Whicker’s War

The original Army Film Unit, 146 strong, had been sent to Cairo to cover the Middle East – then regarded as extending from Malta to Persia. It had 60 cameramen, half always to be on duty in the Western Desert. Their pictures of the Eighth Army in action began to filter home. They remain classic, as does their first feature film for the cinema, Desert Victory, edited at Pinewood from their collected footage. Churchill was proud to present a copy to President Roosevelt. Later there was Tunisian Victory. In this respect at least, the Treasury was edging slowly and reluctantly into the 20th century and becoming aware of the power of propaganda to influence the thoughts, decisions and spirit of nations.

War, we now know, is the most difficult event in the world to photograph – even with today’s brilliant technology and miniaturisation. Audiences have grown accustomed to John Mills ice cold in Alex and John Wayne capturing a plaster Guadalcanal in close up and artificial sweat while smoke bursts go off over his shoulder and are dubbed afterwards in death-defying stereo. Just watch Tom Hanks storming Normandy. Terrifying. So viewers are not impressed by a tank in middle distance and a couple of soldiers hugging the dirt in foreground – even though at that moment real men may be shedding real blood.

Reality can be dull, unreality cannot afford to be; yet should a cameraman get close enough to war to make his pictures look real he is soon, more often than not, a dead cameraman.

The second film unit, which I was joining, was formed to cover the new southern warfront in North Africa and the threatened battlefields of Europe. To provide Britain and the world with an idea of the life and death of our armies at war, the No 2 Army Film and Photo Unit eventually took 200,000 black-and-white stills and shot well over half-a-million feet of film. We were busy enough.

To get those pictures, eight of the little band of 40 officers and sergeant-cameramen were killed and 13 badly wounded. They earned two Military Crosses, an MBE, three Military Medals, 11 Mentions in Despatches – and, eventually, a CBE. Today, any picture you see of the Eighth, Fifth or First Armies in action was certainly taken by these men.

The sergeant-cameramen worked under a Director – a Captain or Lieutenant – and travelled the war zones in pairs, with jeep and driver. Their cine footage and still pictures were collected as shot and returned to base for development, and transmission back to London. By today’s standards their equipment was pathetic – any weekend enthusiast would be scornful. Each stills photographer was issued with a Super Ikonta – a Zeiss Ikon with 2.8 lens, yellow filter and lens hood. Each cine man covering for newsreels, films and television-to-be had an American De Vry camera in its box – a sort of king-size sardine tin – with 35mm, 2” and 6” lens. No zoom, no powerful telephoto lens, no sound equipment; effects would be dubbed in afterwards – usually to stirring or irritating music, with commentary written in London.

To get a picture of a shell exploding the cameraman needed to will one to land nearby as he waited, Ikonta cocked. If it had not been fatally close, he would shoot when smoke and dust allowed, otherwise the explosion which could have killed him would be invisible on film. A German tank had to be close and centre-frame before he could take a reasonable shot – by which time the tank might well take one too, more forcibly. A long life was not in the script. So, ill-equipped but confident, we went to war.

HIS MAJESTY GOT A WRONG NUMBER… (#ulink_1751c4fa-b947-540f-89bf-c0919ac2e5f7)

It certainly began badly for Britain. In 1940 France surrendered and we were driven out of Europe. Hitler ruled the Continent, Italy and Japan declared war upon us. Only in Africa did we eventually taste victory, at El Alamein and Tunis. But now in ’43 we were starting our return journey to Europe in gathering strength alongside our new American ally.

The Army Film Unit approached the recapture of Europe by a rather circuitous route, it seemed. Small enough to start with, it had been split into even tinier segments as we went to war alone, or in pairs, and approached Hitler’s European fortress surreptitiously. We knew that convoy sailings were top secret, and at our Marylebone hotel faces now familiar would suddenly disappear without a word. There were no Going-Away parties.

When it came to my turn, I sailed from the Clyde one bleak January night in the 10,000-ton Chattanooga City, with a shipful of strangers. We still did not know where we were going, but it had to be towards warmer waters to the south. Our convoy formed up and we joined a mass of other merchantmen and a few escorting frigates and destroyers, heading out towards the Atlantic and the threatening Bay of Biscay at the sedate pace of the slowest ship.

This did not seem reassuring, since the U-boats were still winning the Battle of the Atlantic. We had a lot of safety drills, though felt rather fatalistic about them. Convoys would never stop to pick up survivors after a ship had been torpedoed. The escorts would not even slow down – so why bother with life jackets? The outlook was grey, all round.

