended, and the Royal Navy deployed aircraft carriers with destroyer escorts into the Western Approaches. Their aircraft could search large expanses of ocean for submarines and provide protection to shipping, but in doing so the carriers themselves became vulnerable to the enemy they were hunting.
On 16 September, Courageous, commanded by Captain William Totfield Makeig-Jones, sailed from Plymouth for another anti-submarine patrol. Four destroyers accompanied her. The following day, Sunday 17 September, she was operating far out in the Atlantic to the south-west of Ireland.
Aboard the carrier were around 1,260 men.
Five of them were not members of the Royal Navy.
Walter Copley, Harold Matheson, Edward Bishop, Edgar Wallace and Arthur Quirk were civilian employees of NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service. Their work aboard Courageous was very different from that of the sailors and airmen around them, but they lived aboard the same ship, sailed into the same operational waters and faced exactly the same dangers.
Unknown to those aboard, the German submarine U-29, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Schuhart, had found Courageous.
For more than two hours the submarine manoeuvred into a position from which it could attack.
As evening approached, the aircraft carrier turned into the wind for flying operations.
For U-29, the opportunity had arrived.
The Sinking of HMS Courageous
For the men aboard Courageous, the evening of 17 September had begun much like any other period at sea. There was no warning that within minutes their ship would be gone.
Three of those who survived would many years later describe their experiences in interviews now preserved by the Imperial War Museums. The recollections of Walter Young, Gordon Samuel John Smerdon and Patrick Cannon are remarkably similar.
Shortly before eight o'clock that evening, two torpedoes struck Courageous on her port side.
Young was on the mess deck. He remembered two explosions at about 7.58 p.m. and the electricity failing almost immediately. Smerdon, also on the mess deck, recalled hearing a “couple of thuds” at around three minutes to eight before the lights went out.
Cannon remembered much the same sequence: an explosion at about four minutes to eight, followed by another and then darkness.
The ship began listing heavily to port.
For men below decks, getting out now meant finding their way through an increasingly unfamiliar ship. Cannon remembered negotiating what he described as a labyrinth of passages while the noise around him was deafening as equipment shifted violently with the increasing list.
Young and Smerdon both succeeded in making their way from the mess deck to the upper part of the ship. Young remembered little real panic. As Courageous rolled further over, he found himself with more than a hundred other men standing on the side of the vessel itself.
Smerdon found himself in much the same situation.
There came a point when there was nowhere else to go.
Young waited until the rising water had reached about chest level before swimming away. A strong swimmer, he knew that he needed to put distance between himself and the sinking carrier and to avoid the patches of oil spreading across the water. In his recollection, survival had become a matter of “every man for himself”.
Smerdon remembered entering the sea at around 8.15 p.m. and swimming clear. He eventually found an oar and clung to it while awaiting rescue.
Cannon dived into the sea and also swam away from the ship. He believed that he spent more than two hours treading water and recalled periods when he felt himself beginning to drift into unconsciousness.
Behind them, HMS Courageous disappeared beneath the Atlantic.
The photograph was taken from one of her escorting destroyers as the carrier sank in the Western Approaches.
Royal Navy official photograph. Imperial War Museums, HU 45268. Public domain.
Young later recalled that Captain William Makeig-Jones went down with his ship. Both Young and Smerdon also remembered the presence aboard Courageous of many men they called “pensioners” — former Royal Navy men who had returned to service at the outbreak of war.
For the survivors in the water, the ordeal was far from over.
Smerdon recalled being picked up by one of the escorting destroyers at about 10.10 p.m. Cannon was rescued by the merchant ship Dido. Young believed he remained in the water for around three and a half hours before he too was rescued. He was subsequently returned to Devonport.
The precise timings remembered decades later naturally vary slightly, but the three accounts tell strikingly similar stories: the explosions shortly before eight, the sudden loss of electricity, the rapidly increasing list, the struggle to reach the open deck and finally the attempt to swim clear of the sinking ship.
Hundreds survived.
But 518 men did not return.
Among them were the five civilian members of NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service.
Walter Copley, Harold Matheson, Edward Bishop, Edgar Wallace and Arthur Quirk had shared the dangers of the ship on which they worked. When Courageous went down, they shared her fate.
Walter Henry Copley — Canteen Manager
Eighteen months before the loss of HMS Courageous, Walter Henry Copley could be found thousands of miles away, aboard another Royal Navy warship.
In March 1938 he was Canteen Manager aboard the cruiser HMS Emerald on the East Indies Station. At Penang, a conversation between the Canteen Managers of Emerald and HMS Norfolk had produced an unusual challenge: a race between the two ships' NAAFI canteen staffs.
