Last Year's 50th Anniversary celebrations for VE and VJ Day brought back memories of my time in the RAF Film Unit.
During the war, the Army and RAF formed film units in order to record events and activities of each of those services. Both units were based at Pinewood Studios, together with the Crown Film Unit, which produced public information films under the direction of the Ministry of Information.
After initial military training, my request to join the RAF Film Unit was successful and I was posted to Pinewood. It was strange being back there in uniform, rejoining the friends I had previously worked with in civvy street. I was sent on a course of instruction on the use of cameras in combat and was issued with a 35mm still camera and a 16mm magazine loading Cine Kodak camera, the type that was also used in camera guns on Spitfires. The course usually lasted eight weeks but the group I was with h!
ad to do it in two. I passed out with the rank of sergeant. I joined the sound crew with Flight Lieutenant Alan Allen and Sergeant Cyril Collick. We had a 35mm Visatone sound-on-film recorder which although portable was quite bulky. With us on the picture side was Reg Cavanagh who had a 1000ft 35mm Vinten camera which could be synch interlocked with a Visatone recorder. Ronnie Shears and Alan White had portable 35mm Newman Sinclair cameras and Harry Gillum a 35mm Bell & Howell Eymo.
Instead of the usual seven days embarkation leave we had only 48 hours before they packed us off with our equipment to Scotland and departure overseas. We boarded ship at the port of Greenock and sailed to join the British North Africa Forces.
It was September 1943 and the North African desert campaign was well under way. We were to be attached to an American unit under canvas. When we arrived, quite tired after the journey, Ronnie Shears and I unpacked our blankets and lay down on the sand for a kip. While we were lying there an American Top Sergeant came round to check on the unit's well being. When he saw Ronnie and me crashed out on the sand he said "Gee, you guys. Where are your beds?". "Beds?" we said "We don't have beds!" and to our delight he immediately issued us with a chit to draw folding camp beds from the PX. We kept those beds with us for the 'rest' of our war service.
Once settled in we set to work covering troops transported in gliders towed by aircraft. They were practising transporting troops to a required area as quickly as possible. This activity was undoubtedly rehearsing for the Normandy landings where troops were flown in in exactly that way. Our pictures were probably used for research.
Eventually we were ordered to load our equipment into trucks, which still had desert camouflage and to make ready for the crossing to Italy. We embarked in an American LST (Landing Ship-Tank) and set sail for Salerno. On the way over we filmed the troops in various activities which helped keep up morale by taking our minds off the worry of soon being under heavy enemy fire.
When we arrived off Salerno, Allied battleships were circling the bay shelling the German positions in the mountains at the back. The Luftwaffe were dive bombing the beach and tragically the LST in front of us was hit and blown out of the water. Our landing was delayed while anti aircraft guns were set up on the beach. Once the guns were in action the German planes were forced to fly higher which reduced their accuracy quite considerably.
The trucks with our gear in were on the top deck of the LST so we had to wait until they could be lowered by the on-board lift. Once down, they had to be driven off over the wet sand as quickly as possible to prevent them from sinking, which under constant German bombardment was no easy task.
Once safely ashore we dug in alongside a burnt out tobacco factory where the living was quite hazardous. It wasn't the smoke from the tobacco that endangered our health but the German snipers who were still lurking about.
We advanced with the troops along the coast road to Naples and at one point we had to drive our heavily loaded Dodge truck over a partly bomb-demolished bridge. The obviously hasty timber repairs did not inspire confidence in it's safety. We all held our breath as the driver eased the truck forward. Once on the rickety structure we hoped that the driver wasn't, as we all were, shutting his eyes to avoid seeing the horrendous canyon we'd plunge into if the bridge gave way.
While we were based in Naples, Mt Vesuvius decide to become active. We covered the eruption in picture and sound which made a pleasant diversion from war activities. However, life wasn't all 'Chianti and Cantare'. Naples and Pompeii had been heavily mined and booby trapped by the retreating Germans and as they hadn't been cleared yet there was the ever present danger of a hasty dispatch out of this world and into the next.
