"TALKIES" IN DESERT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 17, 23 October 1942, Page 2

"TALKIES" IN DESERT

MOBILE CINEMA UNITS

POPULAR WITH TROOPS

A wcliare .service popular with the New Z-a'and troops in the Middle East is that provided by Immobile cinema units, which are operated Tor the National Patriotic Fund Hoard by the Y.M.C.A. In twelve months, up to August last. 500 shows had been put on and the number who saw the program me in that period is estimated conservatively at 2()r>,<HK). The mobile cinema units have been driven far out into the deseit. and many times the programmes have come as a welcome respite to batrlestained troops. To provide shows for the men the operators and plants have gone through many vicissitudes. They have had to cope with the heat and the humid.ity of the Miiddle East, and also the sand and very bumpy tracks. Besides catering for the men in the field, the mobile cinema plants have been the means oi' providing picture programmes for members of the New Zealand Forces in hospital. The New Zealand Y.M.C.A. acts as an expanding agent for the Patriotic Fund Board, and in the middle of 1941, Mr Shove, Y.M.C.A. Commissioner. submitted, proposals to Lieutenant-Colonel AVaite, the Board's Commissioner, that a mobile cinema piant shoukl be assembled and operated wherever New Zealand units were located. Sergeant Lee Hill, of Wellington, was the technical expert who got the plant going, but unfortunately, after a time, he was captured in the Libyan Desert and. is now a prisoner of Avar. Private F. R.r Hull, of Dunedin, Avho served with the New Zealand Infantry in the Cree'k campaign, then took charge, and eventually had four units operating. For transport purposes either a staff car is used or a station waggon. The plant is a 35-millimetre portable projector complete with sound equipment. Each unit generates its own power. Two plants have been complete units solely engaged in picture showing. Two other plants have been operated part time by two other Y.M.C.A. field secretaries as part of the establishment of Y.M.C.A. canteens. The lirsc. unit started in August, 1941, and only for a short period—during the time the New Zealand troops were in Syria—-were the four units operating. The units have operated in six countries—Egypt, Italian Cyrenaiea. Transjordania, Palestine. Syria and Lebanon. The outside limits have been the vicinity of Tobruk. Safaga on the Red Sea. Maan and Aka>ba in Transjordania, Af'rine and other villages on the Turkish border of Syria. Mr Hull recently returned from a circuit in- the Suez Canal area, visiting all New Zealand; cen"tres up the coast to Beirut.,