There must have been 30 ships in our convoy, but only a couple were torpedoed during the voyage. Both were outsiders, steaming at the end of their line – so seemingly easier targets, less well-protected. The U-boats attacked at night – the most alarming time – yet the convoy sailed on at the same slow steady speed as though nothing had happened. Our escorts were frantic – and the sea shuddered with depth charges as we sailed serenely into the night. Two shiploads of men had been left to their wretched fate in the darkness.

Our ship was basic transport, with temporary troop-carrying accommodation built within its decks. The Officers’ Mess – one long table – was surrounded by bunks in cubicles. Meals, though not very good, were at least different, and plentiful. Most of the officers were American, so we passed much of the following days and nights playing poker. This was a useful education.

When we reached the Bay it was relatively peaceful, though with a heavy swell. On the blacked-out deck I clung-on and watched the moonlit horizon descend from the sky and disappear below the deck. After a pause it reappeared and climbed towards the sky again. I was stationary, but the horizon was performing very strangely.

We passed our first landfall at night – the breathtaking hulk of Gibraltar – without really believing we could fool the Axis telescopes spying from the Spanish coast and taking down our details. By now we knew we were heading for the exotic destination of Algiers. Its agreeable odour of herbs, spices and warm Casbah wafted out to sea to greet us.

In Algiers I rounded up our drivers and we collected the Unit’s transport: Austin PUs – more than 20 of them. These ‘personal utilities’ were like small underpowered delivery vans, but comfortable enough for two. They saw us through the war until America’s more warlike jeeps drove to the rescue. I had been told to deliver this motorcade to AFPU in a small town in the next country: Beja, in Tunisia, where we were becoming a Unit again.

I thought that having come all this way I ought to take a look at Sidi-Bel-Abbès to check-out the HQ of the Foreign Legion, but it was on the Moroccan side of Algeria, and the Legionnaires still uncertain whether they were fighting for us or against us. In Algiers I consoled myself in the cavernous Aletti bar with other officers heading for the war. Then we set off for Stif and Constantine. It was a lovely mountain drive on good roads in cool sunshine, with the enemy miles away.

The journey to recapture Europe was taking the new First Army longer than expected. Our push towards the Mediterranean ports of Tunisia, from where we planned to attack Europe, had been halted. Hitler was supporting the fading Afrika Korps to keep us away from his new frontiers. The enemy was now being reinforced every day by 1,000 fresh German troops from Italy. They flew in to El Aouina Airport at Tunis and joined the tired remainder of the Afrika Korps arriving across the Libyan Desert, just ahead of the Eighth Army.

At Beja we unloaded the supplies we had been carrying in our PUs and joined the rest of the Unit awaiting us in a small decrepit hotel. I had been carrying one particularly valued memento of peaceful days. It says something for the progress of technology when I reveal that this was a small portable handwound gramophone with a horn, as in His Master’s Voice. It now seems laughably Twenties and charleston, but in those days there were no such things as miniature radios, of course, and great chunky wireless sets required heavy accumulators.

Unfortunately, the accompanying gramophone records I brought had not coped with the stressful voyage. The solitary survivor was good old Fats Waller singing My Very Good Friend the Milkman. On the flip side: Your Feets Too Big. We played this treasure endlessly, then passed him on to the Sergeants’ Mess for the few cameramen still not placed with Army units. When they could stand him no longer he was joyfully received by the drivers. Fortunately Fats Waller’s voice was not so delicate or finely-tuned an instrument that it lost much quality from constant repetition. I always hoped that one day I would be able to tell him how much one recording did for the morale of a small unit stranded amid the sand and scrub of North Africa.

The First Army had earlier been expected to occupy Tunis and Bizerte without difficulty, but instead lost Longstop Hill and was almost pushed back from Medjez-el-Bab. A major attack was planned to make good that defeat and capture the remaining enemy forces in North Africa. Leading the thrust for Tunis would be two armoured divisions. I went to join a photogenic squadron of Churchill tanks, awaiting action.

