Filming the retreat from Burma, 1942: British newsreel coverage of the longest retreat in British Army history

Abstract

The 1000 mile retreat of the British Army in 1942 was the longest in British military history. It was covered by two British newsreel cameramen, who provided film on a rota basis to other British newsreels. This article will focus on the story that the cameramen provided, the conditions in which it was made and the relevance to some important issues in the retreat from the rapid Japanese advance. It will also examine how the film was used and often transformed by the newsreel companies in exhibition. It argues that, despite the brave and enterprising work that the cameramen did under very difficult conditions, the newsreel picture received by the contemporary British public gave a very limited, often belated and sometimes misleading account of what actually took place in this phase of the Burma campaign.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Mrs Jinx Rodger for providing copies of her late husband, George Rodger’s contact sheets for the Shwegyin battle, and also checking his diaries for information on the same. Also to Mrs Anna Patterson for photographs of her late father, Alec Tozer. I received very useful comments from Dr Eleanor Bavidge of Kingston University, London. Thanks also to Luke McKernan (British Library), Linda Kaye (BUFVC) and Terry Gallacher for their advice on the issue of ‘faking/reconstructing’ scenes of battle in wartime newsreels. Needless to say, the views in this article are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Burma Victory and other original films of the Burma campaign in 1945 are available on an Imperial War Museum DVD (2007). For analysis of these films see Ian Jarvie, ‘The Burma Campaign on Film: “Objective Burma” (1945), “The Stilwell Road” (1945) and “Burma Victory”’ (1945)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8, no. 1 (1988): 55–73.

2. A notable exception is the recent Colonial Film project http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/home, which catalogues and gives detailed commentaries on newsreels and documentary films on colonial history topics. The online database covers film material held by archives such as the Imperial War Museum as well as selected newsreels. It is important, however, to recognise that only a fraction of the film shot by the cameramen actually reached cinema screens, after censoring and editing.

3. For more information on newsreel cameramen, see the British Universities Film & Video Council’s (hereafter BUFVC) website, which holds an invaluable database on newsreels, contains links to streamed newsreel footage and has archived manuscript material, such as dope sheets (cameraman’s record of shots taken) and background, shot lists and commentary drafts where available. BUFVC sources and web links have been referred to in this article wherever possible. See http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/person/301 (accessed 25 September 2014) for Ford’s career details.

4. See http://www.historicfilms.com/tapes/20495 [start 1:15;05; stop 1:18:20] (accessed 25 September 2014) for good film of Ford’s filming of the Blitz in January 1941, with good shots of a moustachioed Ford.

5. For details of Alec Tozer’s career (1913–1974) see http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/person/932. It was calculated that Tozer served overseas for 4 years and 3 months, including further spells in Burma in 1943 and 1945, The Cine-Technician, November–December 1945 available in http://archive.org/stream/cinetech911asso/cinetech911asso_djvu.txt (accessed 25 September 2014).

6. http://terencegallacher.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/cameraman-tales-alec-tozer-italian-prisoner-of-war/ (accessed 25 September 2014).

7. The other newsreels were Gaumont British News, Universal News and Pathé News.

8. The Burma retreat was fully reported by British newspapers (within tight censorship constraints) but there were few photographs included, so the newsreels remained the main visual source for the public. The British pictorial magazines also provided few images of the war in Burma. Picture Post focused more on domestic stories, whilst Illustrated London News, which provided excellent coverage of the Malaya campaign, provided only a few stock photos of Burmese ‘sights’.

9. ‘Street Scenes, Rangoon, Burma, 25 January 1942’, Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM) BAY 226, the IWM holds the original dope sheets and some of the Paramount films—references to film clips are to their catalogue numbers; ‘Scenes in Bomb Damaged Rangoon, 28 January 1942’ and ‘Air Force and Japs Downed, Burma, 30 January 1942’, IWM BAY 232-1: http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/5584 & http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/5585 (accessed 25 September 2014).

10. O’Dowd Gallagher, a South African working for the London Daily Express, published his criticisms in Retreat in the East (London, 1942), see pp. 76–7.

11. See Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (London, 1999) 156–7.

12. Idem.

13. For some details of the debates about the working of the rota arrangement in this period, see Minute Book 2 of the Newsreel Association of Great Britain, especially the minutes of 5 February, 26 March and 7 May 1942, British Film Institute Library (hereafter BFI), London.

