Actual battle footage?

[Guest Shmann]

I've been wondering for a long time about the film footage that keeps reappearing on the many WW1 documentaries. Considering the danger involved and the infancy of cinematography at the time, one would think that the majority of these trench shots are posed or rehearsed. Is anyone aware of a doc available on video which addresses this or at least points out the actual battle footage? Maybe there exists a magazine article that would shed light on this?

Thanks.

[Paul Reed]

I believe either a back issue of the Imperial War Museum Review and/or the notes that accompany the Battle of the Somme viedo deal with issue. As you suspect, much of the 'battle footage' is posed. In the Somme film I think it was done at a mine warfare school somewhere near Amiens. The size and weight of cameras of that time meant that filming in battle was pretty much impossible - bullets and shells aside!

I am also sure some early editions of the Yorkshire WFA magazine Gun Fire also had articles on this subject.

[Tom Morgan]

As Paul says, much of the "Battle of the Somme" battle footage was faked. There is real battle footage, but it doesn't make for a very exciting visual image, as the cameraman had to be so far away.

The most famous faked shot is the one following caption 31 - "THE ATTACK. AT A SIGNAL, ALONG THE ENTIRE 16 MILE FRONT, THE BRITISH TROOPS LEAPED OVER THE TRENCH PARAPETS AND ADVANCED TOWARDS THE GERMAN TRENCHES, UNDER HEAVY FIRE OF THE ENEMY."

This is followed by the shot of about 20 men, led by an officer, dashing out of a trench (one man sliding back in) and through barbed wire, with two more of the men falling.

However, immediately AFTER this shot is a long sequence, filmed from the same position as that used to film the detonation of the Hawthorn Ridge mine, of troops advancing towards the crater (figures on the skyline) and more passing round and below it, it towards the village of Beaumont Hamel. The men at the front of this second group turn and begin running down the hill towards the camera position and the two in front both fall. This was only a minute or two into the battle. Perhaps these two men were the first the cameraman had seen killed. In any event he stops filming and resumes a few seconds later by which time there are large numbers of men moving down the hill and towards Beaumont Hamel.

I read that this real bit of battle footage was not considered exciting enough. (The men are just little dots, hundreds of yards away, and many viewers might not even see them. You have to watch the film several times to see what's happening.) So the famous faked bit was added just before this section to give a more immediate impression.

Tom

[Stuart Brown]

Filming The Hawthorn Ridge , waiting for the detonation, the camerman was concerned that he was going to run out of film.

"I looked at my exposure dial. I had used over a thousand feet. The horrible thought flashed through my mind, that my film might run out before the mine blew. Would it go up before I had time to reload?"(another 250 feet and the mine was detonated).

He goes on to say that he swung the camera to our own parapets where the engineers were swarming over the top. Then at another signal , men emerged from the trenches in front of him and he could see that numbers were shot down before they reached the top of the parapet. The Germans realised that the great attack had come and shrapnel poured into our trenches. At that moment my spool ran out .( and he had to reload.)

Map added to give an idea of the location of the cameraman. I believe that there is small CWGC cemetery there now.

From "How I Filmed War" by Lt. Geoffrey Malins.

[Paul Reed]

Nice post Stuart - the map is a useful addition.

There is no cemetery on the site of Malin's position; a water pumping station was added a winter or so ago. The nearest cemetery is Beaumont Hamel British Cemetery, just east of the Sunken Lane.

[Stuart Brown]

Thank you Paul,

That must be the cemetery then - we were there some years ago. I weed my webspace quite regularly so take a copy of the map if not already done so.

Stuart

[Hedley Malloch]

Much of the Malin's Somme movie is not so much faked as falsely described. Examples include Lochnagar Crater passed off as the crater at the Hawthorne Ridge; footage of happy, cheering troops described as returning from action when the film was made of them heading up to the front before July 1; a battalion of the Essex Regiment said to be resting after an attack when, in fact, they never went over the top. It is easy to criticise Malins (and the other cameraman who assisted who is often forgotten) but he had to tell a story with the footage he had and it's not clear how much control he had over the finished product.

I recently watched the episode of the BBC 'The Great War' which dealt with third Ypres. A big chunk of what purports to be the Salient in 1917 is easily recognisable as Malins' Somme July 1 1916 material.

[Conor Dodd]

There is a photo of the Lancashire Fusiliers, supposedly taken on the 01/07/1916 and the caption is The Morning of the Attack.....Just before the attack the Lancashire Fusiliers Await inscrutions and fix bayonets :

" It was the 29th of June he (the photographer) said. Will you come out (of the dugout) while I take your photgraph ? We all said yes and stodd there fixing bayonets. It was just for the newspapers thats all. Lancashire Fusiliers going over the top ! We weren't at all. We all went back into the dugout after that.

Said by NCO George Ashurst

[Mark Hone]

Didn't somebody claim recently that the famous scene of the mine going off is Lochnagar rather than Hawthorn Ridge? What evidence is there?

[Tom Morgan]

Didn't somebody claim recently that the famous scene of the mine going off is Lochnagar rather than Hawthorn Ridge? What evidence is there?

