Wartime home front

In the last major British army manoeuvres before the First World War, two ‘armies’ led by Sir James Grierson and Douglas Haig engaged at locations across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Each had cavalry and infantry, aeroplanes and an airship, and vital lessons were learned, but the reality of trench warfare would make very different demands of the army.

Brief scenes of troops assembled on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge.

Jumping from the upper floor of Chamberlain’s department store near Norwich Guildhall, these women members of the company fire brigade practising fire drill and rescue were recorded for a cinema newsreel.

The damage to buildings following a zeppelin raid on Ipswich, and the remains of a bomb.

From January 1915, the East of England region experienced the first aerial bombing raids by zeppelins. The loss of life and damage to buildings made headlines internationally. A zeppelin was shot down at Cuffley.

In this appeal to Norwich residents to volunteer for air raid precautions and civil defence duties, with scenes of the city on the brink of war, Alderman Riley of the City Council ends by pointing at members of the cinema audience in the style of Lord Kitchener’s 1914 army recruitment poster.

Evacuees from London arrive in Clacton, then Clacton children are evacuated to the countryside, including Peter Smerdon whose father Herbert, a newspaper photographer, filmed these silent scenes of a wartime family Christmas and the boarding up of the town.

Rare colour film used effectively to capture a colourful occasion and contribute to the fundraising appeal.

A moving personal record filmed in colour by American pilot Captain Rowsell who was stationed in Norfolk and married Peggy Armes from Norwich who is seen in the film with her family. The extraordinary cemetery scenes as well as the views around the damaged historic city reveal his deep feeling for his wartime home.

One of two official films at EAFA in which serving soldiers in India and Burma appear before the camera to send messages to their families at home, who would be invited to a screening at a local cinema. Very few of these ‘Calling Blighty’ films survive.