Dan Snow's History Hit - Lost Recordings from the Front Line

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Often faster than letters sent by ship, WWII soldiers stationed in South East Asia would send heartfelt and humorous video messages to their loved ones who'd gather in cinemas across Britain. Using the revolutionary technology of the time the men spoke directly to the camera, addressing their families and partners watching back home in Britain, it was a way the government ensured those fighting further away weren't forgotten.For Remembrance Day, Dan takes a trip to South Yorkshire to the Penistone Paramount cinema, a red plush auditorium with an original Compton cinema organ, for a special screening of these moving films from the front line. Professor Steve Hawley came across the films gathering dust in archives up and down the country and decided to track down the descendants of the personnel in the films for a special screening. In this episode, Dan goes along and meets Vanessa and Richard Barnes who have no idea a film of their father exists.Professor Steve Hawley's book is called 'Men, War and Film'Find out more about the Penistone Paramount here.Archive audio heard in this episode is held by the BFI.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and mixed by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I am in South Yorkshire, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I've come to the town of Penistone, I'm going to be careful how you pronounce that, and I'm heading up now past the classic grey stone buildings of Yorkshire to the Paramount Cinema because I'm here for a special screening of a film this is not only old film this is a real piece of history i'm going to be witnessing the film is part of a very extraordinary collection of films made by the british army during the second world war from 1943 onwards they're part of a project called calling blighty a series of messages recorded from soldiers in the far east to their loved ones back home during the second world war they would be shown in uk regional cinemas so it's really a very early version of skyping or facetiming your loved ones tonight they're going to be screening some of these messages from the men of sheffield which is down the road from here now there will be descendants of those soldiers in the audience and there's one particular pair a brother and a sister who've never seen their father's message and don't even know it exists it'll be the first time that

richard and vanessa have ever come across it and it's going to be a real special moment in the cinema tonight i can't wait their father ernest barnes known as tag was a 23 year old commando from sheffield and he was taken to bombay in 1944 to send a message to his wife and his family. One of the reasons we're focusing on Tag as well as the fact we found his descendants is because, perhaps quite unusually for an enlisted man, he left quite detailed accounts of his adventures, military and amorous, because he illegally, very naughtily, kept a diary whilst he was fighting and he wrote it up in the 1990s, just before he died.

It's called Commando Diary so he's the only man in any of these surviving calling blighty films who we really have a huge amount of detail about his service in this podcast I'm also going to be meeting Professor Steve Hawley he was the one who amazingly helped to uncover all of these wonderful films and archives around the country he's written the only book about the messages. It's called Men, War and Film. And he's made it his business over the last few years to watch every single one of these surviving films.

I'm going to meet Steve in the cinema right now, ahead of tonight's screening, to find out more about these extraordinary messages that connect us in such a personal way to these soldiers who fought 80 years ago. I've just arrived at the door. It looks like a classic 1930s picture house. It's wonderful. I'm going to head in now.

Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

So I've just walked into the building, through the foyer of the Penniston Paramount. It's a cinema built in 1937. I've just entered the auditorium. This is beautiful. It's wonderful. It's a cinema built in 1937. I've just entered the auditorium. This is beautiful. It's wonderful. It's all red, as you'd expect. Art deco, lovely plush red velvet seats.

And then down at the bottom, look at this, right next to the stage, right next to the screen, there is a gigantic organ, a Compton cinematic organ. A Compton Cinematic Organ. This is a beauty. It's one of the only handful of cinematic organs still in cinemas here in the UK

out of hundreds there used to be. It's from the mid-1930s and this organ would have played during the Blitz to audiences who came in the second world to have a bit of a sing-song, get their spirits up. All right, Steve, we're sitting in the back row of this beautiful 1930s theatre. It's very atmospheric.

But tell me, where did you first come across these extraordinary films? I saw one of the calling Blighty films at the Wessex Film Archive in Winchester and I was absolutely blown away. I was seeing for the calling blighty films at the Wessex Film Archive in Winchester and I was absolutely blown away. I was seeing for the first time a film from 80 years ago where a man was speaking to his loved ones from a war zone from Burma in 1944. Hello mum, dad, that ain't all I know at all. Hello Mary, hope you're all keeping well.

