Title:LOCAL LABOURERS AND TACTICAL EXERCISE BY ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS IN NORTHERN BURMA [Allocated Title]
Film Number:JFU 182
Other titles:BRITISH ARMY OPERATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR [Allocated Series Title]
Summary: Local civilian labourers are paid with money and food after a day's work with 29th Brigade (36th Division) near Ywathit in the Mogaung Valley, Northern Burma, while the Royal Welch Fusiliers hold a tactical exercise in no man's land.
Description: A line of Burmese labourers queue up to receive their payment of money (1 rupee, about 1 shilling sixpence at contemporary rates), salt, tea, bully beef and biscuits. A British man in a bush hat with 36th Division insignia (two overlapping rings) pays a labourer.
Tactical exercise. A mortar team of 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, operate an Ordnance ML 3-inch mortar. The sights are adjusted. A man speaks on a field telephone. A man standing in a trench fires two rounds from a PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank). Good view looking over the man's shoulder; the PIAT is fired and an explosion can be seen on a target perhaps a hundred metres away. A soldier fires an Ordnance SBML 2-inch mortar almost horizontally. Soldiers, concealed in long grass, wait as a white smokescreen spreads across a field in front of them. Infantrymen rise out of long grass and advance across the field. Men advancing with a broad smokescreen in front of them. Footage from a banana grove with a number of small bashas or shelters; a Bren gunner enters shot, kneels and fires a burst. A soldier with a Thompson submachine gun ('Tommy gun') fitted with Cutts compensator at the muzzle does likewise before advancing. Second shot; Tommy gunner enters shot, kneels and fires a burst. A very brief, but well focused and identifiable, shot of a section of infantry posing for the camera.
Alternative Title:BRITISH ARMY OPERATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR [Allocated Series Title]
Production Details: War Office Directorate of Public Relations (Production sponsor)
SEAC Film Unit (Production company)
Park, RolandArmy Film and Photo Unit/SEAC Film Unit cameraman/photographer. (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: Northern Combat Area Command (regiment/service)
British Army, 36th Division (regiment/service)
British Army, 29th Infantry Brigade (regiment/service)
British Army, Royal Welch Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion (regiment/service)
Keywords: Mogaung, Burma (geography)
Operations in Northern Burma 1943-1945, Burma 1942-1945, Second World War (event)
Burma 1942-1945 (theme)
British Army 1939-1945 (theme)
