The area where Malins did his filming, and most of the movements from the front line may be best seen if the car is parked by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders’ Memorial in the Sunken Road. From there it is a matter of moving around by foot.
See Map 6
Possibly the most famous single picture of the Somme Battle that rests in the popular mind is that of the Hawthorn mine being exploded on the ridge of that name. It is taken from a film on the Somme — equally well known — shot by one of the army’s earliest “Official War Office Kinematographers”, Geoffrey Malins. He recorded his experiences in the war in a book, How I filmed the War, that was until recently very difficult to obtain, even on the second hand market. This problem has been solved by the (1993) republication of the work by the Imperial War Museum.
Malins dressed for Front Line action.
The Army was slow in getting official photographers on to the ground, but by 1916 there were a small number at work, supplemented by others from the Dominion Armies. Fortunately the early years of the war are well photographed, but only because large numbers ignored the order prohibiting cameras and set about the task themselves. Unfortunately the arrival of official photographers, and the fiercer implementation of the instruction, largely killed off the work of these amateurs, who produced work of a spontaneity and interest that still tends to be ignored by many books even in this day and age.
This also would seem to be a good moment to urge the merits of the Photographic Department of the Imperial War Museum, which house many thousands of photographs, has a generally effective indexing system for reference purposes, and a well-trained and well-disposed staff that can put you on the right track. A simple appointment is all that you need, and it is possible to have copies of photographs made for you.
Geoffrey Malins was working for Gaumont Pictures at the outbreak of the war, and had been some years in the nascent film industry. He was asked by his company to go to Belgium to get some ‘stuff’ (ie film), and in due course he became officially recognised as a war photographer. He was determined to get some good footage of the action on the Somme, and was directed by GHQ to the 29th Division, commanded by Major General Beauvoir de Lisle. This was early on the 26th June; de Lisle suggested that he ought to be able to get good pictures of an intense bombardment of Beaumont Hamel from Jacob’s Ladder. He proceeded to this spot via Fifth Avenue, Tenderloin and King Street. At the Brigade HQ dugout he showed where he intended to film, in Lanwick Street: “We proceeded by way of King Street to Lanwick Street, and several times we had to fall flat in the trench bottom to escape being hit by shells. The whizz-bangs which Fritz puts over are rather little beggars; you have no time to dodge them. They come with a ‘phut’ and a bang that for sheer speed knocks spots off a flash of lightning. One only thinks to duck when the beastly thing has gone off.” This extract gives some idea of the rather gung-ho way in which Malins writes of his experiences; but we would be wise not to judge the man because of a literary style that seems stilted and almost a caricature to us today.
No Man’s Land from the British side of the Sunken Road. ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (a series of about twenty-five steps) came off the bank some 150 – 200 yards from the photographer’s position. In the banking a British bunker may still be found.
Having found his spot he had to remove sandbags (needing to expose his head and shoulders over the parapet to achieve this), and then clothed the camera in sacking and, “gently raising it on to the tripod I screwed it tight. Then gradually raising my head to the viewfinder, I covered the section which was going to be strafed, and wrapping my hand in a khaki handkerchief, waited.” This latter reference to a khaki handkerchief puzzled me for a while, until it dawned that he would have to turn the handle of the camera, and his hand rotating around would quite likely catch the attention of a sniper in a notoriously risky part of the trenches.
Having taken shots at intervals for some time he then prepared to view the position in Jacob’s Ladder, some yards forward of his previous position; he was taken by an officer to it: “A stranger coming upon it for the first time would undoubtedly get a slight shock for, upon turning into a traverse, you come abruptly upon an open space, as if the trench had been sliced off, leaving an opening from which you could look down upon our front line trenches, not only upon them but well in front of them. I was on the bank of a small valley; leading down from this position were about twenty five steps, hence the name Jacob’s Ladder. Our parapet still followed down, like the handrail of a staircase, only of course much higher.” Malins’ reaction? “Jove! This is the ideal place. I will definitely decide upon it.”