I'm doing fine, as you can see. I'm getting your mail through all right. Hope mine is the same. And I thought this was absolutely amazing. It was a real confrontation with the past. It was like speaking with the dead. Yeah, I agree with you. They are so striking. I've watched hundreds of hours of World War II archive,

but I've never seen men deliver what we call in TV piece to cameras. They are speaking directly to the camera to the audience thousands of miles away at home. It's incredible. These are the first films in the world that I can find where men and a very few women speak informally in their own accents, particularly regional accents. accents, particularly regional accents. At that point in the 1940s and the late 1930s, documentary directors were predominantly upper middle class. They wanted working class men to be seen as heroic, but they didn't really want them to have a voice. So even the famous documentary directors like Humphrey Jennings in the Second World War, he would feature working class men in the films, but they would be highly scripted, highly structured depictions.

Were they all filmed in one theatre of war? Yes, they were all filmed in the Far East of members of the 14th Army, the Southeast Asia Command, predominantly in India, in Bombay, but also on location in the war zone in Burma. This is a time when the Japanese had invaded Burma, which was then a British colony. The British were trying to push the Japanese back out of the Dominion, and with very little success for at least two years. So because of

this, the men got the impression, which was a true impression, that there was very little about this war in newspapers, that they had been forgotten about. They called themselves the Forgotten Army. There was a big problem of morale. That particular war zone was incredibly difficult. The Japanese were known as a fearsome and implacable enemy. There was a terrible monsoon which rotted your boots. There was tropical disease. 84% of the army had malaria. And communications were very bad. Even airmail letters took some weeks to get home and the ship based letters took forever so the men felt very isolated and the british army decided as an experiment to try and make some of these films that could be shown as messages they already

had a working film unit in Bombay. They were making training films for the Indian Army. So it was a relatively small step. You mentioned Indian Army. Do all these films feature white British troops, or do they feature some of the huge numbers of West Africans, Asians, and other soldiers that were fighting as part of that army group? This is particularly problematic, I think, to present-day eyes, because the 14th Army, which was nearly a million men, most of those were Indians plus other nationalities, Gurkhas, Karen, ethnic minority in Burma, Burmese themselves, and some estimates say almost 100,000 men from East and West Africa.

But these men very rarely appear in the films. There was a radio programme for Indian men in London where they could send radio greetings back to India. So you mentioned they're filmed on a location at the battlefield. Some look like they're in sort of naffies and bars and things like that. Were those real or were some of them sets? The films that were made in Bombay were ostensibly made in a naffy canteen, the army forces social club. But actually, as you're suggesting, it was a constructed set in the Shri San studios in Bombay. When relatives saw it, they thought their men were being treated in a very luxurious way, but actually the reality was far, far different. This was an incredibly idealised Nafi canteen with lots of servants, lots of beer,

and the men were able to be filmed with much more sophistication. were able to be filmed with much more sophistication. At the same time, there was a parallel initiative where location trucks, two location Chevrolet trucks, would go out into Burma and sometimes into Malaysia and film the men on location in the actual war zone. So there were two different modes of filming, but actually the way that the men express themselves is basically the same. How do they express themselves? I've watched a couple that seem very genuine and rather emotional, and some are just like cheeky chats, some are like stand-up routines, and others feel a bit scripted.

I mean, there's all sorts of different ways in which they present themselves. We are told from interviews with the camera crews who were there in the Imperial War Museum, they weren't scripted. Of course, the men would have known, because their letters were censored, what they could and could not say. So they were aware of censorship. They were trying to deliver messages of reassurance to their families. I'm okay. I'm in the pink. Keep on smiling. Keep your chins up. They hardly ever refer to the war that they're in. Many of the messages are a little bit like talking postcards. They're quite stilted. But yes, men who had no experience of being on film or being in the cinema

except watching Gone with the Wind or cowboy films, were trying to find their own way of self-presentation. Some of these films, I think, express a side of masculinity which is incredibly emotional, I think for these days, let alone in this stiff upper lip era of wartime. Other men are much more cocky, some are humorous, some are trying to display their masculinity in different ways. And there are very few films of women, just five or six, you might think the women would express themselves in a very different way to the men. In fact, they don't. It's almost exactly the same. The idea was everyone used to go to the picture on Saturday night

and instead of the newsreel at the front of the feature film, you'd have these remarkable messages from the front. Yes, the Calling Blighty films were quite often shown as shorts before the main feature, but they were also shown in separate discrete screenings, sometimes more than once, to quite large audiences. We hear of audiences of 500, 1,000.