The Churchill was our first serious tank, developed before the war. It weighed 39 tons and with a 350hp engine could reach 15mph, on a good day. It originally had a two-pounder gun, which must have seemed like a peashooter poking out of all that steel. Then in ’42 its manufacturer Vauxhall Motors installed a six-pounder. In ’43 this was replaced by a 75mm, making it at last a serious contender – though the German Tiger we were yet to meet weighed 57 tons and had an 88mm. Throughout the entire war German armour was always just ahead of us. We never met on equal terms. However, we had heard how Montgomery had run the Panzers out of Libya, so were optimistic about our chances before Tunis.

For my cine-cameraman partner I asked Sergeant Radford to join me. Back in our old Marylebone days Radford had been the main protester against marching and drilling with the rest of the Unit in Dorset Square. He always seemed a bit of a barrack-room lawyer, so I thought I should carry the load rather than push him into partnership with some less stroppy sergeant. With a precise, fastidious and pedantic manner – before the war I believe he had been in Insurance – Radford was a great dotter of i’s and crosser of t’s, but I suspected where it mattered he was a good man. In fact on the battlefront and away from Dorset Square we soon came to terms. He was a splendid and enthusiastic cameraman, and would go after his pictures like a terrier.

On our first battle outside Tunis, some Churchills suffered the mechanical problems they inherited from the original 100 Churchills remaining in the Army after Dunkirk, and broke down. The day did not go well.

You don’t remember events too clearly, after a battle. It’s all too fast and fierce and frightening – but I do recall seeing Radford going forward clinging on to the back of a tank, as though riding a stallion into the fray.

Being on the outside looking in, is never a wise position in war. Nevertheless after a busy day on Tunisian hillsides, we both found ourselves on the lower slopes of Longstop Hill when the final attack was called off. I was mightily relieved to see him again, exhausted but in good shape.

Next day the Commanding Officer drew me aside. He was a smiling Quorn countryman who would have been happier riding to hounds. Our enthusiasm, he said, had been ‘a good show’. That was a relief, since I gathered we had been seen as a bit long-haired and effete. At least the Regiment’s worst suspicions had not been confirmed … To be complimented by a CO of such style and panache was accolade enough; then he added that when life calmed down he was going to put us both in for gongs. That seemed a satisfactory way for a Film Unit to start its war and a reminder that we were not there to take pictures of parades.

When the battle for Tunis resumed next dawn German gunners concentrated upon our lead tank. The CO was the first man to be killed.

The elusive quality of battlefield behaviour is well-known: bravery unnoticed, medals unawarded … because no one was there to see. Yet Radford’s behaviour in the face of the enemy had been seen by a senior officer who, when we had asked permission to join his tanks, thought we might be a nuisance. At least on our first day in battle we had not let down that most gallant gentleman.

Yet in truth, we were not in the hero business. Our CO regularly reminded us that no ephemeral picture was worth a death or an injury. This did not stop the braver cameramen risking their lives. (The General who led the British forces in a later war in the Gulf, Sir Peter de la Billiere, has reminded us, ‘The word “hero” has become devalued. Nowadays it’s applied to footballers and film stars, which does a disservice to people who have risked their lives for others.’)

So we covered the slow advance through Tunisia. It was our first experience of fighting alongside the Americans. Totally unblooded, they were quite unequal even to General Rommel’s beaten army at Kairouan and the Kasserine Pass, suffering 6,000 battle casualties and a demoralizing major defeat in their first engagement of the war. The Germans were amazed at the quantity and quality of the US equipment they captured intact.

In April ’43, after observing the battle for Tunisia, the Allied Commander, General Sir Harold Alexander, found the US troops ‘soft, green and quite untrained’. He reported to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke: ‘There are millions of them elsewhere who must be living in a fool’s paradise. If this handful of divisions here are their best, the value of the rest may be imagined.’

Anglo-American relations became even more strained following a brusque signal from the Allied Tactical Air Commander, Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, to Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr, concerning close air support. It told the pugnacious American that his II Corps was not battle-worthy. That did it.

The Allied Air Commander-in-Chief Sir Arthur Tedder averted a major crisis by sending Coningham to apologize personally to Patton, however accurate his assessment. I have never been able to discover details of that interesting meeting. At AFHQ the incident was seen as so serious that the Allied Commander-in-Chief General Eisenhower prepared to resign.

Relations could only get better, as indicated by the later effective emergence of the explosive Patton, pearl-handled revolvers, polished helmet and all – hence ‘Gorgeous George’. This aggressive cavalryman became the Allies’ most effective commander of armoured formations.