Walter became coxswain of the Emerald crew. His three Canteen Assistants — R. D. Green, C. F. H. Westwood and L. G. H. Sly — took the oars.
They took their preparations seriously. At Trincomalee the boat went out twice each day, at six in the morning and again at six in the evening. Walter's task was to bring his crew together, keeping them pulling strongly and in rhythm.
On the morning of 21 March, the two NAAFI crews lined up for their race.
Emerald won by eighteen strokes.
A photograph published afterwards in the Imperial Club Magazine shows Walter sitting in front of his three assistants. The accompanying account of the race ends simply with the initials “W.H.C.” — almost certainly those of Walter himself.
It provides a rare glimpse of the man behind the name on the Roll of Honour.
Imperial Club Magazine, Summer 1938.
Walter had been born at Faversham, Kent, on 28 April 1903, the son of Walter Brazier and Ellen Edith Copley. He grew up in Chatham and attended St Paul's School.
Contemporary newspaper reports published after the loss of Courageous said that he had first “joined the Service” as a boy of fourteen. Precisely what form that early service took has not yet been established, and some of the details subsequently reported about his early career are difficult to reconcile with the surviving evidence.
What is clear is that Walter eventually made his career with NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service.
Newspapers associated him with a succession of Royal Navy ships, including HMS Emerald, Resolution, Hood and Maidstone. His posting aboard Emerald is independently confirmed by the 1938 Imperial Club Magazine, where we find him not merely named as Canteen Manager but leading his small NAAFI team.
Walter had married Celia Niles in 1925. By 1939 they had two children and the family home was at 116 Ocean Street, Keyham, Plymouth — only a short distance from Devonport and the naval world in which Walter had spent so much of his working life.
His posting to HMS Courageous appears to have been very recent. When news of the carrier's loss reached his parents in Chatham, they had not even known that their son was aboard her.
Walter was 36 years old.
The photograph taken during his time aboard Emerald therefore assumes a poignancy that could never have been imagined when it appeared in 1938. Walter sits surrounded by three Canteen Assistants, the manager of another small NAAFI team serving aboard a Royal Navy warship.
Eighteen months later, aboard HMS Courageous, Walter Copley was again the manager of a team of four Canteen Assistants.
This time, none of them came home.
Harold George Matheson — First Canteen Assistant
If Walter Copley's life can be glimpsed through his NAAFI career, the surviving records tell a very different story about his senior assistant.
Harold George Matheson was born in Portsmouth on 29 October 1916. He was the son of George Henry and Lucy Matheson and had an older sister, Lucy Clarissa.
Harold was barely fourteen months old when his father died.
George Henry Matheson was serving in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Attack. On 30 December 1917 the destroyer was involved in rescue operations following the torpedoing of the troopship Aragon off Alexandria. Attack was herself then torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UC-34.
Attack is taking off survivors from the torpedoed troopship, with survivors on a raft in the foreground. Later that day Attack was herself torpedoed and sunk. Harold Matheson's father, George Henry Matheson, was among those who lost their lives.
UK Government photograph, Surgeon Oscar Parkes Collection. Public domain.
George Matheson was among those who lost their lives.
The 1921 Census therefore finds four-year-old Harold growing up in Portsmouth with his widowed mother and older sister. He was attending school, but the records so far discovered reveal little about the years that followed or when he eventually joined NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service.
By September 1939, however, Harold was aboard HMS Courageous. The ship's casualty records describe him more precisely than simply as a Canteen Assistant: he was the 1st Canteen Assistant, making him the senior of the four assistants working beneath Canteen Manager Walter Copley.
On 17 September 1939, Harold George Matheson was lost with Courageous. He was 22 years old.
There is a poignant symmetry to the story preserved in these few surviving records. Harold had grown up without the father who was lost when his Royal Navy ship was torpedoed during the First World War.
Twenty-two years later, Harold himself was lost at sea when the ship aboard which he served was torpedoed during the opening weeks of the Second World War.
His father is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Panel 26.
Harold is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial, Panel 36, Column 1.
The Three Young Assistants
The remaining three members of Walter Copley's canteen staff are much harder to trace.
They were Edward George Bishop, 2nd Canteen Assistant; Edgar Patrick Wallace, 3rd Canteen Assistant; and Arthur George Quirk, 4th Canteen Assistant.
Although civilians employed through NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service, men such as these worked and lived aboard Royal Navy ships. Their canteens provided the everyday things that helped make life at sea a little more comfortable, and their place within the ship's company brought them many of the same dangers faced by the sailors they served.
The numbered titles recorded against the Courageous casualties also reveal the small hierarchy of the canteen staff. Beneath Canteen Manager Walter Copley came Harold Matheson as 1st Canteen Assistant, followed by Edward, Edgar and Arthur.