So the relatives were gathered together from the local town could be sheffield or birmingham or dundee they will be assembled together in a cinema there would be a pep talk from a senior army person quite often saying something like don't forget to write to your men, they're waiting for your letters. And then the films will be screened. We know from contemporary newspaper reports that the reaction was one of mixed laughter and tears. And indeed, when we recreated these screenings, we've done screenings in Manchester, Sheffield, Birkenhead and Brighton, we've had exactly the same reaction. They inspire the same kind of motions today as they did in the mid-1940s. Sometimes some of the subjects in the films wouldn't have survived the war, presumably. Tragically, this is so.

If a serviceman had died while the film was on its way back to Britain by ship. There was no capacity or time to edit out the deceased. So the families would be invited. One can only imagine how moving and awful that would have been to see their loved one, their son or their husband who had died. This has become an obsession of yours. You're not just a fantastic researcher, but you've put on these events. You've dedicated your life now to reuniting descendants of these people with the films shot of their forebears. Why have you done that? It's a wonderfully emotional and satisfying thing to do. That's the main reason. So myself and Marion Hewitt of the Northwest Film Archive traced the men.

We had public appeals on TV and radio and in newspapers. We've traced over 200 men and their descendants. We hold large-scale screenings with these films, which, by the way, they were filmed originally in what was then the latest technology, 35mm black-and-white quality sound this was the high definition tv of its age so we have these screenings they're very emotional and it's an incredibly satisfying thing to do and it's also a way of digging into the notion of remembrance. And I think that these films are just as much memorials

as tombstones and cenotaphs. You've invited a whole crew of people today. Some of them don't know what they're about to see. They don't know that these films exist. Why are you so interested in this one particular guy, Tag Barnes? Tell me about him. Ernest Tag Barnes. We don't know why he's called Tag. He was a remarkable person, a working class Sheffield bloke who had, by his own admission,

a cushy number training people in the army. But he decided he wanted more action. He joined the commandos. He was a war hero. He was awarded the military medal for his service in the Arakan which is a coastal part of Burma so tank Barnes is extraordinary for what he did in the war but also because he kept a diary throughout the war as he says he wasn't supposed to you weren't supposed to by the British authorities and much later in, he wrote up this diary in a book called Commando Diary. So this is the only occasion where we have a really full and frank description of life in the 14th Army, in the Far East, in Burma, and we actually have a film of the man himself. And not only does he talk about his war service,

but he's also very frank about his amorous adventures, not unusual for men in wartime, very far from home. I've always wanted to trace Tag. I've made radio appeals and appeals on TV in the Sheffield area where he lived, but sadly he died in the late 1990s, but was unable to trace his son and daughter, Vanessa and Richard. And we have incredibly now managed to track them down.

So they will be here in this very cinema seeing this film of their father for the very first time. And in this wonderful cinema later on, as well as them, there'll be other descendants of these extraordinary men. So I'm excited. What about you? What are you feeling? I'm feeling incredibly excited and I'm also feeling incredibly moved. I know from my past experience that these events are incredibly affecting. People are staring into the eyes of their fathers, grandfathers,

great-grandfathers, and it's something that shrinks time. It's a little bit like talking with the dead, and I think it's an incredibly moving thing to do. Right, next up I'm going to go and talk to Tag Barnes' children, Vanessa and Richard, who are waiting just around the corner

in a nearby hotel. You listen to Dan Snow's History, there's more coming up. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America's past to help us understand the United States of today. Join me as I head back in time to witness Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence, head to the battlefields during the Civil War,

visit Chief Poetin as he prepares for war with English colonists, tour Central Park before it was Central Park, and a city in Tennessee which helped build the atomic bomb. From famous battlefields to secret cities, from familiar names to lesser-known events,

I'll speak with leading experts from across the United States and beyond to bring American history to life. Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings,

Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit

wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Tag's children, Vanessa and Richard, just arrived at the hotel. It's great to meet you guys. How are you? I'm great. Nice to meet you, Dan. Very nice to meet you. Right, let's go and have a chat in this side room. Richard, Vanessa, how do you sum up your dad's character? Well, he was full of fun laughter is the one thing that i really miss from it but he was also full of adventure he loved to um take us

out in the country and discover things with us because he was very knowledgeable about wildlife birds in particular um and he was also very brave because of all the fighting he did with the commandos, getting the Military Medal for bravery. Richard, what about you? Tell me about your memories of your dad. Well, I was taught how to move through a forest and not be seen. And I went on several bird-watching holidays with him,

including Israel. Vanessa, tell me about your dad's life growing up. Well he was from a working class family who worked in the steel factories in Sheffield so it was expected that he would work there which is what he did to begin with but it just wasn't adventurous enough for him so he joined the army when he was 16 but after he'd done that for a while, he got restless, this is how we describe it, and he wanted to do something more exciting,

so he volunteered for the commandos. Because he had a cushy job in the UK, guarding airfields and relaxing. He could have spent the whole war doing that. Instead, he goes and signs up for the most dangerous unit in the British Army. That's right, yeah. So tell us about that particular battle in which he was given the military medal. It was in Burma, and there were a series of five hills, and one particular one that was called Hill 170 because that was its hiding feet.

Whoever dominated that hill could control a supply route and an escape route, so it was really important for the British to hold it. But the Japanese were there, and they wanted it for the same reason, and they were very vicious fighters. And after about 12 days of the British being there, trying to get control of it, Dad's troop were told to go through the scrub

and approach the Japanese from behind and surprise them and they found it very difficult to get through the scrub but they made it but all of a sudden they were being attacked by the Japanese who must have seen them coming and there were hand grenades going off and shells and gunfire all around and a hand grenade landed between dad and his sergeant and exploded and it threw them both to the ground and dad was wounded badly in the leg and I remember him saying how he just thought his leg had gone and he felt down to see if it was still there luckily it was but he told me that bit of the story many times and I think he sort of lived with that for the rest of his life,

remembering that moment when he thought he'd lost his leg. And he started to drag himself back when the sergeant called out, don't leave me, Tag, don't leave me. And he said the sense of self-preservation had never been so strong in him because he knew he was likely to be killed himself. But he went back and he got him and he managed to get the sergeant's arms round his neck and then drag them both back. But the sergeant kept passing out so he'd lose the grip round the neck

and so they had to stop until he regained consciousness and so on. And then Dad found himself getting very weak because he'd lost a lot of blood. And he reached a point after about 30 yards that he just couldn't go on anymore. So he said to the shaman, you know, I'll leave you here by this tree and if I can get back, I'll get someone to come and fetch you. So Dad did manage to get back to a trench and sent someone to find him, but the Japanese had increased their assault and he couldn't get through. When eventually they did get through, they found him, but he was dead.

So Dad managed to get to safety and was taken to a first aid post and he had to have two operations. What he'd got in his leg was the actual filler cap from the grenade because Japanese grenades apparently break into many, many pieces but he happened to get the filler cap which was much larger and it went a long way in his leg and they operated from the front then they had to operate again from the back. And of your dad's close friends many of them didn't return from war his three closest friends from his um unit were killed two of them on that hill and one of them shortly afterwards

you're lucky to get him back he did say adventures in the book about someone dying and they fell on top of the trench and they haven't got time to move them because they were being attacked he told me how awful it was that they had to rest on these bodies to fire over the top of them because they were being attacked. He told me how awful it was that they had to rest on these bodies to fire over the top of them. That's one of the bits that he didn't put in the book. I mean, you guys didn't know that there was this surviving footage of your dad? No, no, we didn't. No, we can't wait to see it. No, it's so exciting. Right, well well let's go to the cinema I'm just peeking out the door now of the cinema there are people starting to arrive

we've got apparently about 30 or 40 descendants of people like Richard and Vanessa who are descendants of people featured in these films the rest

are just local members of the community. Hi, everybody. Welcome. We are all here because we're going to see this very, very special screening of something called Calling Blighty. It was a Second World War project, cutting-edge project at the time, like the first FaceTime or Skype where servicemen

and some women out in the Far East sent messages to their loved ones, friends and family, back here in the UK. It was the first time you would have heard those voices on the cinema screen, I think, in British history. So it's really interesting. Thanks, great to see so many different generations here today, and I hope you enjoy what you're about to see. So Mum, Dad, sister Dad, enjoy it. How are you all? I'm keeping fine. Hope you all are fine there.

