William Boyd - The New Confessions

The Aeroscope looked like a small wooden attaché case with a rotating handle on one side and a hole in one end for the lens. A simple latched flap revealed its innards, and it was a relatively straightforward process to load and unload. It was not particularly heavy to carry on its own, but its tripod was a real burden. Sometimes, Donald told me, film cameramen could persuade battalions or companies that were being filmed to provide an orderly to lug equipment about, but most of the time we would have to carry it ourselves.

This was the most onerous aspect of what was otherwise to be a most pleasant existence. Indeed, after the bantams it was like some paradisiacal reverie. We dressed as officers — notional second lieutenants — but we wore no rank or unit badges and carried no weapons. The old lady in the farm was paid (by the WOCC) to cook and care for us, and, twice a week, rations and fuel were delivered from the divisional QM stores. Our most important document was our pass. This allowed us access to all parts of the front and required individual commanders to facilitate us in every possible way. One would drive to a chosen area, present oneself to the adjutant, or whoever was orderly officer, inform him of what one wanted to film and set about it. According to Donald, the prospect of having a moving film made of the unit was irresistible. All doors were opened.

I had learned all this during the two days I had spent with Donald in Bailleul. There was no embarrassment between us, I am glad to report. No mention was made of that hideous walk in the countryside around Charlbury. I even managed to ask after Faye without blushing. Donald was his usual courteous, caring self. I was the one who had changed. It was only just over a year since we had last seen each other, but the experiences I had lived through had transformed me from passionate, foolish schoolboy into a numb, prematurely disillusioned adult. I did not go into details about that last day with Teague and the attack on the mythical crossroads at S—, but Donald had clearly guessed from the state I was in that I could not have taken much more.

Anyway, such is the natural resilience of my character that I found I was no longer brooding on my unpleasant experience with the bantams but was instead relishing the comforts I now found myself surrounded by. I visited the latrine (it was blissful not to be constipated, the fixture of trench life); I poured myself another cup of coffee. Then I heard a motorcar arrive.

The first of my colleagues to return was Harold Faithfull — the celebrated Harold Faithfull. He had been one of the first film photographers on the Western Front, arriving just after the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His greatest moment had come with the attack on Messines Ridge a year later. Faithfull had been there and — by sheer luck, I am sure — had managed to record the explosion of one of the massive mines beneath the ridge. The resulting fifty-minute film, The Battle of Messines (Donald had shown it to me at Bailleul), had played to packed cinemas in Britain and America for over three months. Faithfull received all the plaudits (although I now know for a fact that it was also the work of one, if not two, other cinematographers); he delivered many lectures and he had just published a book— How I Film War and Battle —which was, Donald said, selling extremely well.

Faithfull greeted me in an affable and only marginally condescending manner — Donald had forewarned him of my arrival — but I instinctively disliked him. He was in his mid-twenties, and had a handsome, plump face and fine, thinning fair hair. His voice was surprisingly deep, full of sage gravitas . I was sure this was an affectation of maturity. The problem was that, to me, Faithfull reeked of deceit. I confess that at this stage my conclusion was based solely on prejudice (I am prepared to admit to some jealousy — already I envied his success with The Battle of Messines) , but in spite of that there was something too glib about the man. He was always too conscious of himself and of the impression he was creating on others — an infallible sign of the vain and the fraudulent.

He was soon joined by his crony Almyr Nelson, which completed our number. Nelson was an official stills photographer. He was known as “Baby” Nelson, possibly because of his curly light-brown hair. However, I could never bring myself to call him this. With Nelson I was on safer ground professionally, and I used to talk technical matters with him, preferably in Faithfull’s hearing. Faithfull was suspicious of me and how I came to be in the WOCC unit — the most elite unit in the British Army, as he dubbed it. I had not been an avid cinemagoer before the war and my few hours of instruction on the Aeroscope would not stand much interrogation. So whenever the subject turned to the subject of moving films I steered the conversation into general areas — composition, portraiture, the merits of the posed shot against the natural — and no one, I think, guessed at my real ignorance. Faithfull possessed some wily intelligence. Nelson was more agreeable, but as far as brains were concerned, he was — as Sergeant Tanqueray would have phrased it—“as thick as shit in a bottle.”

A routine soon established itself. Donald would arrive every other day with a list of potential subjects that the WOCC considered to be newsworthy or of propaganda value. Faithfull had first choice (he was very keen on visiting dignitaries — he claimed he had filmed the visits to the front of two kings, three prime ministers and entire cabinets of politicians) and would set off after a leisurely breakfast, often accompanied by Nelson. Frequently, they stayed away the night. Faithfull seemed to receive a warm welcome at every regimental mess. Since The Battle of Messines he had become a celebrity. All his new films were very boring.

At the outset, Donald set me to work on a series entitled Great British Regiments , a simple enough job with the advantage that it allowed me to master the Aeroscope. I filmed a battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, receiving victuals at a field kitchen, playing football, listening to a singsong and marching up to the front along a road lined with shattered poplars. I shot four reels of film and sent it off to London, where some nameless editor in the Topical Film Company’s labs in Camden Town cut it up and patched it together.

A week later it was back, passed by the censor, and we showed it to the KOYLI colonel and his officers in their battalion reserve billets.

I will never forget that evening. It was in November. We drove over at dusk. There was some sleet in the air melting like spit on the windscreen. A “stunt” was on and a battery of sixty-pounders in a field a mile away fired throughout our visit. We had a drink in the officers’ mess and then went into a barn where a sheet had been tacked to a wall. I rigged up the projector and started the portable generator; the beam flickered, then sat — shivering slightly but true square — on the makeshift screen.

I can bring it all back. The faint frowsty smell of old hay, the fragrant reek of pipe tobacco, the thrum of the generator, the rolling boom of the guns, the laughter and comments of the officers, the lanterns turned down, plump with oily light.

GREAT BRITISH REGIMENTS NO. 23

THE KING’S OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY

No other name, no credits (no sound, of course), but it was mine. The opening monochrome shot of smiling marching men waving at the camera (I had been vainly shouting, “Don’t wave! Don’t look at the camera!”), then the inept jocularity of some War Office copywriter … I watched it all pass before me, entranced. I cannot say I was in the grip of some artistic or aesthetic visitation; my mood was rather — what? — proprietorial. This was mine . John James Todd fecit . Donald stood beside me puffing on his pipe, and I thought back to that day on the train from Barnton when he had held me at the window and I had taken my first photograph, “Houses at Speed.” I felt a rush of affection for him and his constant generosity to me.