Description
Object description
Unedited and uncensored (?) newsreel rushes showing infantry units serving with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in northern France taking part in combat training and learning to cope with cold winter weather. A re-enactment of a combat patrol into no-man's-land in the Saar sector of the Allied front for which men serving with the British Expeditionary Force BEF) were awarded with decorations for bravery for the first time.
Full description
Part I. Guardsmen carrying their rifles and wearing their normal service caps and leather jerkins over their tunics file along a shallow communications trench. Guardsmen standing around in close order in a road break ranks and take up firing positions in a roadside ditch beneath a hedgerow. Grouped together in a compact body, they are taught by a non-commissioned instructor how to shoot down low-flying enemy aircraft (?) by aiming their SMLE Mk III rifles skyward at an angle of roughly 35 degrees; they are seen working their rifle bolts without actually firing any rounds. The Guardsmen are wearing 1937-pattern ammunition pouches over their jerkins.
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Part II. Scenes on a bright winter's day in snow-covered fields outside Râches, a village less than 10 kilometres north east of Douai, showing distant figures of British infantrymen from the 1st/7th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment deployed in open order during a company-strength exercise and riflemen in full combat kit kneeling on the ground during a pause in their advance. One infantrymen crawls on his hands and knees across a frozen ploughed field towards the camera. A company commander kneeling on the ground summons three of his platoon commanders and together they hold an impromptu 'order group' in the middle of the open terrain and then disperse. General views of the bare field and nearby farm buildings; distant figures appear as they get up from behind small piles of straw (?) and approaching the camera in single file and in platoon in one long column; the majority are armed with the standard SMLE Mk III rifle but at least two men are shouldering Boyes .5-inch anti-tank rifles (distinguishable by their long thin gun barrels) and several more are carrying Bren light machine guns, which each rifle section in the British Army was supposed to be armed with at this time.
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Part III. A re-staging for the camera of a combat patrol by five men serving with the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment's 'A' Company for which two of them were decorated for heroism and the rest mentioned in despatches: the five men are seen outside their company headquarters, a dugout, emptying their pockets of any letters, photographs and Army paybooks etc. The location is Rumegies near the Franco-Belgian border and the ground is covered in snow. 'A' Company's Company Sergeant-Major (CSM) itemises each man's personal effects in his note book before putting them in a small sack. All the men seen here are wearing steel helmets covered in light coloured cloth and leather jerkins and sleeveless body warmers over their Battledress tunics. The CSM disappears into the dugout with the sack and re-emerges with a map showing the local terrain. Captain Barclay spreads out the map in front of him and briefs his fellow patrol members; they all have fitted long bayonets to their rifles and have dispensed with the regulation gas mask satchel normally worn by troops on duty at this stage in the war. Captain Barclay gives Lance-Corporal Davis an enamelled mug with a slug of whisky in it and after he has downed it, refills the mug and passes it around to the rest of the patrol. The cameraman's car briefly appears in the background during this scene. A final briefing takes place before the five men, set off on into no-man's-land as the sun begins to set and, crouching low, head across a snow-covered field and take up position along a wire fence at its edge. The camera keeps running at a point when there is a pause in the 'action'.
Physical description
35mm