Description
Object description
Unedited and uncensored newsreel rushes showing mortar rounds exploding in a field during firing trials and Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Conservative government, inspecting field defences in the sector of northern France held by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).
Full description
I. Smoke rounds fired by a British Army 3-inch mortar detachment burst in a field near Montenescourt, a village roughly eight miles west of Arras. An observer party consisting of one junior officer and a rifleman armed with an SMLE Mk III rifle dash across a country road and up a grass embankment. From his position on the lip of the embankment, the officer uses a pair of binoculars to observe the fall of shot several hundred yards away. Both men are from 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
Full description
II. Scenes from a tour of inspection of defences manned by the British Expeditionary Force by the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha; the minister inspects a four man Guard of Honour outside a battalion headquarters at Cantin, a village four miles south of Douai (?) in company with a Major-General carrying a short swagger stick. Accompanied by officers in command of local formations and units and Captain Lord Munster, aide-de-camp to General Lord Gort, Hore-Belisha inspects a French reinforced concrete bunker built in 1937 and pauses as he steps out of its heavily armoured door to look at a soldier manning a Vickers machine gun post set amongst sandbags laid to protect the fortification from an attack from the rear. A close-up of the Vickers machine-gunner; he is wearing the new British Army battledress and 1937-pattern webbing. Hore-Belisha's party is seen inspecting a site where new field defences are under construction near a newly-excavated anti-tank ditch already filled with water. The minister himself is some distance away from the camera talking to several ordinary soldiers; he eventually comes closer to the camera but the senior officers present appear to be keeping their distance from him. Lord Munster, armed with a walking stick for the occasion, is seen talking to an officer from a Scottish regiment.
Physical description
35mm