Bridge Under a River

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 13

Bridge Under a River

By

G.

M.

N reviewing One Against Seven on December 28, I suggested that the plot seemed to be based on a major improbability: the building, across a broad river by Russian engineers, of a special type of underwater bridge (the carriageway of which was just 18 inches below the surface of the water), this structure being used to launch a completely successful surprise attack against the Germans on the other bank who had not suspected that the bridge was there. My point was that it seemed likely that such a considerable submarine obstruction as this bridge would betray its presence by causing surface disturbance in even a slow-moving river. However, a correspondent, Miss Brenda Bell, of Shag Valley Station, Palmerston, Otago, has now written quoting an article from the London Daily Express of December 4, 1942, which, as she says, was clearly the foundation of the "improbable" story used for the film. It has been impossible to find a file of the paper containing the actual article, but Miss Bell took a note of the details when they were published in 1942, and here they are: "Russians building a bridge under the forming ice, swimming by night through the forming ice to the German side hauling logs and concrete blocks in stretchers, which took back the wounded . , . working, black with cold and bleeding with ice, as nervous sentries sprayed the beaches . . . the ice forming, the water level dropping, the engineer watching, watching as the river coated and the Russian tanks assembled . . .. tank rehearsals behind, practising keeping to narrow limits in line ahead; and then the day when the ice was just over the water level dropped, and the tanks splashed into breaking ice-and did not sink!" Hollywood improved on these facts a little, and by so doing perhaps strength-| ened the impression of improbability; but it seems clear that I did the producer an injustice which, thanks to Miss Bell, I am now happy to acknowledge.