Tented encampment of 43 DHQ Company of King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners, with Indian sentry on duty; regimental (?) flag flies in the background. Indian bearer grooms Lieutenant Jack's small black and white terrier. Mess tent (?): Indian prepares and cooks chapattis. Sequence showing British soldier farriers, wearing solar topees, preparing hooves and shoeing horses; the horseshoes are made in an outdoor smithy. Indian soldiers are seen planing wood. Two struggle to tighten the screw connection on a makeshift pipeline (for connecting to lift and force pump, ready to fill canvas troughs for watering horses on exercise - a shot of these troughs is seen later in the film). Shot of pipeline. Indian soldiers carry out maintenance and carpentry (planing wood). Indians play cards. Panning shot of the camp, showing tents and pathways marked by stones; one Indian soldier shaves another; a Muslim soldier winds the cloth of a pagri (turban) round the kullah (cap) of his colleague. Brigade exercise: British officers wearing white armbands (possibly acting as umpires) survey the proceedings from a high vantage point, some with binoculars. Officer in a topee checks a large map, pinpointing troop movements. Group of officers discuss the exercises; below, in the distance, infantrymen can be seen marching across open plain. Royal Corps of Signals personnel use wireless set in the field. Mounted British officers accompany Indian troops, who march in half-sections past a stream; mules (some laden, some pulling carts) follow behind.

Officers take part in hunter trials, mounted on their chargers. Horses are inspected and prepared beforehand: shot of the animals lined up with their Indian grooms at camp. Horses eat from nosebags. Trials get underway: shots of various officers negotiating the fences (one horse clips a fence, the centre of which spins on a horizontal axis). Topeed officers galloping.

Amateur film without titles shot by Royal Engineer Lieutenant Archibald ("Archie") Jack of King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners records on and off-duty scenes at camp in Northern India, possibly during a Brigade winter exercise in the Rawalpindi area ca 1939, when Lieutenant Jack was captain of the unit's 43 Divisional HQ Company, based at Roorkee.

Notes

Summary: Original film box marked "Camp".

Remarks: grateful acknowledgement to Major D D Alexander, Colonel M B Adams, Colonel W G A Lawrie, Colonel D C S David and Lieutenant-Colonel M J J Rolt (members of King George V's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners Officers Association) for comments and additional information. Colonel Adams suggests that the location could be Rawalpindi (or possibly Agra) during peacetime; the presence of wireless sets suggests an exercise (Sappers had no sets of their own at that point). The exercise would have consisted of the DHQ Company of Sappers and Miners, and also a full troop of soldiers. Horses were used often by the unit; Colonel Lawrie notes that the Indian Army had little motor transport at the time, which was not a problem due to the lack of roads on the North West Frontier.