I love old movies and with December fast approaching, I’ll be watching White Christmas (1954) for the umpteenth time. I never tire of the opening scene with Bing Crosby on a make-shift stage near the front line singing Irving Berlin’s seasonal banger of the film title. The song was originally written in 1942 and became a favourite with audiences through the Second World War. Filmed almost a decade after the end of the war, Paramount Pictures knew how to conjure up those memories of United Service Organisation (USO) camp show entertainment during those dark days, the whole thing dripping with nostalgia.
Speaking as a dual-citizen, how did the USO, populated by glamorous Hollywood stars, compare to Britain’s equivalent civilian organisation, the Entertainment National Services Organisation (ENSA)? Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Marlene Dietrich vs. George Formby, Gracie Fields, and Tommy Trinder? Is it even a fair fight? Whilst catering to different tastes, different cultural references, and different expectations of entertainment, both organisations worked hard to boost the morale of service men and women stationed overseas and worked within a larger framework of military welfare. A comparison reveals how the US and UK managed morale of their servicemembers and reveals how the two countries considered its citizen soldiers as part of society.
A Question of Morale
Both the UK and the US authorities regarded troop morale as important in beating an enemy whose troops had very different motivations to fight. To help maintain morale, the US Army’s Special Services Division was established in March 1942. It was responsible for a wide range of wholesome activities to distract the troops whilst they were not training or in combat; including athletics, entertainment, recreation, and other leisure activities such as reading. The staff structure covered welfare & recreation, army motion pictures, information-education, and facilities. Additionally there was a civilian-based component of the Division responsible for research, conducting sociological studies across the US Army. Each regiment had a morale officer, supported by a number of Special Services companies.[1] Partnering with the USO, the Special Services Division Entertainment section provided shows and established a network of clubs and hotels overseas (they partnered with the Red Cross to do the same at home in the US).
Whilst the importance of morale within the British Army during the Second World War was never in doubt, the organisation of welfare took some time to establish itself. The question of troop morale really hit home after the British Army’s defeat and retreat from Dunkirk. Up to this point, morale and troop welfare was based on best efforts by a unit’s or formation’s Commanding Officer. A new Directorate of Army Welfare was established under the Adjutant-General (AG) in mid-1940 under General Sir Ronald Adam. Dedicated Welfare Officers were attached to military formations and regular Morale Reports were established by the War Office to monitor and recommend remedial action where appropriate.[2] Morale was a slippery subject at the time and General Ronald Adam’s apologetic explanation explains a lot of the British attitudes to this suspicious new concept:
“Morale is a psychological problem like sex, and therefore the Britisher is almost ashamed to talk about it.”[3]
No place for psychological problems, like sex, in the British Army! This was a world apart from the scientific attitude of the US Army towards morale. Confusion around responsibilities became exacerbated when Army Welfare took ownership of entertainment. Up to this point, the Navy, Army, Air Force, Institute (NAAFI), established in 1920 as a not-for-profit civilian-run organisation, had been responsible for recreation. This included entertainment, through their relationship with ENSA. Unlike Army Welfare, the NAAFI reported to the British Army’s Quarter Master General. Naturally being British, the NAAFI did not have a written constitution, which left room for interpretation and consequently the organisation of entertainment was a buggers-muddle for much of the war. Discord flourished in the relationship between ENSA and Army Welfare.[4]
Over on the other side of the Atlantic, a variety of civilian organisations had been responsible for providing welfare to US servicemembers in the First World War. The YMCA, YWCA, National Catholic Community Services, National Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army, and National Travellers Aid Association met to discuss “catering for the spiritual and moral welfare” of the troops and formed the USO on 4 February 1941.[5] Like ENSA, the USO was a civilian organisation that was quasi-state run. The USO’s mission was to offer servicemembers “intelligent recreation…. participation in worthwhile, leisure activities”, fuelled by “real community hospitality”.[6] Whilst there was some conflict between the Red Cross and the USO in the provision of welfare early in the war, this was resolved by the War Department who determined that the USO would be responsible for welfare overseas and the Red Cross at home in the US. General Byron in his USO Camp Show Publicity Records (1941-55) expanded on the USO’s role:
“USO has four needs to serve
emotional (which means movies, Camp Shows troupes, and GI Shows)
digestive (ice cream pop and candy)
intellectual (library and records)
physical (athletics)
Overseas the emotional need is the greatest.”[7]
The USO had a wider brief than Basil Dean’s vision for ENSA’s remit, by including athletics, sweet treats (donuts are never far away if you’re a GI), and connecting the troops to a wider community. Winchell in her book, “Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun”, points to a deeper spiritual and improving foundation, the “USO agencies and fund-raisers believed that servicemen needed healthy recreation to keep them out of trouble and to sustain their humanity.”[8] As someone living in England, I’m already shuffling my feet and looking uncomfortable. In 1941, I cannot imagine Tommy Trinder signing up to such high-minded ideals. Trinder had already undermined ENSA within the first few months of its conception by coining the phrase which stuck, “Every Night Something Awful.” Can you imagine what he would have done with “sustain their humanity”?