Of their lives before Courageous, frustratingly little has so far been discovered.
Edward George Bishop was just 20 years old when he died. Searches of family records and contemporary newspapers have not yet provided enough evidence to identify his earlier life with certainty.
For Edgar Patrick Wallace we know a little more. His date of birth was recorded as 23 May 1922.
He was therefore only 17 years old.
Edgar had celebrated his seventeenth birthday less than four months before Courageous sailed on her final patrol. Britain had been at war for just two weeks when he died.
Arthur George Quirk, the 4th Canteen Assistant, has proved similarly elusive. A possible birth registration has been identified at Devonport in 1922, but without further evidence it cannot yet be stated with certainty that it belongs to the young man aboard Courageous.
There is a temptation when so little survives to try to fill the gaps. But remembrance does not require us to know every detail of a person's life.
We know that Edward, Edgar and Arthur worked together aboard HMS Courageous. We know their places within Walter Copley's small NAAFI team. And on 17 September 1939, when the ship was torpedoed in the Western Approaches, all three were lost alongside Walter and Harold.
For Edward and Edgar in particular, the surviving records leave one stark reminder of just how young some of NAAFI's first casualties of the Second World War were.
Edward George Bishop was 20.
Edgar Patrick Wallace was 17.
Beyond Courageous
The five men aboard HMS Courageous were the first NAAFI personnel to lose their lives during the Second World War. They would be followed by many others.
As the war spread, NAAFI personnel served wherever the Armed Forces went. Some were civilians, others served with the Expeditionary Force Institutes; they worked aboard ships, accompanied troops overseas and staffed canteens and clubs at military establishments across Britain.
Their names on the Roll of Honour reflect many different circumstances.
On 17 June 1940, NAAFI and EFI personnel were among those lost when the troopship Lancastria was sunk during the evacuation of British forces from France.
On 9 May 1941, seven NAAFI women were killed during a German air raid on RAF Waddington. Among them was the club manageress, Doris Constance Raven. The rebuilt club would carry her name.
Just over two months later, on 19 July 1941, six NAAFI women died at RAF Aldergrove when a Bristol Blenheim crashed into the station canteen — a reminder that enemy action was not the only danger faced during wartime.
Elsewhere, NAAFI's Naval Canteen Service continued to suffer losses aboard Royal Navy ships, while RASC/EFI personnel died serving with the Army in theatres of war far from home.
Each name represents a different life and a different story.
Together they form a Roll of Honour which this research has so far increased to 560 men and women.
The memorial commemorated members of NAAFI's Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes who lost their lives during the Second World War. It is pictured during the Remembrance service held in 1951.
NAAFI News, April 1952.
But the first five names were those of a small canteen staff aboard HMS Courageous.
We Will Remember Them
Walter Henry Copley.
Harold George Matheson.
Edward George Bishop.
Edgar Patrick Wallace.
Arthur George Quirk.
Five men who went to sea aboard HMS Courageous to do a job rarely recorded in histories of war.
They ran the ship's canteen.
On 17 September 1939, they became the first NAAFI personnel to lose their lives during the Second World War.
They were the first five names on a Roll of Honour which this research has so far increased to 560 men and women.
This Remembrance began with five.
It ends by remembering them all.
We will remember them.
Sources & References
This article draws upon contemporary records, official casualty information, oral-history testimony, newspapers and material published by NAAFI itself. The principal sources used are listed below.
HMS Courageous and the five NAAFI casualties
Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Casualty records for Walter Henry Copley, Harold George Matheson,
Edward George Bishop, Edgar Patrick Wallace and Arthur George Quirk,
all recorded as serving with NAAFI aboard HMS Courageous
and lost on 17 September 1939.
Royal Navy casualty records and Admiralty registers.
Records relating to the loss of HMS Courageous, including the
identification of the NAAFI staff as Canteen Manager, 1st Canteen Assistant,
2nd Canteen Assistant, 3rd Canteen Assistant and 4th Canteen Assistant.
These records also provide the recorded date of birth of Edgar Patrick
Wallace, 23 May 1922.
Admiralty War Diary, September 1939.
Contemporary Admiralty reporting concerning the loss of HMS
Courageous in the Western Approaches on 17 September 1939.
Survivor Accounts
Imperial War Museums, Sound Archive.
Walter Young — oral-history interview, IWM object 80009193,
Reel 1, approximately 07:20–21:00.
Gordon Samuel John Smerdon — oral-history interview,
IWM object 80016952, Reel 1, approximately 18:30–29:00.
Patrick Cannon — oral-history interview, IWM object 80012543,
Reel 2, approximately 05:00–20:00.
