As well as fulfilling a strategic role in wartime, Newfoundland provided the Allied cause with around 7000 men for the armed services. There were no standing military units – the first call for men, issued in the second week of the war, was for 625 ‘experienced Newfoundland fishermen to serve in the boats and ships of the Northern Patrol’ (Nicholson, 1969, 5). As the winter of 1939 drew in, further requests for manpower were made by the Navy and Army, and in November a request for loggers was also issued. Newfoundland units were formed within the Royal Artillery (the 166^th [Newfoundland] Field Regiment RA and the 59^th [Newfoundland] Heavy Regiment RA) and in the RAF (125^th [Newfoundland] Squadron), and by 1942 around 3500 loggers had crossed the Atlantic to work for the war effort in the forests of Scotland (ibid., x, 6-8). The wartime service of these men is the subject of Newfoundlanders at War.

A Ministry of Information film produced by Pathé, Newfoundlanders at War was clearly intended for a Newfoundland audience alone, as its main intention is to inform people at home in Newfoundland about the wartime work that their friends and loved ones were undertaking so far away. Thorpe and Pronay confirm that the film was for overseas distribution only (Thorpe and Pronay, 1980, 121). An upbeat missive to those that have stayed behind, it uses the device of letters from home as a way to introduce the various Newfoundland units.

The film opens with scenes of bags of letters being sorted in the London offices of Newfoundland’s Trade Commissioner, and the commentary immediately connects the scene directly to the audience: ‘Two thousand miles away you stamped your letter and sent it off. It comes out of the bag in Newfoundland’s corner of London.’ Cheery ‘Newfoundland boys’ sort the mail – ‘they recognise many of the names’ – and send the letters on to their comrades stationed around  Britain. As the film progresses, each Newfoundland unit is individually introduced after a shot of a real letter, each addressed by name, forwarded care of the Commissioner’s office. The film evidently hopes to present the troops as a source of great pride for Newfoundland, but more dominant is a desire to reassure its audience that everything is fine, and that the lads of Newfoundland are happy and well looked after in their work.

Naturally, the nitty-gritty of war is studiously avoided in favour of scenes of hard work, camaraderie and humorous asides. There is an effort to reduce the strangeness of the situation by relating everything to Newfoundland – letters from home will find the soldiers in a place ‘very much like Newfoundland,’ it rains in London ‘just as it does at home’, the tractors in Scotland are ‘much the same as those back home,’ and so on. Lightly handled sequences show the great strides that Newfoundland’s doughty young men have made in training and extol the virtues of the traditional Newfoundlander, linking their current task to the legendary past – ‘They are the worthy sons of pioneers and explorers. They face the wind and weather on uncharted courses with the same skill and daring as their sailing-ship grandfathers once displayed.’

The essence of the film is encapsulated in the initial sequence of mail-sorting – as the commentary describes the alacrity with which the Newfoundland boys despatch the packages of ‘comforts’ sent from home, a middle-aged woman holds a woolly jumper up for size in front of a fresh-faced naval rating. ‘Trade Commissioner Davies takes a personal interest in their distribution’, asserts the narrator, and the motherly lady fades out to be replaced by the portly Commissioner, who shakes the young man’s hand. The sequence gently reproduces both the moving farewell of parents to their child, and touchingly reassures those same parents (who would have formed a principal audience for the film) that their grown-up sons, gone away to war, are being looked after abroad by a kindly, concerned officialdom.

Francis Gooding