VOICES FROM EGYPT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 83, 24 January 1941, Page 7

VOICES FROM EGYPT

OR most listeners the Christmas morning broadcast of personal messages from New Zealand soldiers in Egypt was the highlight of the work of the overseas Broadcasting Unit. For the three members of the unit, however, it was just a routine job in a full and busy schedule. When it was announced that a broadcasting unit was being despatched overseas with the troops, many must have wondered just what it could do in modern warfare, but the popularity of the broadcasts they have sent back to New Zealand has more than justified the faith of the NBS in sending them. Besides Doug. Laurenson, whose voice is now well known, the unit consists of Noel Palmer, officer-in-charge and engineer, and Norman Johnston, assistant engineer. From all accounts their job is no sinecure. They make recordings practically every day, and the technical work of recording is the least part of their job. They must first go out and find their story, make contact with military heads for authority, find the right man with something to say, and arrange for him to be at the right place to say it. Apart, of course, from the job of making sure that he knows what to say, and getting what he has said through the field censor. Paramount is the technical side of the job, the care of equipment under desert conditions, transportation from place to place, keeping up stocks of discs, and despatching the recorded discs, properly packed, back to New Zealand. A Constant Stream By almost every sea and air mail a constant stream of recordings arrives in New Zealand. The work of sorting out this material and preparing it for presentation in the regular Sunday and Monday schedules falls on the NBS in Wellington. ~

For example, a soldier sending a personal message may ask for a favourite musical item to be played. This is added in New Zealand. Much more complicated is the work of editing the "sound pictures" of life with the troops. Here it is not unusual for the Production Department to take excerpts from. several different records and weld them into a programme, a New Zealand announcer bridging gaps. This is the feature which is heard at 7.30 on Monday evenings, and which, for the first time in warfare, has brought to the people back home actual sounds and vocal descriptions of the life of the troops. Incidentally, the unit has no sound effects records with them at all, so that all the sounds heard over the air in New Zealand are the genuine recorded sounds. As Doug. Laurenson put it, "We start off strictly honest." Personal Messages By far the most popular job they do is the personal messages feature, popular with them and popular with mothers, wives, and sweethearts, who are able to hear in the familiar surroundings of their own homes the voices of boys who have been away from home for months. The Broadcasting Unit men themselves say this is, alas, no more than a "lucky dip" business as to who is allowed to record a message. They go out into the camps and record at random, and for everyone they ask they have to leave 200 or 300 unasked. It could not be otherwise. The "hit or miss" nature of the selection raises some odd difficulties in New Zealand. For example, several people have written to the NBS that they heard from friends that "their Bill" sent a message to them, and please could it be played over again, as they were not listening. This raises difficulties. First of all, even if they supply details of the

time and "Bill’s" full name and regimental number, which most of them do not, the NBS is quite unable to help, as they know no more than the public does about the speakers. And even if the exact message can be traced it would obviously be unfair to the many other listeners throughout New Zealand to take up normal programme time rebroadcasting a message from one particular person, Repeats the Broadcast To overcome this difficulty the NBS now repeats the broadcast of Sunday morning personal messages on the following Tuesday evening at 10.40. Those who have friends in Egypt, and particularly those who have heard by letter that a radio message has been sent should make a practice of listening in every Sunday morning without fail. When they are available (which is tot necessarily every Sunday morning) personal messages are broadcast at approximately 9.15 a.m., following the sports talk given at 9 am. by Captain J. S. King. It often happens that in recording the discs in Egypt the staff of the Broadcasting Unit find they have perhaps 80 seconds of time still left on the disc, and they occasionally take advantage of this gap to send a personal message of their own to the NBS. Chiefly, of course, they are instructions regarding the various items in the recordings, or notes to the engineers, reporting on technical matters connected with their equipment. In passing, it is worth noting that so far they have had no trouble at all with any of the radio equipment they took from New Zealand. 3 Sidelights, Anecdotes Sometimes, if space allows, more personal sidelights. are sent. Doug. Lauren- ~

son filled the tail-end of one record with some anecdotes about the other members of the unit. He told how Noel Palmer gave his name to the native secretary of a colonel as "N. Palmer," but the native’s grasp of the English language was so inadequate that he was announced as an "embalmer." On another occasion, apparently, they had just returned from: a 21-mile route march which was " real tough, but the truck ran beautifully."