Title:I. MEN CABLE LAYING IN TRENCH. II. GENERAL IRONSIDE AT G.H.Q. [Allocated Title]
Film Number:BAY 12
Other titles:
Summary: Unedited and uncensored newsreel rushes showing British soldiers laying a telephone cable in a French village and the departure of General Sir Edmund Ironside, Chief of Imperial General Staff, from the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force in northern France.
Description: I. An inscription on the film leader - 'Fred Bayliss No. 1 Cable Laying'. British Army signallers are seen at work on a wet day in a French village filling in a ditch and levelling it off with tools to stamp freshly-laid tarmac (?) down. All the men at work are wearing waterproof capes. A mechanical digger cuts a narrow trench by the roadside. A long and heavy telephone cable is shouldered by a line of soldiers wearing steel helmets and waterproof capes and unwound from a cable drum before then being laid in the trench which has become flooded by the heavy rainfall. The mechanical excavator makes light work of cutting a narrow ditch by the roadside; the signallers at work laying the telephone cable make heavy work of their task.
II. An inscription on the film leader 'Fred Bayliss 3 Ironside starts Englandwards'. The Army driver (a Lance-Corporal) of General Sir Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), attaches the Union Jack insignia of the CIGS to the statuette at the front of his Rolls Royce staff car; the setting is the courtyard of the chateau used as his general headquarters by General Lord Gort, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expedionary Force (BEF), outside Arras at Avesnes-le-Comte. Ironside, who is seen smoking a cigarette, poses for the camera and with the help of his aide-de-camp (ADC) puts on his 'British warm'. Lord Gort and his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, wave goodbye to Ironside as his Rolls Royce leaves the courtyard; the vehicle registration is 'PMF 132'.
Production Details: British Paramount News (Production company)
Bayliss, Frederick W "Fred"Paramount News (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: Vereker, John Standish Surtees Prendergast (6th Viscount Gort) (person)
Pownall, Henry Royds (person)
Ironside, William Edmund (person)
British Expeditionary Force (1939-1940) (regiment/service)
Keywords: Avesnes-le-Comte, Pas-de-Calais, France (geography)
Phoney War 1939-1940, Second World War (event)
British Army 1939-1945 (theme)
France and the Low Countries 1939-1940 (theme)
