War Diaries Talk

Faces of the War Diaries - Stars of the Silver Screen: New Blog Post

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    http://blog.operationwardiary.org/2014/09/17/faces-of-the-war-diaries-stars-of-the-silver-screen/

    This is a pretty special one, in my opinion. Thanks to @marie.eklid@virginmedia.com we've found an old film mentioned in the diary of 1st Bn, the Cheshire Regiment. It shows them marching past their CO, then later enjoying a meal and some downtime. It also shows Private T.A. Jones, VC. Well worth a watch - it's just under 5 minutes long. Watch out for the dog about a minute and a half in.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    That's fantastic! Gives a real appreciation of the number of men in a Battalion. Also nice to see what we used to call "range stew" or "all in stew" hasn't changed a bit in 100 years...

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Ha! 😄

    Army cuisine at its best!

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    This is really wonderful! I loved the dog and the newspaper seller. Touches of normalcy in these unusual circumstances. Now, the newspaper seller would be hustled off camera or asked to sign a release.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    That's true! I was really struck by how shy Private Jones seemed - amazing really, a normal man who'd done extraordinary things.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Watching him in the video you can imagine his mates were calling out to him trying to put him off and he was waving them to be quiet... I wonder if that's what was going on there? I presume that being filmed was pretty out of the ordinary for most people in those days!

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Heather, That's what I thought, too, when I saw those little hand flicks. He was trying to stop his mates from giving him guff while he was being filmed.

    It probably felt awkward, too, to just stand there and be filmed. No live or taped interviews back then.

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  • Jan_Greenslade by Jan_Greenslade

    I thought quite a few of the men filmed whilst eating looked very suspicious of the camera. What a change from today, nobody hogging the shots looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Selfies were still 100 years away!

    I was looking through the IWM's film archive last week and there are a lot of clips like this, where the men are obviously aware of the camera, but not entirely comfortable with its presence. It makes it all very human, I find.

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