Wa r T h r ou g h t h e L e n s : The C anadian Ar my Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 The First Canadian Division arrives in Britain filmed by Lawrence Audrain, a private cameraman hastily hired by Lester Pearson as no Canadian film unit yet existed. Source: LAC PA-034185 [ 12 ]
Formation When World War T wo began in 1939, there wasn t a single cameraman in the Canadian Army. Frank Badgley, head of the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, drew up elaborate plans for an army unit at the war s start, but the federal government shelved them as too complicated. In fact, when Canadian soldiers first docked in England in December of 1939, Lester Pearson, at the Canadian High Commission in London, had to personally hire a civilian cameraman, Lawrence Audrain, to record the event. (Audrain later enlisted to become Lieutenant Audrain and provided his camera skills to the Canadian Army until they could form a unit of their own.) By late 1941 the need for a film unit was becoming pressing. Nazi Germany had occupied most of Europe. Canada had built an overseas army of a quarter million men and women defending the Allied bastion in Britain, and that army was busy preparing to go on the offensive. However, the Canadian Army was virtually invisible to the public on film screens. In the pre-television age, everyone went to the movies. Before every feature film there were ten-minute news films made by big American film studios called newsreels, which presented the dramatic visual news of the war. They were full of stories about the British and especially the American military. Acutely aware of this, the head of Canadian Army public relations, Bill Abel, dusted off Badgley s old plans and created the Canadian Army Film Unit (CAFU) in October of 1941. Abel was also reacting to moves by Canada s newly created National Film Board (NFB). As documented in a study of the relationship between the Army and the NFB in a 2004 MA thesis by Sarah Klotz, the ambitious head of the film board, John Grierson, claimed his agency controlled all Canadian government film work and had plans for his own NFB-controlled film unit in the Army. Grierson really wanted his [ 13 ]
War Through the Lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 Photo by Lt Barney J. Gloster Source: LAC PA-145970 hooks into it, recalled Gordon Sparling, one of CAFU s most experienced recruits. The Army argued that Grierson s control did not extend overseas. Abel wanted an Army film unit free of civilian meddling from Ottawa, and one that could work closely with fellow soldiers. The Army got their way, but hostility from the NFB would plague the Army Film Unit for most of the war. The unit s purpose was to document the operations of the Canadian Army. The main goal was to represent accurately and prominently the role of the Canadian Army. This would inspire soldiers and the home front and would help with the war effort. While propaganda roles were key in total war, the unit also aimed to assist with training and to capture history. The Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force also created film units for similar reasons, although not on the same scale as the Canadian Army Film Unit, leaving the Navy and Air Force to depend to a larger extent on the NFB to depict their wartime activities. At right: Army PR chief Colonel Bill Abel, centre with his dog, visits the Canadian Press Camp, April 1944. Source: LAC PA-206112 [ 14 ]
F o r m a ti o n [ 15 ]
War Through the Lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 The Canadian Army studied the British Army Film Unit and the American Signals Corps Photographic Companies. It also searched intelligence files for information on how the Germans and Soviets ran their film units. In most aspects such as rank structure, camera technique, film handling and censorship the Canadian Army followed the British model. Army officers also consulted the Army s official historian, C.P. Stacey, to see what role the Army cameramen could play in capturing history. Stacey encouraged the creation of the Film Unit, which he felt could leave an admirable legacy. He stressed that filming should be carefully documented to record dates, place and units by an Army film library. This would give context to future use of the wartime film. With the unit s framework created, staff officers began combing personnel records for suitable cameramen. A core of experienced filmmakers began the unit but the Army soon had to widen its net. The shortage of experienced recruits for the unit was very much a reflection of the film industry, or rather lack of one, in Canada before the war. Dominated by the American film industry, filmmaking in Canada was limited to the federal government s small and outdated Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau and a handful of companies, most of them tiny one-person operations. A single business, Associated Screen News (ASN) in Montreal, was the only film company of any size in pre-war Canada. It provided the small core of experienced Canadians who would be recruited into the Army s film unit. John Erroll Rankin Jack McDougall from Montreal was an ASN cameraman and director before the war and had joined Montreal s Black Watch regiment. He was made the film unit s commander. ASN also supplied Gordon Sparling, an experienced filmmaker from Toronto who had worked for Paramount in the United States before joining ASN. He was recruited into the Army in 1943 to take charge and expand the set-up [ 16 ]
f o r m a t i o n of the film unit s London operation. Al Fraser from Montreal had run a film department for CIL, the large Canadian chemical company. He was also recruited from the Black Watch infantry regiment to become the film unit s field commander. A few of the frontline cameramen came from filmmaking families. Al Grayston s father worked for ASN and the NFB in Montreal, which gave Grayston just enough background to bluff his way into the unit from the Royal Montreal Regiment. Norm Quick from Ottawa had a brother who was a newsreel cameraman for Fox Movietone News and his father had been a cameraman in the only feature film made in Canada during the late 1920s, Carry on Sergeant. Charles Bud Roos from Victoria, British Columbia also came from a filmmaking A German army cameraman. The Canadians carefully studied intelligence reports to see how their enemy deployed film units. Source: LAC PA-130048 [ 17 ]