Malins returned behind the line to film the speech by de Lisle to men of the 2/Royal Fusiliers; Malins reports the response of the men to the great man’s words of encouragement, “The faces of the men shone with a new light.…”
It was soon after this that Malins heard that ‘The Day’ had been put off by forty eight hours. He returned to the line, and filmed the shelling of the Hawthorn Redoubt, which involved him in a hair-raising crossing of the Beaumont Road; it is easy to forget just how unwieldy a camera and tripod, not to mention associated film, actually was. He then filmed some trench mortars in action, firing ‘plum puddings’. This proved to be quite a terrifying business, as there were three misfires due to faulty detonators, and the demolition of a neighbouring trench mortar pit did not encourage Malins to stay any longer than he had to.
Early on the morning of July 1st Malins was asked by Lieutenant Colonel Magniac to film his men in the Sunken Road, hitherto in No Man’s Land, but which had been occupied by means of tunnelling from the main positions during the night. Malins reckons that this was the worst journey that he ever made. “I have been in all sorts of places, under heavy shell-fire, but for intensity and nearness — nothing — absolutely nothing — compared with the frightful and demoralising nature of the shell-fire which I experienced during that journey.” Eventually he reached the tunnel, some two feet wide and five foot high. “Men inside were passing ammunition from one to the other in an endless chain and disappearing into the bowels of the earth… By the light of an electric torch stuck in the earth I was able to see the men. They were wet with perspiration, steaming, in fact; stripped to the waist;…” Eventually they came to the exit of the tunnel, which was about thirty feet away from a roadway, overgrown with grass and pitted with shell holes. “The bank immediately in front was lined with the stumps of trees and a rough hedge, and there lined up, crouching as close to the bank as possible, were some of our men. They were the Lancashire Fusiliers, with bayonets fixed and ready to spring forward.” Having got forward, Malins had to ensure that he kept his camera as close to the bank as possible: “a false step would have exposed the position to the Bosche who … might have enfiladed the whole road from the flank.”
Malins made his way to Jacob’s Ladder, filming more men en route to the front line trenches as he went. He went to find his position on Jacob’s Ladder severely shelled, and further shelling brought sandbags tumbling down the Ladder. He had less than twenty minutes before the mine was due to go off, and so, “hastily fixed my camera on the side of the small bank, this side of our firing trench, with my lens pointing towards the Hawthorn Redoubt.” Malins got himself ready, and at 7.19 he began turning the handle at two revolutions per second, starting this little bit earlier to ensure that he got the mine from the moment that it broke from the ground. Time passed interminably, he had used well over twelve hundred feet of film: “Would it go up before I had time to reload? The thought brought beads of perspiration to my forehead. The agony was awful, indescribable. My hand began to shake.” Then it blew up, Malins finding that he had to grip the tripod as all the ground shook and swayed with the force of the explosion. Malins was completely absorbed by his filming. He filmed, amongst others, the Engineers leaping over the parapet with wire to secure the crater, and then some time later men went over from the parapets near him (these would be the Lancashire Fusiliers). At one stage, as the battle raged, the legs of his tripod were damaged by an exploding shell, and he had to make do and mend with bits of wood and signal wire. Later in the day Malins filmed roll calls. “In one little space there were just two thin lines — all that was left of a glorious regiment (barely one hundred men). I filmed the scene as it unfolded itself. The sergeant stood there with note-book resting on the end of his rifle, repeatedly putting his pencil through names that were missing. This picture was one of the most wonderful, the most impressive that can be conceived. It ought to be painted and hung in all the picture galleries of the world, in all the schools and public buildings, and our children should be taught to regard it as the standard of man’s self-sacrifice.”
The cameraman in action.
Malins stayed in the Beaumont-Hamel area until the following day, and then moved on to film other sectors of the Somme battlefield. After several days of filming he went back to England to get it edited for viewing. Lloyd George said, after seeing it, “Be up and doing! See that this picture, which is in itself an epic of self-sacrifice and gallantry reaches everyone. Herald the deeds of our brave men to the ends of the earth. This is your duty.” A Bishop was rather less enthusiastic, with some reason, as he pointed out the shock that might be caused to a loved one who saw her relation smiling out of her on the film and who was then subsequently killed in the battle.
Malins film is a remarkable one, despite the learned doubts about the authenticity of some of the scenes. It is now readily obtainable on a video from the IWM, along with a most useful explanatory booklet of the various scenes. Perhaps the most uncanny thing about it all is the completely divorced impression that the viewer gets: the lack of sound is almost deafening.
Hawthorn Crater to-day, clearly indicated by the trees, and photographed from the approximate position that Malins was in on July 1st 1916 (compare with the photograph on page 28).