Summary: British troops, predominantly Cavalry, Amiens area, Western Front, late March or early April 1918.
Description: Royal Engineers start to dig a trench in open country. Men of the Machine Gun Corps (?) rest by the roadside. More soldiers dig trenches in the open. A column of horsemen, possibly 1st Cavalry Division, on patrol quite close to the front, pass others waiting dismounted in a leafless wood. A soldier asleep in a foxhole while others nearby rest and eat (they have mud covers on their rifles - probably a safe area). Infantry lining a scrape trench are approached by a group of prisoners (?) while in the background horsemen gallop past. Soldiers holding a more substantial trench. A group of Cavalry officers holds an open air briefing while German prisoners rest nearby. A Cavalryman escorts three prisoners who are on foot. More Cavalry trot along a road. At a dressing station some wounded, including two French soldiers, are given tea (?). A smashed 18-pounder with its limber overturned on the roadside and the dead bodies of its crew beside it. In a railway siding two French and one British soldier inspect a burnt out ammunition train hit by a German bomb. Refugees from Amiens, some quite smartly dressed, wheeling handcarts and loading furniture onto a lorry.
Production Details: Ministry of Information (Production sponsor)
Topical Film Company (Production company)
McDowell, J B (Production individual)
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, Royal Engineers (regiment/service)
British Army, Machine Gun Corps (regiment/service)
British Army, Div, Cavalry, 1 (?) (regiment/service)
French Army (regiment/service)
Keywords: weapons, British - gun: 18-pounder field gun & [wrecked] (object name)
animals, mammals: horse & [casualties] (object name)
casualties, British dead - battlefield (object name)
medical, British military - emergency (object name)
society, British military - sustenance (object name)
casualties, French wounded - battlefield (object name)
transport, British military - rail: ammunition train & [wrecked] (object name)
refugees, French - flight (object name)
engineering, military, British: trenches (object name)
01/3(4-15).81 (event)
Somme, France (geography)
