Letter: Feasting in the Naafi clubs

Gerald Haigh
Friday 07 February 1997 00:02 GMT
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Sir: T H K Barron is right (letter, 3 February). No one who had actually eaten and drunk in a Naafi would make the kind of criticisms (tough chops; bromide tea) that were in your original piece.

The big Naafi clubs particularly, in main garrisons, went a little way towards redressing the ludicrous difference between the social facilities for officers and sergeants and those for other ranks. I have particularly good memories, from the mid-Fifties, of the Naafi club in Singapore - a superb, modern building close to the Raffles Hotel.

There, on Sundays, I would eat well, having raised the cash by diving to the bottom of the big swimming pool to retrieve coins lost by tired and emotional servicemen, who had fallen in the night before.

GERALD HAIGH

Bedworth,

Warwickshire

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