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Title:RECREATION BEFORE REPATRIATION AT BOMBAY [Allocated Title]
Film Number:ABY 177
Other titles:ROYAL AIR FORCE OPERATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR [Allocated Series Title]
Summary: Airmen enjoy some time on leave in Bombay (Mumbai), India, while awaiting embarkation for return to the United Kingdom
Description: Indian countryside seen from a moving train including a ramshackle village and a scrub-covered rocky valley. View along the side of the train as it rounds a bend. Airmen lean out from carriage windows with Indian children begging below. Men step off the train. Men wash themselves at a trough on the platform. A man buys tea from a 'char wallah'. A serviceman in glasses gives his luggage to some local Indian bearers to carry. A carriage is marked 'G.I.P' ('Great Indian Peninsula'). A soldier wearing the cap badge of the Seaforth Highlanders gives something to an Indian. View from the moving train; a station platform with a London Underground-style circular roundel (the location is not legible). Further along the platform a rectangular sign reads 'Sandhurst Road'. Airmen and women in swimming costume on Juhu Beach, Bombay. Men play with a ball in the water. Men in swimming trunks watch local fishermen at work; they appear to have had a good catch. Men watch a snake charmer. Rooftops at Worli Transit Camp. Two men on a balcony; a sign reads 'No.3 Release Embarkation Centre Worli'. A parade of shops at a Worli bazaar; two airmen stop outside the 'Indo-Burma Store' and examine some clothing. A number of signs advertising various helpful services such as 'Clothes altered to fit you' and 'Parcel service to UK' can be read. In a concert hall Monty Banks, acting as compere, introduces his wife, singer and comedienne Gracie Fields. Fields performs and the audience applaud enthusiastically. At an open-air swimming pool a man bounces several times on a diving board before making a rather underwhelming effort at a dive. General view of the pool.
Alternative Title:ROYAL AIR FORCE OPERATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR [Allocated Series Title]
Production Details: Air Ministry, Directorate of Public Relations (Production sponsor)
Royal Air Force Film Production Unit (Production company)
Goozee, S (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: Fields, Gracie (person)
Entertainments National Service Association (regiment/service)
British Army, Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany's) (regiment/service)
Keywords: Bombay, West India, India (geography)
Repatriation (event)
Home Front, India, Second World War (event)
Welfare and recreational activities and services, Burma 1942-1945, Second World War (event)