In its report of the 15^th session of the National Defence Council in August 1944, Indian Information noted that the ‘council also discussed a memorandum on a number of recommendations made by certain members of the National Defence Council who visited the Middle East, Persia and Iraq in April last’. The caption for a photograph in the journal taken at an Indian Soldiers’ club explained that on the recent tour of the Middle East, council members – including Professor E. Ahmed Shah, Captain Sardar Naunihal Singh Mann, and Pandit Kunzru – visited ‘active battalions, training establishment[s] and special leave camps for Indian troops of this command’ (Indian Information, 15 August 1944, 178). The visit of the council members is further reported in the next issue of Indian News Parade (‘Indians Abroad Promote Goodwill’) which shows the members at a tea party and on a tour with Army officers learning ‘how the Middle East has become one vast base camp’.

Coverage of West African troops in Burma also featured elsewhere within Indian News Parade (in issues 70 and 88, for example). This issue notes the reinforcements for the West African forces. The 81^st West African Division reached India in August 1943 and served as part of the second Arakan campaign during the first half of 1944. By the summer of 1944, the 82^nd West African Division arrived and at the end of the year served as part of the third Arakan offensive (Jeffreys and Anderson, 2005, 57). In all, nearly 80,000 West African infantrymen served during the Burma campaign (Jackson, 2006, 214).

The final sequence shows footage from Italy, at a time when Indian News Parade was endeavouring to show more footage of Indian troops in action. Sir Syed Sultan Ahmed, Government Minister for Information and Broadcasting, explained the difficulties of photographing ‘night fighting in Italy’ at a meeting of the Publicity Advisory Council in August 1944. ‘Nevertheless’, he continued, ‘those of you who follow the Indian News Parade will have noticed that there is sometimes as much as 500 feet devoted to the services and an increasing proportion is of actual operations’ (Indian Information, 15 September 1944, 269). Footage from Italy featured in three of the next five editions (68, 70 and 72). Philip Woods noted that these newsreels often highlighted ‘the importance of Indian troops in the war, and the care that was being taken of these troops’, while a number of these films also illustrated Mahratta loyalty (Woods, 2000, 105).

The final item shows the town of Pignataro, which was captured by Indian troops of the Eighth Army in May 1944. The Times reported on the ‘superbly audacious and daring work’ of the Indians in capturing Pignataro and showed photographs of this ‘battered shell of a town’ (The Times, 18 May 1944, 4 and 19 May 1944, 6). Indian Information subsequently reported on the capture of German prisoners during the campaign. It reported the capture of German paratroopers by a company of the 8^th Indian Division under Major Girdhari Singh in Roccasecca at the end of May, and noted further prisoners taken by a rifle troop of the Bengal Lancers under Lieutenant Iqbal Singh. The report described hundreds of Italians that ‘streamed past the Indian column returning to their homes’ and ‘greeted the Indians with great joy’ (Indian Information, 1 July 1944, 5).