Title:VISIT TO FRONT LINE BY HORE-BELISHA [Allocated Title]
Film Number:BDY 8
Other titles:
Summary: Unedited and uncensored newsreel rushes showing mortar rounds exploding in a field during firing trials and Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Conservative government, inspecting field defences in the sector of northern France held by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).
Description: I. Smoke rounds fired by a British Army 3-inch mortar detachment burst in a field near Montenescourt, a village roughly eight miles west of Arras. An observer party consisting of one junior officer and a rifleman armed with an SMLE Mk III rifle dash across a country road and up a grass embankment. From his position on the lip of the embankment, the officer uses a pair of binoculars to observe the fall of shot several hundred yards away. Both men are from 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
II. Scenes from a tour of inspection of defences manned by the British Expeditionary Force by the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha; the minister inspects a four man Guard of Honour outside a battalion headquarters at Cantin, a village four miles south of Douai (?) in company with a Major-General carrying a short swagger stick. Accompanied by officers in command of local formations and units and Captain Lord Munster, aide-de-camp to General Lord Gort, Hore-Belisha inspects a French reinforced concrete bunker built in 1937 and pauses as he steps out of its heavily armoured door to look at a soldier manning a Vickers machine gun post set amongst sandbags laid to protect the fortification from an attack from the rear. A close-up of the Vickers machine-gunner; he is wearing the new British Army battledress and 1937-pattern webbing. Hore-Belisha's party is seen inspecting a site where new field defences are under construction near a newly-excavated anti-tank ditch already filled with water. The minister himself is some distance away from the camera talking to several ordinary soldiers; he eventually comes closer to the camera but the senior officers present appear to be keeping their distance from him. Lord Munster, armed with a walking stick for the occasion, is seen talking to an officer from a Scottish regiment.
Production Details: British Movietone News (Production company)
Cotter, J (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: Hore-Belisha, Isaac Leslie (person)
British Army (regiment/service)
British Expeditionary Force (1939-1940) (regiment/service)
Keywords: Cantin, Nord, France (geography)
Montenescourt, 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)