Hedley mentioned this but as he said, any possible subterfuge was in passing off the Lochangar mine crater as the Hawthorn Ridge crater in the shot following the explosion. The exploding mine is definitely the Hawthorn Ridge mine, but the crater shown afterwards can't be, as the Hawthorn Ridge crater remained in german hands and Malins couldn't have filmed it.

[Paul Reed]

Anyone who has visited the battlefield today will clearly see this is Hawthorn Ridge, but the view of the crater is another matter. I am not convinced it is Lochnagar either, as this was still under direct German observation for the first week of July 1916, and Malins would not have been able to film it. It might be the Casino Point mine, or there is a later version of the film, when the crater at Hawthorn Ridge was filmed after the November attack. It is so long since I last watched this, I don't recall the size of the said crater; which will obviously dictate whether it is Casino Point or another, larger mine.

Incidentally, Malins wasn't alone. He was accompanied by Lt 'Baby' Brookes, a photographer, who took all the stills.

[Tom Morgan]

The sequence of the two soldiers inspecting the crater, which appears following caption 29, is repeated after Caption 51. According to the booklet which accompanies the video, the IWM has an annotated captions list, which gives name of cameraman, place and date for many sequences. This list has a note for Caption 51 saying that this mine-crater sequence was filmed by Malins near La Boisselle on 5th July. This annotation was probably the start of the "Lochnagar" theory. The surrounding countryside does look like the Lochnagar area, but the annotated captions list is apparently demonstrably wrong in some of the ascriptions it makes!

[paul guthrie]

Conor quotes George Ashulst. His book, My Bit, A Lancashire Fusilier At War is superb, the best ever account by a true working class ranker soldier. Recently when I acquired some old ST! issues I saw a letter from him in one, he was 89. John Giles did not seem to be aware of the book, it must not have been published at the time. Unfortunately the book is at home and I can't tell you today when it was published. I am aware that I make this statement often enough that one would be entirely justified in asking why I don't get one for the house! The closest I can come to a decent answer is the cost of flying to Europe twice a year to visit the battlefields!

[Paul Reed]

George Ashurst was a veteran member of the WFA; he came to quite a few meetings, and I met him once or twice. His manuscript was made some time before the book was published (by the Crowood Press in 1987 in hbk), and I am sure Alf Peacock had something to do with it - at least he had a copy from which he sent me some extracts relating to Beaumont Hamel.

[Tom Morgan]

Conor quotes George Ashulst. His book, My Bit, A Lancashire Fusilier At War is superb, the best ever account by a true working class ranker soldier.............. Unfortunately the book is at home and I can't tell you today when it was published.

First published 1987 by the Crowood Press, Paul, with a later (about 1990?) edition, edited by Richard Holmes.

Tom

[Adam Harland]

While there may be doubts as to the filming on the Somme, there is at least one instance of the filming of a trench raid by the 9th Division in the days prior to the opening of the Battle of Arras in 1917. This took place over two days, as on the first day a British 'short' buried the film team! It would appear that the second attempt at filming was successful, and depicted a raid by the South Africans. I believe this is the source of the often used photographs of a raiding party moving up a trench, most recently seen on the cover of Gary Sheffield's last book. There are a number of printed sources that describe these matters, no doubt as they were remarkable in the context of soldiers experience of the filming of the war. The original papers from the SA raid are in the PRO, and the reports were written whilst there were still men pinned down in NML, as this is reportrd by the various officers on the raid.

[Walter Kortooms]

The two trench-raids in “The Battle of Arras (full title: The German Retreat and the Battle of Arras)” took place on 6.4.17 and 7.4.17. The first trench-raid shown in the film was by the South Africans (1st Regiment) on 7.4.17. This scene, according to information held at the Film Department at the I.W.M., was shot in the vicinity of Henin by Mr. McDowell.

The second trench-raid shown in the film was a raid by the 9th Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) on 6.4.17, again in the vicinity of Henin and also shot by Mr. McDowell. It says in the Dopesheet that: “7 of our men were killed before the raid started”. You can find a description of this raid at the P.R.O. in the War Diary of the 27th Brigade (WO 95/1770), partly written by Brigadier General F.A. Maxwell. The 7 men that were killed are all buried at Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery in Arras.

The (famous) photographs according to the captions at the Photograph Archive at the I.W.M. are of a raid by the 10th Scottish Rifles on 24/3/17. The problem is that this raid took place “in the darkness of the night” (zero hour was 4pm)!

For more information read:

A.J. Peacock “Evidence In Camera”, Stand To!, 3 (winter, 1981)

W. Alex Frame “Unknown Raiders”, Stand To!, 4 (spring, 1982)

I believe (IMHO) that the photographs are of the raid on 6.4.17.

In “Twenty Years After” Sir Ernest Swinton (ed.) Vol.2, p.876 there is the following caption with the photographs: “Near Arras, on March 24th, 1917 a raiding party waits in a sap for the signal to advance. On this occasion the Official Photographer followed them. Unfortunately, a few moments later a shell fell short, killing seven men…The men in these pictures belong to the 10th Scottish Rifles.”

From the War Diary of the 27th Brigade (on the raid by the 9th Scottish Rifles on 6.4.17) (WO 95/1770):

“The smoke barrage was very effective, but several shells (smoke) fell very short including that which unfortunately burst just to the S. of Cuthbert Crater and killed half the party.”

Walter Kortooms