Title:ARMY POST OFFICE AND BIG GUNS [Allocated Title]
Film Number:BAY 3
Other titles:
Summary: Unedited and uncensored newsreel rushes showing troops serving with the British Expeditionary Force in northern France at work and at play.
Description: I. British soldiers dash out of the doorways of their billets in a village outside Arras in northern France when they hear a bugle call (?) announcing the arrival of mail, from home. An exterior shot of a building used by the Army as a field post office. Filmed from a first floor window, a large number of soldiers mob officers (?) who have arrived with the mail. Soldiers read letters from home. From inside a shop set up by the Army in an ground floor room, British soldiers are seen lining up at an open window and buying cigarettes and sweets.
II. British soldiers lining the edge of the pitch while watching a football match; two teams of footballers in striped shirts kicking the ball about.
III. Army signallers expertly manhandle a telegraph pole into a vertical position and drop it into a pit they have dug during work to improve communications in the British Expeditionary Force's zone of operations in northern France.
IV. The gunlayer of a Vickers BL 8-inch howitzer Mk VIII positioned at the edge of a wood near Auchy-en-Bois (?) squints through the gun sights and cranks the gun barrel onto the correct target elevation. Scenes in a farm which serves as a billet and fire base for gunners serving with the 1st Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery's 5th Battery; the French farm owner leads a large plough horse by the reins past 8-inch projectiles and large crates containing artillery propellant charges; his wife hurries several ducks along. The main farmyard is home to several vehicles parked under camouflage netting and an 8-inch howitzer camouflaged with straw and tarpaulin. Its crew pretend to load a projectile into the breech. A view of the gun muzzle and the rifling inside the barrel. The howitzer detachment inserts a ram rod into the breech to clean the inside of the barrel. An 8-inch howitzer in position at the edge of a wood has been camouflaged with tree branches. The barrel is at a high elevation. The gun crew inserts a ramrod into the breech, not to insert an 8-inch shell but to clean the the gun barrel.
Production Details: British Paramount News (Production company)
Bayliss, Frederick W "Fred"Paramount News (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, Royal Artillery, 1st Heavy Regiment (regiment/service)
British Expeditionary Force (regiment/service)
Keywords: France (geography)
Phoney War 1939-1940, Second World War (event)
British Army 1939-1945 (theme)
Camouflage (theme)
France and the Low Countries 1939-1940 (theme)
