How I Filmed the War / A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc.

by Geoffrey H. Malins

But neither he nor his horse liked the way the shells were coming around, and at last even his avarice refused to be stimulated further at the expense of his courage. So I strapped on my skis, thankful for my earlier experience with them, and sped towards a wood which French soldiers were clearing of German snipers. I managed to get one or two good incidents there, though occasional uncertainty about my skis spoiled other fine scenes, and in my haste to move from one spot to another, I once went head over heels into a snowdrift many feet deep.

The ludicrous spectacle that I must have cut only occurred to me afterwards, and the utterly inappropriate nature of such an incident within sight of men who were battling in life and death grip was a reflection for calmer moments. I do not mind confessing that my sole thought during the whole of that afternoon was my camera and my films. The lust of battle was in me too. I had overcome great difficulties to obtain not merely kinema-pictures, but actual vivid records of the Great War, scenes that posterity might look upon as true representations of the struggle their forefathers waged. Military experts may argue as to whether this move or that was really made in a battle: the tales of soldiers returned from the wars become, in passing from mouth to mouth, fables of the most wondrous deeds of prowess. But the kinema film never alters. It does not argue. It depicts.

The terrific cannonade that was proceeding told me that beyond the crest of the hill an infantry attack was preparing. It was for me a question of finding both a vantage point and good cover, for shells had already whizzed screaming overhead and exploded not many yards behind me. There were the remains of a wall ahead, and I discarded my skis in order to crawl flat on my stomach to one of the larger remaining fragments, and when I got behind it I found a most convenient hole, which would allow me to work my camera without being exposed myself.

In the distance a few scouts, black against the snow, crawled crouching up the hill.

The attack was beginning.

The snow-covered hill-side became suddenly black with moving figures sweeping in irregular formation up towards the crest. Big gun and rifle fire mingled like strophe and antistrophe of an anthem of death. There was a certain massiveness about the noise that was awful. Yet there was none of the traditional air of battle about the engagement. There was no hand to hand fighting, for the opponents were several hundred yards apart. It was just now and then when one saw a little distant figure pitch forward and lie still on the snow that one realised there was real fighting going on, and that it was not man[oe]uvres.

The gallant French troops swept on up the hill, and I think I was the only man in all that district who noted the black trail of spent human life they left behind them.

I raised myself ever so little to glance over the top of my scrap of sheltering wall, and away across the valley, on the crest of the other hill, I could see specks which were the Germans. They appeared to be massing ready for a charge, but the scene was too far away for the camera to record it with any distinctness.

I therefore swept round again to the French lines, to meet the splendid sight of the French reserves dashing up over the hill behind me to the support. Every man seemed animated by the one idea—to take the hill. There was a swing, an air of irresistibility about them that was magnificent. But even in the midst of enthusiasm my trained sense told me that my position must have been visible to some of them, and that it was time for me to move.

I edged my way along the broken stumps of wall to the shelter of a wood, and there, with bullets from snipers occasionally sending twigs, leaves, and even branches pattering down around me, with shells bursting all round, I continued to film the general attack until the spool in the camera ran out. To have changed spools there would have been the height of folly, so I plunged down a side path, where in the shelter of a dell, with thick undergrowth, I loaded up my camera again, and utterly careless of direction, made a dash for the edge of the wood again, emerging just in time to catch the passage of a French regiment advancing along the edge of the wood to cut off the retreat of the little party of Germans who had been endeavouring to hold it as an advanced sniping-post.