HOMAGE TO NAVY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1943, Page 6

HOMAGE TO NAVY

“IN WHICH WE SERVE” The public has been treated to many newsreels giving glimpses of the Royal Navy at work in the present war, including actual combat with enemy ships and aircraft, but there has been nothing at all like the Noel Coward picture, “In Which We Serve,” a picture which will shortly come to the State Theatre in Masterton. It not I only shows fights at sea with a realism that almost makes the spectator believe himself under fire; it shows sincerely and convincingly the spirit of the Navy, manifested in officers and men of many types in many situations, ashore and afloat. What is more, the film reflects in a racy way the hopes, fears and unfailing courage "of the wives, children, mothers and fathers who wait ashore. In making the picture Noel Coward received the fullest assistance from the Admiralty, ensuring complete accuracy in all technical matters, such as words of command in action and points of naval custom. A battalion of the Coldstream Guards assisted in a graphic- series of pictures depicting the landing of troops in England from Dunkirk. It is all the story of the destroyer H.M.S. Torrin, her commissioning, service in a convoy escort, in home waters, in a fight with light enemy craft and her end when she is dive-bombed and . sunk, in the Mediterranean. Noel Coward wrote, the script, directed the film and him- 1 self played the destroyer’s captain, around whom the whole action centres. “In Which! Vie Serve” is sincere drama and at the same time a document that should be preserved among the records of what everyone hopes will be the last naval war.