Title:9TH DIVISION AND RAILWAY ENGINEERS [Allocated Title]
Film Number:IWM 406
Other titles:
Summary: Troops of 9th (Scottish) Division and Railway Engineers on the Western Front, 1918.
Description: Highlanders, probably 8th/10th Battalion, the Gordon Highlanders, sit with some South African Engineers of 9th Division outside the ruins of Arras Cathedral, 24th January 1918. Royal Engineers (or possibly South African Engineers throughout) repair a broken railway wagon and shunting engine, using the syphon attached to the engine to collect water from a flooded shellhole. Full sized and narrow gauge railway trains cross on the level. Other narrow gauge trains, one carrying shells, pass the camera. One of the locomotives re-coals. The film returns to Highlanders (8th/10th Gordons ?) parading outside Arras Cathedral with their pipe band. A South African 6-inch 26cwt howitzer under scrim in action. Mail distribution to men of the South African Brigade in camp. Troops crowded onto a narrow gauge train, filmed from the moving train itself. Four very large soldiers posed for the camera (possibly a joke about their weight ?) not clearly seen as the film breaks up.
Production Details: War Office Cinema Committee (Production sponsor)
Topical Film Company (Production company)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, Gordon Highlanders, 8/10th Battalion (regiment/service)
British Army, Div 9, South African Bde (regiment/service)
South African Army, South African Bde (regiment/service)
British Army, Royal Engineers (regiment/service)
Keywords: buildings, French - religious: cathedral & [damaged] (object name)
transport, British military - rail: narrow gauge train & [+] (object name)
supplies, British, movement [FA] - munitions (object name)
operations, British military - maintenance (object name)
combat, South African - artillery bombardment (object name)
weapons, British - gun: 6-inch 26cwt howitzer & [South African] (object name)
communications, South African military - postal (object name)
01/3(4-15).8 (event)
Arras Cathedral, Arras, Pas-de-Calais, France (geography)