The Role of Women
One of the ways the USO delivered the broad troop welfare goal to “sustain their humanity”, was through the use of women, not only as entertainers (singers, dancers, and comedians) but also as junior and senior hostesses. The role of women in the USO during the Second World War needs much more analysis, but Winchell describes the dynamic succinctly:
“While the USO depended on junior hostesses to use their beauty and sexual appeal to entice men into USO clubs, it contributed to the construction of older women, and mothers, as asexual.”[9]
This was a very different approach to ENSA. However, there are parallels with the USO senior hostesses and the voluntary role Joyce Grenfell played in acting as a mother figure whilst visiting them in military hospitals on behalf of ENSA (see previous post). Whilst Grenfell helped injured troops write letters home and sang to them, the USO’s senior hostesses went further by providing informal counselling to young GIs. The USO may have been fitting women into archetypal junior and senior female roles in a very masculine world, but the ability to provide counselling services may have had a more significant impact on troop morale than simply providing entertainment. There’s rooms for more research is needed on this topic.
Talking of research, the Special Service Division took a much more scientific approach to troop welfare. They conducted comprehensive social surveys asking servicemembers about their attitudes to recreation, entertainment, athletics, etc. The data from these surveys have been preserved on the excellent American Soldier of WW2 website. US servicemembers were asked questions like:
- During your off-duty free time about how often do you go to the movies here in camp?
- When you go to the movies, what three kinds of feature pictures do you like best?
Imagine! Asking the troops their preferences of entertainment? Obviously, to Colonel Blimp, this was all very un-British and verging on bolshie behaviour liable to undermine the very fabric of military command. I have not been able to find an equivalent set of survey’s for the Dominion, UK, and Empire forces during the Second World War covering the topic of morale. As with school dinners, British troops were served up what was on offer, and they would bloody well enjoy it! Never did me any harm, etc.
Over paid, over here, etc
Another key difference in terms of the remit of the two organisation is that ENSA had to balance the needs of entertainment on the home front as well as on the front-line overseas. The USO was only responsible for the entertainment of US troops overseas. Whilst the provision of entertainment at home would have had simpler logistics compared to theatres of war like the Western Desert or Italy, there was only a finite number of entertainers available to ENSA. Where ENSA employed nearly 4000 artists by the end of 1944, the USO employed 5424 performers of which only 1522 were prepared to be sent abroad to entertain the troops.[10] Unlike entertainers in the UK, US performers could claim deferment from draft from May 1942 after movies were designated as essential industry.[11] Many of ENSA’s potential pool of artists that could be drawn upon ended up being conscripted into the British Army in roles that kept them far away from greasepaint.
