On the evening of VE-Day as I was leafing through some more box files, I spotted some stills of a piece of film shot at Overloon on 13th October 1944.
In these stills, a Suffolk solider can be seen wearing very uncharacteristically, the braces to his webbing equipment down loose around his waist. This triggered something in the back of my mind of another photograph I had seen before. After a bit more rummaging, I found what I was looking for; a colour photograph taken just a few weeks earlier at Weert on 22nd September 1944. Though the stills were of The film were of no great quality, it definitely looked like the same man, with the same side profile and nose. The scrim on his helmet also appeared to be the same with just a few bits missing.
The film was shot on 13th October 1944 and featured men of ‘C’ Company re-enacting a fighting patrol through a deserted farmyard. After the fierce battle the day before, ‘C’ Company were the only Company of 1/Suffolk at fighting strength and because the other companies were all still holding front line positions to the south and east of the village, this may be why they were chosen to be filmed.
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