Title:FRENCH AND BRITISH TROOPS FRATERNISING [Allocated Title]
Film Number:BCY 17/2
Other titles:
Summary: Unedited and uncensored newsreel rushes showing British and French troops behind the front line in the Saar sector of the Allied front.
Description: A group of British and French soldiers is seen in a wood near Kédange-sur-Canner (?) posing for the camera in a show of inter-Allied harmony. 'Tommies' and 'Poilus' peel potatoes. A British soldier has his cigarette lit by a match held by a Frenchman. A row of laughing and smiling 'Tommies' and 'Poilus' pose for the camera arm-in-arm. A work detachment of British and French soldiers use spades and pick axes to improve the surface of a soggy track running through the wood. French soldiers, some wearing the big floppy berets of the Chasseurs Alpins, walk past the labourers carrying saplings. Close ups of the smiling faces of two men, one British, the other French; the Frenchman poses for the camera wearing a forage cap on top of a balaclava and a greatcoat. With bayonets fixed to their rifles, a 'Tommy' and a 'Poilu' are seen on sentry duty in the wood in front of a stack of small arms ammunition crates. The two men pose for the camera in their steel helmets; the Briton on the left is armed with the standard British Army SMLE Mk III rifle, the Frenchman with the shorter Lebel Model 1886 rifle.
Production Details: Universal (Production company)
Noble, R (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Expeditionary Force (1939-1940) (regiment/service)
French Army, Chasseurs d'Alpin (regiment/service)
Keywords: Kédange-sur-Canner, Moselle, France (geography)
Phoney War 1939-1940, Second World War (event)
British Army 1939-1945 (theme)
France and the Low Countries 1939-1940 (theme)
