Dry January seems an ideal time to examine the important topic of beer supply during the Second World War. This was of enormous interest to British troops serving far from home, and, perhaps surprisingly, the authorities, including Churchill, recognised that a regular ration of ale was more than an indulgence. As Miller points out in his excellent history of the Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute (NAAFI), beer was “a necessity, a lubricant of morale, an extra propellant at the moment of action.”[1] More recently, Fennell’s masterpiece on morale concludes, “The average British soldier had only three interests: football, beer and crumpet.”[2] Admittedly, the author expands on this quite a bit in Fighting the People’s War, but you get the point. Perhaps only tea and cigarettes were more important in terms of the British soldier’s hierarchy of welfare needs. So why did the shortage of beer get so bad that Rifleman Bowlby complained that
“The Eighth Army in Italy’s war-cry, ‘One bottle per man per month perhaps’ was pretty accurate?”[3]
Image: Original wartime caption: “Rolling out the Barrel”; L-R: Pte. F. Wyles, (Birmingham), Pte. S. Moran (Greenock). (from IWM (B 13101))
The supply of beer to the troops was the responsibility of the NAAFI, along with canteens and any number of other aspects of troop welfare during the war. In 1941 over 80,000 tons of precious cargo space were being taken up by shipping beer to the British Army serving in the Middle East.[4] This was clearly inefficient, and the NAAFI soon established its own breweries in Cairo and Alexandria, along with bakeries and butchers, etc. The soldiers didn’t much like the local Egyptian Stella Beer, and the more discerning Tommies noted hints of onion in its bouquet. As the British and Commonwealth forces grew in North Africa, the NAAFI established pubs or roadhouses along the supply routes, like the Noah’s Ark at El Daba (see below) or (my favourite) The Two Bees at Buq Buq.
Image: Photo of ‘Noah’s Ark.’ A tented canteen in the Western Desert, North Africa, 1942. (from Miller, 1971)
The NAAFI requisitioned buildings to establish a chain of breweries in Mersa Matruh, Tobruk, and Benghazi to service the Eighth Army as they advanced. By the time the British Tommy was ready to jump off North Africa and invade Sicily and mainland Italy, they were used to having a good supply of relatively quaffable beer. Whilst wine and spirits were in plentiful supply in Sunny Italy (a bottle of local plonk going for 3 pence in December 1943), beer was not.[5] The authorities soon noticed that the Italian wine being consumed by the British troops tended to be on the strong side. In a report by the Expeditionary Forces Institute in June 1944, a sample bottle of wine was analysed and found to possess the alcoholic equivalent of half a bottle of whisky![6] Posters were promptly put up, warning troops to go easy.
Of course, the posters were largely ignored, and overexuberant drinking became a big problem. Soldiers in rear echelons in Italy, “freely admitted that their principal form of entertainment was to ‘get drunk and fight’.” [7] Too much alcohol also impaired the critical decision-making skills of soldiers on a night out, and drinking was frequently linked to the increased cases of VD in Italy.[8] The NAAFI opened breweries in Italy, but the lack of shipping and more pressing infrastructure problems meant they rolled out slowly. Establishing new breweries took time; the NAAFI lobbied the British and Italian armies to release brewmasters from their ranks (not an easy ask given the manpower shortage at the time). They needed to import hops from Canada and even flew over the first mould of yeast from England.[9] It wasn’t until December 1944 that a brewery was opened in Bari.[10] It was hoped that these measures might improve beer supply so that there would be enough for one bottle per man per week in Italy by the end of 1944.
Image: A Sikh soldier enjoying a pint of beer. (from IWM (NA 20749))
The beer shortage was starting to bite in India and Burma, too, where British troops were rationed to three bottles of beer per man per month. In a memo sent with Churchill’s approval to the Viceroy of India in November 1944, the Secretary of State for India wrote:
“Whether there is enough beer to meet the world demand or not, I think it is true that with the exercise of ingenuity and persistence, anyone can obtain six or eight pints of beer a night in London. As long as this is so, I cannot agree that the ration of three bottles a month to men in Burma can be accepted as reasonable.”[11]
It was clear that those in London found it difficult to understand the shortages halfway around the world, but the mention of six or eight pints of beer a night puts the extreme rations into perspective! That prodigious drinker, Churchill, hated the idea of the troops having to go without and suggested that the beer allocation should be increased to a more reasonable six pints per week in Italy. Like so many of his suggestions, however, the practicalities of providing the additional shipping required to import over 30 million bottles of beer each month proved unrealistic.[12] The supply of beer to Italy and other theatres of war improved during 1945, but it wouldn’t stop the British Army of the Rhine complaining that their ration was only 5.5 pints per head per week in December 1945.[13] Soldiers are always going to grumble about something.
Leave it to the Royal Navy if you need something done properly. As the war in Europe was coming to an end and the senior service anticipated a prolonged campaign against Japan, it planned to build two Amenities ships to be operated by the NAAFI. Only the MV Menestheus was commissioned in the end at a cost of £750,000. The amenity ship included a floating club, shops, cafeterias, ice-cream and soda fountains, a barber shop, and a fully equipped brewery. Using water distilled from the sea, the MV Menestheus was capable of producing 250 barrels of beer per week.[14] As can be seen from the video below from the IWM online collection, the Davy Jones Brewery, “The World’s Only Floating Brewery” offered pints of English Mild Ale for 9d.
The supply of beer was just one of the ways the British authorities tried to maintain troop morale for those serving overseas. It’s always surprising to see how far the authorities went to satisfy the ordinary, everyday needs of the troops in combat.
[1] Harry Miller, Service to the Services The Story of the NAAFI, 1st edn (Newman Neame Limited, 1971), p. 55.
[2] 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. 629.
[3] Alex Bowlby, The Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby, Paperback edition (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021), p. 49.
[4] John Ellis, The Sharp End of War: The Fighting Man in World War II (David & Charles, 1980), p. 291.
[5] Peter Hart, Footsloggers: An Infantry Battalion at War, 1939-45 (Profile Books Ltd, 2023), p. 176.
[6] ‘WO 170/117 Administrative Echelon D.A.D. Army Welfare Services, 1944 Jan. - Dec’, TNA [The National Archives], n.d., TNA WO 170/117 Administrative Echelon D.A.D. Army Welfare Services, 1944 Jan. - Dec.
[7] Keith Lowe, Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024), p. 78.
[8] Tara Louise Finn, ‘“A Pill to Cure an Earthquake”: The Policies and Practices of the British Army and the Royal Navy to Prevent Venereal Disease, 1914-1945’ (unpublished Ph.D. History, University of Buckingham, 2022), p. 202; Diana Butler, ‘CAB 101/224: The British Soldier in Italy, September 1943-June 1944’, TNA [The National Archives], 1967, p. 9, CAB 101/224: The British Soldier in Italy, September 1943-June 1944, by Butler, D.F., 1967.
[9] Miller, Service to the Services The Story of the NAAFI, p. 70.
[10] ‘WO 170/2730 : Miscellaneous: H.Q. E.F.I.’, TNA [The National Archives], n.d., WO 170/678 : 2 District: E.F.I. R.A.S.C.
[11] ‘WO 32-11194 Morale General (Code 105(A)) InterServices Committee’, TNA [The National Archives], n.d., WO 32-11194 Morale General (Code 105(A)) InterServices Committee.
[12] Ellis, The Sharp End of War, p. 291.
[13] ‘WO 32/15772 Morale Reports’, TNA [The National Archives], n.d., WO 32/15772 Morale Reports.
[14] Miller, Service to the Services The Story of the NAAFI, p. 78.