Inevitably, US artists were paid significantly more than the £4 to £20 per week scale enforced by ENSA during the war.[12] Despite the better pay, USO rates were about 1/3rd of what a performer could expect in a commercial theatre in the US. Both ENSA and USO had to tread carefully when it came to protecting their nation’s commercial interests of privately owned organisations. Great lengths were taken to avoid organised service entertainment undercutting commercial cinemas, dance-halls, and theatres in the UK. ENSA worked very closely with the cinema owners and film distributors in the UK (see previous post), as did the USO.
The topic of charging for performances was another differentiator between ENSA and the USO. At the beginning of the war, US Camp Shows charged 25 cents for entry, but this was abolished in March 1942.[13] ENSA imposed a charge for their performances, but when it became clear that their allies down the road were watching USO shows for free, British soldiers wrote to their MPs accusing the organisation of profiteering.[14] In October 1943, the USA informed the British Ministry for Labour that the entertainment of US troops in the UK would be the sole responsibility of the USO, however, General Marshall caveated this by saying “first, soldiers of the Allies as well as American enlisted men should see the show free of charge; second, all monies realised from the tour of the United Kingdom should go to British service charities.”[15]
Given the close military collaboration of the UK and US during the war, ENSA and the USO needed to cooperate where possible despite the differences. ENSA supported the USO by providing theatrical equipment; Basil Dean writes, “in 1943 Drury Lane workshops made and supplied the US Forces with 75 portable stages and 45 switchboards”.[16] British entertainers were performing at USO shows as well, including Harry Secombe and Irissa Cooper. [17] Similarly British servicemembers enjoyed US Camp Shows where available.
ENSA: A Very British Organisation
Whilst on the surface the USO and ENSA had similar roles in the war, a closer inspection highlights some important differences. The US attitude towards morale, the employment of social research to understand attitudes towards entertainment, how these civilian organisations operated within a military setting, and the role of women to maintain morale off-stage (as well as on) were all points of departure. At the time, it is difficult to see how the British could have implemented any of the elements practiced by the USO as they were operating in very different social, cultural, and political contexts. In this way, ENSA was a very British organisation and, despite the muddle, provided much needed entertainment to factory workers and troops serving at home and abroad. I will still be enjoying Irving Berlin’s White Christmas this weekend and I’m once again reminded that the English and the Americans are two people divided by a common language.
[1] Maj Megan C. Cain, US Army, ‘Morale - Sustaining the Cognitive Weapon of War: Insights from the World War II Special Services Division’ (unpublished Masters Thesis, School of Advanced Military Studies US Army Command and General Staff College, 2019).
[2] Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1956), p. 114.
[3] Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War, Armies of the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 12.
[4] Harry Miller, Service to the Services The Story of the NAAFI, 1st edn (Newman Neame Limited, 1971), p. 29.
[5] Richard Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh: Entertaining the British and American Armed Forces, 1939-1946 (Macdonald and Jane’s, 1978), p. 112.
[6] Meghan K. Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II, Gender and American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 2.
[7] Samantha Joy Pearlman, ‘“Something for the Boys” An Analysis of the Women of the USO Camp Shows, Inc. and Their Performed Gender’ (unpublished Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Theater, Wesleyan University, 2011), p. 19 <https://digitalcollections.wesleyan.edu/_flysystem/fedora/2023-03/22445-Original%20File.pdf> [accessed 26 March 2024].
[8] Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun, p. 9.
[9] Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun, p. 31.
[10] Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh, p. 13.
[11] Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh, p. 115.
[12] Gracie Fields, ‘Variety: American Troupers, as in England, Will Carry On For the Cause’, Variety (7 January 1942), p. 27.
[13] Pearlman, ‘“Something for the Boys” An Analysis of the Women of the USO Camp Shows, Inc. and Their Performed Gender’, p. 21.
[14] Fawkes, Fighting for a Laugh, p. 22.
[15] Andrew Merriman, Greasepaint and Cordite: The Story of ENSA and Concert Party Entertainment during the Second World War (Aurum, 2012), p. 120.
[16] Dean, The Theatre at War, p. 268.
[17] Harry Secombe, Arias and Raspberries: An Autobiography (Fontana, 1990), p. 115; Merriman, Greasepaint and Cordite, p. 121.