How's the old Twicker Archers going on eh? Well I'm keeping fine, hope you all have a say. Knock along for a moment, I'll be having a nice word eh? Mrs Barnes here is thank you speaker Hello, I'm Charlie not from Dalton sauce. Hope you're all okay. I'm getting a mail regularly now I'm sorry. I'm the only person this year, but maybe I'll manage it next year and We'll keep smiling and keep it finishing. See you all. Are you your family are you? Yes.

Which family? Richard and Vanessa. So you were tied as well? So you're a great grandpa? So what's it like seeing your great grandad on the big screen it's a bit weird

I didn't really notice him you didn't recognise him did you yeah I haven't really ever seen him before you wouldn't know

what he sounds like would you well you never got to meet him did you what's it like because you met him

oh yes obviously yeah yeah what's it like seeing him again as a young man? Oh, yeah, crazy. So I did, yeah, recognise his tattoo on his arm. He's got a little bit of armour on his arm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name's Christine and it was my dad, Kenneth Fleet, that was on there. Yeah. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful to see him. He said hello to his mum and dad and also to Edith, who must have been his girlfriend but wasn't my mum. All right. OK, which one of you? Wolf. Wilfred Parker.

Oh, I love that name. Yeah, I saw him up there. What did he make of him? He was a character, my dad. Yeah, he was a character. When he went on, he was a bit of a bad lad. He used to get promoted to Lance Corporal and then get demoted. He had tattoos on his arms. He had a scroll here, blacked in. I think it was my mum's name, blacked it in.

And then, because he fell out, then they married. I'm Joan Styron, and the chap in the film was my dad, Lance Corporal George Styron. My dad was quite an intelligent bloke. He actually learned Urdu I don't know what it was but I could speak

up to 20, count up to 20 and the only thing I can remember now is 8, 12, 13, 1, 2, 3 and I can't remember anymore I often think, I wish I'd have learnt that a bit better it was absolutely fantastic, it's the one we just said it's like seeing him alive I think, I wish I'd have learnt that a bit better. It was absolutely fantastic. It's what we just said, it's like seeing him alive.

So hi, Vanessa, Richard, we've just come out of the screening. How did that feel, seeing your dad? It was amazing to see him actually speaking. It sort of brought him to life again, although I don't remember him looking like that because I wasn't born at the time. But it was wonderful to see him and he did seem very confident and, as you said, he was very, very fit.

Remarkably fit-looking and his movements were very sharp and even the way he moved his eyes was a young, extremely fit man. You've brought three generations of your family. That's pretty cool. What's everyone made of it? Very nice for them all to see it. They were all absolutely delighted and it's wonderful that they were able to come and see him as well. Definitely.

Well, the audience is drifting out of the theatre now. It's the end of the evening. I must say, my overwhelming feeling at the moment is just wishing that my granddad, and both of my granddads were on camera, one of whom I never met, and the other I love very dearly. It would be very special to see them, to hear them, as they were in wartime. The effect it had on the audience here, the effect it had on people, it was electrifying. very dearly. It would be very special to see them, to hear them as they were in wartime.

The effect it had on the audience here, the effect it had on people, it was electrifying. There were people in tears, there were young kids staring at the screen. You could see it, they found it so strange that this vision of a young man from 80 years ago was somehow related to them. I was also really struck by how modern it was, the idea of talking to camera. It is like FaceTiming. They were encouraged to call out members of the audience, to talk as if they're in the same room. And it's an indicator of how the British Army in the Far East was obviously nervous about morale. And you get a sense that government here in the UK

was trying to keep that distant front, the Far Eastern theatre, front and centre in people's minds, preparing them perhaps for a longer war against Japan than the war against Germany. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time. Thanks for downloading this podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to Penniston, Paramount Cinema, and organist Kevin Grunnell. The clips heard in this episode are held in the BFI National Archive.