New Zealand Forces Club in Cairo (interview)

Eleanor behind a counter at the New Zealand Forces Club in Cairo.

Campaign memories: New Zealand Forces Club

Eleanor Fraser served in the Women's War Service Auxiliary as a Tui in the New Zealand Forces Club in Cairo. She left for Egypt in September 1941 with 29 other young women with whom she would work in the club, behind one of the counters supplying refreshments to the troops on leave. Here she describes the routine of the club:

Transcript

We started work at eight o'clock so we must have got up fairly early but that was all right, especially in the summer. We'd have a very good breakfast, fruit or juice and porridge of some kind, or cereal, probably scrambled eggs and then we'd go down into the club. Half the girls would be working on the counters and half would go into the preparation room down on the ground floor. Halfway through we'd change over.

There was a cake and sandwich counter which was jammed right against a wall. We were busy. That huge lounge would become jammed with troops, shoulder to shoulder, all wanting food. In the middle of summer it was always very hot. You couldn't get out because there were too many troops in front. You'd run out of sandwiches and see the suffragi coming with this suitcase thing full of sandwiches away at the far end. It'd be on his head because it was the only way he could get it through the crowd, and quite often he'd get within a few feet then some drunken soldier would tip it up and all the precious sandwiches [would] go on the floor. All the boys would be getting impatient, 'bloody women' this and 'bloody women' that, you know, because there weren't any sandwiches. It was a horrible counter to get trapped on.

Next door to it was the tea counter. It was just a small thing with a half kind of shutter and the girls had to sit on a high stool [at] the counter. [We] had a great big teapot and when it was full we literally couldn't lift it, we just had to tip it until half of it had gone. Then around from there was the soft drink counter. Underneath the counter there were a couple of shelves where all the bottles were kept. We had to stand on duck boards off the ground because there was so much stuff on the floor. We got terribly sticky because it got all over you, this ghastly stuff, and every so often in the hot weather a bottle would burst and there'd be glass and gaseuse, as it was called, all over the floor. You got trapped on that counter because it was very long and the boys who had nothing else to do would stand there and talk at you in between customers and you couldn't get away from them.