These recollections were used to reconstruct the experience of the sinking and rescue. As might be expected from testimony recorded many years after the event, precise timings vary slightly between individual accounts.
Walter Henry Copley
The Imperial Club Magazine, Summer 1938.
East Indies Station report concerning the NAAFI rowing race between the
canteen staffs of HMS Emerald and HMS Norfolk.
Includes the photograph of Canteen Manager Walter H. Copley with Canteen
Assistants L. G. H. Sly, R. D. Green and C. F. H. Westwood, and an
accompanying account signed “W.H.C.”
General Register Office indexes.
Birth and marriage registrations used in tracing Walter Copley and his
family.
1939 Register.
Copley household, 116 Ocean Street, Keyham, Plymouth.
Western Morning News, 26 September 1939.
Contemporary report concerning Walter Copley following the loss of
HMS Courageous, including details of his family and reported
NAAFI career.
Chatham News, 6 October 1939.
Contemporary report concerning Walter Copley, his parents in Chatham
and their reaction to the loss of HMS Courageous.
Newspaper descriptions of Walter's early career contain details which cannot presently be reconciled fully with the surviving records. Where this occurs, the article has treated them as contemporary reports rather than established fact.
Harold George Matheson and HMS Attack
1921 Census of England and Wales.
Harold George Matheson, aged four, recorded in Portsmouth with his
widowed mother Lucy Matheson and older sister Lucy Clarissa.
First World War pension records.
Pension documentation for the family of George Henry Matheson,
Royal Navy service number 290620. The record identifies his widow Lucy
and children Lucy Clarissa and Harold George, whose date of birth is given
as 29 October 1916. This provides the documentary link between the
Courageous casualty and George Henry Matheson.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
George Henry Matheson, Petty Officer Stoker, Royal Navy,
service number 290620, HMS Attack; died 30 December 1917.
Commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Panel 26.
The National Archives, ADM 1/8509/5.
Admiralty papers concerning the loss of HMT Aragon and
HMS Attack, 30 December 1917.
Edward Bishop, Edgar Wallace and Arthur Quirk
Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Royal Navy casualty
records.
Used to establish the identities and positions of Edward George Bishop,
Edgar Patrick Wallace and Arthur George Quirk aboard HMS
Courageous.
Searches were also made of civil registration, census, family-history and contemporary newspaper records. Possible civil registrations have been identified for some of the men, but where the available evidence does not establish an identity with sufficient certainty, those details have not been presented as fact.
The Wider NAAFI Roll of Honour
The Sutlers Supreme — NAAFI Roll of Honour research.
The current Roll of Honour contains 560 individually identified men and women
associated with NAAFI, the Naval Canteen Service and Expeditionary Force
Institutes who lost their lives during the Second World War. The Roll remains
a work in progress and may increase as further records are identified.
Supporting research includes contemporary casualty records and archival material relating to NAAFI and EFI personnel lost in the sinking of the Lancastria on 17 June 1940; the seven NAAFI women killed during the air raid on RAF Waddington on 9 May 1941; and the six NAAFI women killed when a Bristol Blenheim crashed into the canteen at RAF Aldergrove on 19 July 1941.
NAAFI Remembrance
NAAFI News, April 1952, “We Will Remember
Them…”
Illustrated report of the Remembrance service held at Imperial Court,
London, in 1951, including photographs of NAAFI's War Memorial,
the Book of Remembrance and the laying of wreaths.
Photographs & Illustrations
HMS Courageous, c.1935.
Royal Navy official photograph. Imperial War Museums, Q 65692.
Public domain.
HMS Courageous sinking, 17 September 1939.
Royal Navy official photograph. Imperial War Museums, HU 45268.
Public domain.
HMS Emerald NAAFI canteen crew, 1938.
The Imperial Club Magazine, Summer 1938.
HMS Attack alongside HMT Aragon,
30 December 1917.
UK Government photograph, Surgeon Oscar Parkes Collection.
Public domain.
NAAFI War Memorial and Book of Remembrance,
Imperial Court, London.
Photograph published in NAAFI News, April 1952,
illustrating the Remembrance service held in 1951.
Map: The Final Patrol of HMS Courageous.
Prepared for The Sutlers Supreme using the recorded position of the
sinking in the Western Approaches.
Note on Sources
Every effort has been made to distinguish between information established by contemporary records and details which remain uncertain. Historical research of this kind is necessarily ongoing, and corrections or additional information concerning any of the men and women commemorated here are always welcome.
Historical newspaper extracts, magazine material and archival images are reproduced or quoted for the purposes of non-commercial historical research, criticism, review and commemoration. Copyright remains with the respective rights holders where applicable. Public-domain images are identified as such in their individual captions.