We were finally based in Rome at the Scalera Film Studios. The railways in Rome had been completely demolished by extremely accurate RAF bombing; so accurate that none of the ancient Roman buildings had been touched. We had the job of filming the results, possibly the RAF wanted a record of their achievement, and the British Government proof of how they'd saved antiquity.
Another assignment while in Rome was covering the Pope's speech from his balcony on the outside of the Vatican buildings in St Peter's Square. It was quite a job making our way with camera and sound equipment through the thousands of people waiting to be blessed by the Pope. I suppose by being there the unit and the gear were also blessed by the Pope and the whole event could have been titled 'Vinten and Visatone at Vatican'.
The war in Europe was drawing to a close and we were all looking forward to returning home to the UK but it was not to be; we were posted to Burma. The journey to there took some weeks and began by setting out from Rome in a railway cattle truck. We sailed to India via the Suez canal and disembarked on arrival at Bombay. From there it was a three day journey across India to Calcutta. The heat was intense, so great in fact that the steam loco had to take on water much more frequently than in cooler cl!
imes due to the high rate of evaporation. The boilers were fuelled with wood and at every stop women workers reloaded the tender with huge logs. We were in a Calcutta transit camp checking our gear and getting ready to continue the journey to Burma when orders came through and we were off to Ceylon to film an interview with Lord Mountbatten.
The trip to Ceylon was in an old DC3 (Dakota) aircraft which had seen better days. The main doors had been taken off when the Canadians had used it for supply dropping. Our equipment was lashed down and during the trip, clouds drifted in through the open doorway. Ronnie Shears wanted pictures of the Taj Mahal so the pilot banked and circled round it while Ronnie hung out of the hole in the fuselage with the rest of us hanging on to his legs to stop him falling out! Luckily the trip back to Calcutta was in a much better aircraft.
On our return to the Calcutta transit camp we got orders to continue to Burma. We set out in trucks overland. Kipling's 'Road To Mandalay' was a really rough ride and we saw no 'flying fish', only a number of Burmese temples destroyed by our troops clearing out the Japanese.
In Rangoon we were once again attached to an American unit (not the one with Errol Flynn). The great luxury on arrival was a hot bath in a sawn in half 40 gallon oil drum heated by a flame thrower.
Filming Gurkha and other troop movements against the Japanese was our main activity in the area around Rangoon, however, we also shot very interesting material within the confines of the Shewdagong Pagoda and the Great Golden Buddha, the statue completely covered with gold leaf, certainly a sight to be seen and remembered.
With the Japanese surrender we returned to the Calcutta transit camp to await transport back to the UK. While we waited I borrowed a 16mm sound projector and films from an RAF Cinema Unit and was quite popular putting on feature film shows much appreciated by the chaps in the camp.
At last the great day came and we were on our way home. 'They say there's a troop ship just leaving Bombay' goes the song and that was us but first we had to cross back over India .
We were not long at sea when I was roped in to do many varied duties - orderly sergeant, guard commander etc. Film unit sound recordist I might be but in the eyes of the RAF I was a sergeant and expected to fulfil the duties as required. At least it helped to pass the time.
One evening there was a film show given by a corporal who had two 16mm sound projectors. I offered to help and the offer was enthusiastically accepted. He gave me one of the projectors and so we were able to give shows on the two decks instead of one.
While I was putting a show on in the Officers Mess one evening, the ship was going through rough weather causing her to roll badly. It was quite odd sitting in the dark feeling your stomach heaving and the picture on the screen staying still.
We eventually arrived in home waters and the ship berthed at Southampton. I was sent to Blackpool by rail, given a demob suit and put on the train back to London and home.
I went back to Denham Studios as a boom operator on the film Odd Man Out.