MOBILE CINEMA UNITS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 21 October 1942, Page 2

MOBILE CINEMA UNITS

POPULAR WITH TROOPS ••TALKIES” IN DESERT A welfare service popular with the New Zealand troops in the Middle East is, that provided by the mobile cinema units, which are operated for the National Patriotic Fund Board 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 programmes in that period is estimated conservatively at 205.000, The mobile cinema units have been driven far out into the desert and many times the programmes have come as a welcome respite to battle-stained 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 humidity of the Middle 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 of providing picture programmes for members of the New Zealand Forces in hospital. The New r Zealand Y.M.C.A. acts as an expending agent for the Patriotic Fund Board, and in the middle of 1941. Mr Shove. Y.M.C.A. Commissioner. submitted proposals to Lieutenant-Colonel Waite, the Board's Commissioner, that a mobile cinema plant should 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 war. Private F. R. Hull, of Dunedin, who served with the New Zealand Infantry in the Greek 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 first 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 Cyrenaica, Transjordania, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. The outside limits have been the vicinity of Tobruk, Safaga on the Red Sea, Maan and Akaba in Transjordania, Afrine and other villages on the Turkish border of Syria. Mr Hull recently returned from a circuit in the Suez Canal area, visiting gll New Zealand centres up the coast to Beirut.