14. Ford was lucky in this respect in that Paramount was allowed to present an exclusive newsreel displaying Ford’s Burma footage, which was credited at 13 min as the ‘longest newsreel ever issued by British Paramount’; ‘Burma: A War Correspondent’s Despatch’, NPA 1173, 28 May 1942, IWM. For the response to Paramount’s request, see Minute Book 2 of the Newsreel Association, entries for 21 May 1942 (item 1056) and 4 June 1942 (item 1074), BFI.

15. British Paramount News (hereafter BPN) dope sheet, shipment 115, ‘AVG Personalities’, 7 February 1942, IWM.

16. Cameramen’s dope sheets were listings of everything that had been filmed and were essential for editors as they needed to match film with personalities and locations. Some cameramen wrote brief summaries, but Maurice Ford was an example of someone who wrote very full and colourful dope sheets, which amounted to suggested commentaries for the future newsreel.

17. BPN dope sheet, shipment 106, ‘Scenes in Bomb Damaged Rangoon’, 28 January 1942, IWM.

18. BPN dope sheet, shipment 110, ‘The Troops Arrive’, 5 February 1942, IWM.

19. Idem.

20. Nicholas Pronay, British Newsreels in the 1930s: 1. Audience and Producers, History, 56, no. 188 (October 1971): 416.

21. The correspondents were much more critical of both the civil and military roles in Burma when they wrote up their books after the Allied troops had withdrawn to India, and censorship was less stringent. See this author’s forthcoming article ‘Reporting the Retreat from Burma, 1942: War Correspondents Tell Their Story’.

22. BPN dope sheet, shipment 113, ‘Burma Road Racket’ 1–2 February 1942, IWM.

23. Leland Stowe’s report for the New York Post, filed 31 December 1941.

24. Stowe, They Shall Not Sleep, 76–8.

25. BPN dope sheet, shipment 113, ‘Burma Road Racket’, filmed 1–2 February 1942, IWM.

26. BPN, Issue no. 1156, ‘Burma Crisis’, 30 March 1942, http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist/BHC_RTV/1942/03/30/BGX408200149/?s=Burma%20Road. See also British Movietone News (hereafter BMN), Issue 671, 12 April 1942, ‘Battle of Burma Communications’, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/12217 (accessed 25 September 2014); Pathé Gazette, ‘Aid for China- Burma Road’, 13 April 1942; GBN, 13 April 1942, ‘The Far East Front- India-Burma-China- the Battle of the Roads and railways’. The British Library of Information in New York monitored the showing of British material in American newsreels. It noted that the Burma Road film, which was shown by all the newsreel companies, was ‘one of the finest and most stimulating newsreels for some time past’. Gullan to Darvall, 13 April 1942, INF1/568, ff.191–2, The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA).

27. BMN, Issue 671, ‘Battle of Burma Communications’, 12 April 1942, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/12217 (accessed 25 September 2014).

28. George Rodger, Red Moon Rising (London, 1943), chap. 3, ‘Burma Railway’.

29. Possibly the Indian journalist, M.K. Unni Nayyar, who was serving as a Public Relations Conducting Officer with the armed forces in Burma.

30. Rodger, Red Moon Rising, 71 on. It seems likely that all film and photographs of the Kumaoni soldiers (in bush hats) show the feint attack at Madauk. Kumaon is part of the present-day Uttarakhand state in India’s north-east Himalayan frontier area.

31. Details of the fighting are from Bishweshwar Prasad, ed., Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War, 1939–45: The Retreat from Burma, 1941–42 (Calcutta, 1952), 226–9; Rodger, Red Moon Rising, chap. 7 ‘Battle of Shwegyin’; W.G. Burchett, Bombs Over Burma (Melbourne, 1944), 134–5.

32. Burchett, Bombs Over Burma, 134–5.

33. E.C.V. Foucar, I Lived in Burma (London, 1956) 133–4.

34. Clare Boothe Luce’s article, ‘Burma Mission’ II, Life, 22 June 1945. For Rodger’s account of the battle see Red Moon Rising, chap. 7, ‘Battle of Shwegyin’. Plates xxvii, xxviii and xxix show the Kumaoni soldiers in action; plate xxx shows the Sikh soldiers crossing the fence, p. 71.

35. Tozer’s film of this reconstruction of Indian troops advancing through Shwegyin was shown as ‘Movietone’s War Time News—Reported by Leslie Mitchell: Battle of Burma’, BMN, Issue 673A, 30 April 1942: http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/12237 (accessed 25 September 2014). The alternative Pathé newsreel, ‘Burma - Latest Pictures’, Pathé Gazette, Issue 42/35, 30 April 1942 can be seen at http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/99397 (accessed 25 September 2014). Gaumont British News, ‘Allied Armies in Burma’, 30 April 1942 BGU408210039, also listed the shot of the falling soldier, although it is not included in the film clip on ITN Source.

