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The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI ) is an organisation created by the British government in 1921 to run recreational establishments needed by the British Armed Forces, and to sell goods to servicemen and their families. It runs clubs, bars, shops, supermarkets, launderettes, restaurants, cafés and other facilities on most British military bases and also canteens on board Royal Navy ships. Commissioned officers are not usually supposed to use the NAAFI clubs and bars, since their messes provide these facilities and their entry, except on official business, is considered to be an intrusion into junior ranks' private lives. NAAFI personnel serving aboard ship are part of the Naval Canteen Service (NCS), wear naval uniform and have action stations, but remaining ordinary civilians. NAAFI personnel can also join the Expeditionary Force Institutes (EFI), which provides NAAFI facilities in war zones. EFI personnel are members of the Territorial Army serving on special engagements, bear ranks and wear uniform. NCS personnel can similarly volunteer to join the Royal Navy when it goes on active service. Petty Officer John Leake, NCS canteen manager in HMS ''Ardent'', was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) in the 1982 Falklands War for his courage while manning a machine gun. ==Before NAAFI== The story of NAAFI begins well before 1920. In 1892, the Hon. Lionel Fortescue, Canteen President of the 17th Lancers, became dissatisfied with the corrupt way in which canteen finances were being handled. He establishes a system for keeping a locked till in the canteen and put Sergeant John Gardner in charge, an honest and able man who would later look after hundreds and thousands of pounds as one of the staff of the Navy and Army Canteen Board during World War I. The locked till practice was soon adopted by other regiments, until another Canteen Officer, Major Harry Crauford of the Grenadier Guards was also dissatisfied with the food provided for his canteen and approached Lionel Fortescue with the idea of forming a co-operative society and doing their own buying. Together, they managed to raise £400 and founded the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society. The rule was that interest was not to exceed five percent and all further profits were to be handed to the regimental canteens as a rebate. They hoped that in time the co-operative would become a buying and distributing agency for the whole Army. In August 1914, all arrangements were upset by the outbreak of World War I. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) - the greater part of Britain's regular Army - was sent to France and hundreds of thousands of young men enlisted to fight for the King and the country. The Government was unprepared for the problem of supplying and feeding the forces on a scale never before experienced, so a large Army entered the field without any official provision. Fortunately the Canteen and Mess Society was still active and was the only contractor which was more concerned with the welfare of the troops than with making money. The Head of the society was summoned to the War Office together with the Managing Director of Richard Dickenson & Co., the soundest and most experienced firm of the canteen contractors. The two organisations were invited to establish a special department and subsequently joined together as the Expeditionary Canteens to serve the nation. Even with the extra money and their combined strength, the service could not be increased fast enough to match the huge expansion of the Armed Forces. In the meantime, many new contractors were finding loopholes for exploiting the situation and it became clear that safeguards were needed to protect the interests of the soldiers and supervise the operations of all these vested interests. In January 1915, a Board of Control was formed and exactly two years later the Army Canteen Committee was registered at the Board of Trade as a company trading not for profit. It absorbed the Canteen and Mess Society, and took over the contracts of Dickenson's and all the other firms supplying the Army in the UK. Within three months it also took over all canteens abroad where British troops were stationed during peace times. The Expeditionary Force Canteens were left in charge in the main theatres of war. In June 1917 the Royal Navy were keen to share in the benefits now being felt by the British soldier and so the Army Canteen Committee assumed the new title of the Navy and Army Canteen Board. When the Royal Air Force (RAF) became a separate arm of the nation's defences in 1918, their canteens were absorbed into the Navy and Army Canteen Board. Lionel Fortescue's vision of a unified canteen system for the Forces was starting to take shape and the nucleus of NAAFI was now in place. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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