After their victory at Kairouan the German advance threatened AFPU’s new billet at Sedjenane. This was in the local brothel – by then out of action. Its only remaining attraction was a fine double bed, and when our cameramen joined the US Army in their tactical withdrawal they were anxious to retain this newfound luxury with its comforting peacetime aura. Unfortunately AFPU’s available transport by then was one motorcycle.

The local Arab population was impressed, and a solemn procession carried the bed along the only street to a safer billet – which next day was destroyed by an enemy shell. This however was a hardy bed which had obviously seen a lot of action; it survived and was moved yet again into the safest place around: a deep mine.

When the German advance continued the bed had to be sacrificed as a spoil of war. Later Sedjenane was recaptured – and there stood the long-suffering AFPU double bed, none the worse for recent German occupation apart from a slight green mould. Yet somehow its erotic appeal had diminished …

Tunis was the first major city to be liberated by the Allies during the war, the first streets full of deliriously happy people when men proffered hoarded champagne and pretty girls their all – a scene to be repeated many times in the freed cities of Europe. The crowd around us in the Avenue Jules Ferry was so jammed and ecstatic we could not move. I was standing on the bonnet of my car filming laughing faces and toasting ‘Vive la France’ when I saw Sidney Bernstein, even then a cinema mogul. He had arrived from the Ministry of Information bringing In Which We Serve and other gallant war films to show the liberated people, and now faced a different sort of film fan: ‘How do I get the French out of my car?’ he grumbled.

One of my cameramen apologised in his dope sheet for the quality of his pictures: ‘I have been kissed so many times by both women and men that it really is difficult to concentrate …’ War can be hell.

On May 12, ’43, the enemy armies in Africa capitulated; 250,415 Germans and Italians laid down their arms at Cap Bon. General von Arnim surrendered to a Lieutenant Colonel of the Gurkhas, explaining that his officers were ‘most anxious’ to surrender only to the British. We took pictures of thousands of Afrika Korpsmen driving themselves happily into captivity past one of their oompah-pah brass bands playing ‘Roll out the barrel’ inside a crowded prison cage.

For a Victory celebration at a time when the British Army was noticeably short of victories, Prime Minister Churchill flew into El Aouina airport outside Tunis and drove straight to the first Roman amphitheatre at Carthage to congratulate his First Army, then preparing for its next target – presumably Italy.

To cover this historic celebration we posted photographers all over the amphitheatre. Captain Harry Rignold, our most experienced cameraman, was up on the top tier with our lone Newman Sinclair camera and the unit’s pride: a 17-inch telephoto lens. We also needed close-up stills of Churchill, so I was sitting on the large rocks right in front of the stage – in the orchestra stalls – feeling rather exposed before that military mass. Indeed the task proved more difficult than expected.

In the brilliant African sun Churchill climbed on stage and with hands dug into pockets in his best bulldog style, faced 3,000 of his troops. Next to him stood the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the ultimate red-tabs: General Sir Alan Brooke, CIGS, with the victorious First Army Commander, Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson. Their only prop was a small wooden table covered by a Union Jack. It was not Riefenstahl’s stage-managed Nuremberg and would win no awards, but it was at least naturally splendid.

The troops roared their welcome. Churchill seemed surprised and delighted at a reception made even more dramatic by perfect Roman acoustics. ‘Get a picture of that,’ he said, spotting me in the stalls busily focusing on him. He waved towards the amphitheatre behind me. ‘Don’t take me – take that.’

I wanted to explain that several of our cameramen were at that moment filming the cheering mass as he stood at its heart, that he was the star and a picture of a lot of soldiers without him was not new or significant … when once more that famous voice ordered, ‘Get a picture of that.’ He was clearly not used to saying things twice – certainly not to young lieutenants. For a moment I wavered. General Anderson, breathing heavily, took a step forward and my court martial flashed before me. ‘Take a picture of that!’he snapped.

I took a picture of that.

I had to wait until Churchill was well into his panegyric before I could turn and sneak my shot of him amidst his victorious army. Afterwards he walked out to his car, took off his pith helmet and waved it from the top of his stick, gave the V sign and drove away with his Generals. That bit of our war had been won.

There was a brief pause while the armies digested their victory and prepared for the next invasion, and at the beginning of May ’43 our life became almost social. It was spring and, what’s more, we were still alive. We requisitioned a villa at Sidi Bou Saïd, near Carthage. It overlooked the Bay of Tunis and had indoor sanitation, to which we had grown unaccustomed.