36. Gerald Sanger, A News Reel Man’s Conscience, Sight and Sound, summer 1941, 22, cited in Nicholas Hiley and Luke McKernan, Reconstructing the news: British newsreel documentation and the British Universities Newsreel Project, Film History, 13 (2001), 185–99. It is difficult to be certain about this issue and I am grateful for correspondence with Terry Gallacher who worked for British Movietone after the war and who remains unconvinced that this film is faked. Further, written evidence of newsreel faking later in the Burma campaign is provided in an article by Alan Lawson, of S.E.A.C. British Film Unit in The Cine-Technician, May–June 1945, but this may be influenced by the rivalry between official film units and newsreel cameramen at this later stage of the war.

37. ‘British Troops Fight Rearguard Action Against Japanese Forces’, ITN Source ref: BGX408220153.

38. For a fuller version of the film of the Gloucester Regiment, see the clip provided by courtesy of the IWM: BAY 253-6, ‘The Front Line of Burma. Gloucesters in Action’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJSYvx79krQ. This indicates that the film was taken much earlier in late March 1942. For full details, see the Colonial Film synopsis http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/5600.

39. See, ‘Drafts of Dorman-Smith’s unfinished memoirs’, Eur Mss 215/32b, f.170, Oriental and India Office Collection, British Library (hereafter OIOC).

40. See, for example, Dan De Luce’s article, ‘Burmese Fight British Openly as Saboteurs’ for the Herald Tribune, 29 April 1942, filed on 14 April: OIOC/M/3/862 ‘Propaganda and Publicity in the USA’. For the decapitation story, see Cedric Salter’s article in the Daily Mail, 11 March 1942. p. 1.

41. British Movietone film, Issue 673A, 30 April 1942 ‘Burma Fighting and Chiang Kai Sheks’, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/12237 (accessed 25 September 2014).

42. BPN dope sheet, shipment 133, 28 February 1942, IWM.

43. C. Bayly and T. Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire & The War With Japan (London, 2005) 164.

44. War Office (WO) telegram. 15 April 1942 to Commander in Chief India and General Officer Commanding, Burma, M3/857-B153/40 (i) ‘War: propaganda: publicity organisation in Burma and liaison with UK 27 July 1938–27 July 1943’, TNA. It is interesting to see the term ‘traitor Burmans’ crossed out and replaced by ‘fifth columnists’ in the commentary script for Gaumont British News, Issue 874, 21 May 1942, ‘Far East Front. Burma. Action in Tharrawaddy’, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/document/62762_commentary (accessed 25 September 2014).

45. BMN, Issue 662, 9 February 1942, ‘Rangoon Resolute’, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/12138 (accessed 25 September 2014).

46. BPN, shipment 114, 3 February 1942, ‘Special, First Pictures of Burma’s New Prime Minister’, IWM.

47. ‘BURMA / DEFENCE: Oilfields of Yenangyaung before capture’, 04 May 1942, ITN Source ref: GX408220138, BPN, Issue 1166, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/story/38232, (accessed 25 September 2014).

48. R. Clarke, With Alex at War: From the Irrawaddy to the Po 1941–1945 (Barnsley, 2000), 15, cited in J. Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War (London, 2004) 67, n. 57.

49. Commentary, ‘The Far East Front’, GBN, Issue 859, 30 March 1942. http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/document/62623_commentary (accessed 25 September 2014) Alec Tozer’s film.

50. Idem.

51. This is certainly the view put forward in the GBN, Issue 874, 21 May 1942, ‘Far East Front. Burma. Action in Tharrawaddy’, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/document/62762_commentary (accessed 25 September 2014).

52. ‘Scorched Earth in Burma’, GBN, Issue 879, 8 June 1942; http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/document/62807_commentary (accessed 25 September 2014).

Tozer was to return to film the war in Burma in 1943 and in 1945. He was also one of the cameramen chosen to film the D-Day operations. He continued working for Movietone after the war and helped film the Coronation in 1953. http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php/person/932 (accessed 25 September 2014).

53. Alec Tozer, War Filming in the Far East, The Journal of British Kinematograph Society, 9, no. 1 (January–March 1946): 19–21.

54. www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/5591 (accessed 25 September 2014).

55. Idem.