War Through the Lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 family where he learned camera basics from his father, a fact that the Army film unit discovered when they plucked him out of his anti-aircraft battery in 1943. With so few eligible Canadians, the film unit had to get recruits from other Allied countries. A few, such as George Noble, were older veteran cameramen from the British film industry. Alfred Tunwell was another veteran British cameraman later brought into the unit. Mike Spencer was a young British filmmaker with family in Canada. He had done some editing with the Ottawa company Crawley Films and with the newly formed NFB at the beginning of the war. This core of experienced filmmakers were the very first members of the Canadian Army Film Unit in 1941: Jack McDougall, Al Fraser, Mike Spencer, George Noble and Al Grayston. They made an interesting team. McDougall and Fraser were both old school Black Watch officers, strict and formal in public but candid and paternal in private. Spencer was young and new to the Army. His film experience was modest but his Oxford education gave polish to the writing of their films. The field cameramen nicknamed him Q for Quality Spencer due to the many tips and suggestions in his memos. Al Grayston was short, young and known for his energy and determination but also for his outspoken opinions which didn t help him win promotion. He was a corporal for so long that his nickname was Old Corp. George Noble was the colourful old pro and the unit s entertaining manipulator. Constant jokes. He knew all the pubs. A lot of fun, is how cameraman Gord Petty remembered him. A rogue and a rascal with women is how Mike Spencer characterized him. He was able to get away with absolute murder, at all times, with everyone. However, to cover the large amount of fighting that would face the Canadian Army in the liberation of Europe, they would need many more cameramen. They began to recruit more widely. Hollywood provided [ 18 ]
F o r m a t i o n the largest source of filmmaking experience for the field cameramen of the Canadian Army Film Unit. In 1939, with America still neutral, many Hollywood cameramen came north to join the Canadian Army and see some action. Jimmy Campbell, a cameraman at Columbia Studios, went to Vancouver and enlisted as soon as the war started. Other Hollywood men included Joe Bickerdyke from MGM, Duke DeWest from Warner Brothers and Paramount, stuntman Mike Lattion, and Dave Reynolds, who had worked for Charlie Chaplin. Nevertheless, the majority of frontline cameramen knew virtually nothing about filmmaking when they joined the unit. Many such as Harry Clements, from Toronto, were simply picked because of pre-war An early shot of the Film Unit at work. George Noble left uses their elderly Newman-Sinclar box camera while Capt Jack McDougall is in director mode. Source: University of Toronto Library System [ 19 ]
War Through the Lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 amateur work with still photography. Some invented their experience. Alan Grayston, for example, lied about his film background, much as he lied about his age when he enlisted. He was a mere 17. A small number of Army cameramen, such as Ernie DeGuire, from Ottawa, had pre-war careers in somewhat related fields such as radio broadcasting. DeGuire was a broadcastoperator with CBC Radio and had helped cover the 1939 Royal Tour of Canada by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, a major Canadian media event just before the war. A handful, such as Lew Weekes from Vancouver, had a little experience with home movies. Most enlisted early in the war. Adventure and a desire to follow friends into uniform were a bigger motivation than fervent patriotism. As the Army Film Unit grew, it plucked men from the infantry, artillery, armour and medical units to join the new force. The biggest single source for frontline cameramen were drivers in the Army Service Corps who had transported the cameramen to their assignments. Drivers such as Gord Petty, George Cooper, Ken White and Barney Barnett learned filmmaking by osmosis as they assisted alreadytrained cameramen in the field. When they showed promise, the Army sent them to the British Army film school. One thing that the frontline film and photo units all had in common they were all men. It would be generations before the Canadian Army would send women into battle. Women did fill several critical roles for the Army Film and Photo Unit in their production studio at Merton Park, and by the end of the war there was one female Army photographer, Karen Hermiston. Her work, however, was confined to England. Whatever their background, once in the unit the frontline cameramen were soldiers first and cameramen second. They were expected to follow orders, live in the field and, when necessary, fight like other soldiers. They all received infantry training [ 20 ]
F o r m a t i o n and went to their assignments armed with pistols and submachine guns. Unlike war correspondents, the cameramen had no special status under the Geneva Convention if captured. Most of the cameramen and photographers would never fire their weapons in battle. (The unit s war diary drolly noted after a marksmanship competition in May 13, 1944, Their marksmanship will be more of a hazard to their own men rather than the enemy. ) However, they all came under enemy fire on a regular basis and some cameramen, such as paratrooper David Reynolds, took part in some grim fighting. The Army wanted the war covered from its own ranks. Earlier in the war, the British in North Africa had used civilian newsreel While all the motion picture cameramen were men, the unit did have one female photographer, Sgt Karen Hermiston, shown here with her Speed Graphic camera, London, November 15, 1945. Photo by Lt Arthur Cole Source: LAC PA-150150 [ 21 ]
War Through the Lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 cameramen to cover the fighting but found there were not enough of them to cover all the fighting and they were difficult to integrate into military units. They also asked for things that the Army found unreasonable like demanding danger pay or turning down dangerous assignments. The integration of cameramen into Army ranks also ensured that they would cover the war from a distinctively Army point of view. Before joining the unit, most of the cameramen had served in the same fighting units they now covered. They all had friends and many had family in fighting units. This made them identify with the common soldier. Cameraman George Game summed up the intense respect that drove much of the unit s coverage: I thought they were the greatest men in the world; the greatest men that ever lived were those infantrymen. The danger faced by the soldiers that the cameramen covered also made them acutely aware of their own good fortune. Film crews would take risks but they could enter and leave the front lines at will. Slow film speeds made it impossible to film at night, so camera crews retreated to relatively safe and comfortable quarters, leaving the flooded slit trenches and night bombardments to the infantry. There was an intense recognition, sometimes to the point of guilt, that soldiers in the line, especially the infantry, were really fighting the war. Army Film Unit productions endlessly portrayed the Canadian fighting man as a hero but it was more than just an imposed propaganda line. It was the shared feeling of the unit. [ 22 ]