Tag: Entertainment

How the troops entertained themselves in Macedonia, 1917-1918.

The skirl of the pipes!

Last month I was in London with an evening to spare, so I bought myself a ticket to an event on Horse Guards Parade, something I hadn’t done for many years. The last time I went to one of these, I’m sure it was just billed as ‘Beating Retreat’ by the Household Division, but this was a ‘Military Musical Spectacular’! And the name wasn’t the only change – a large digital screen, electric guitars and fireworks were also innovations, but, at least, the bands of the Brigade of Guards hadn’t changed.

The Salonika campaign was, of course, far too unfashionable for the ‘Gentlemen’s Sons’ of the Guards to take part in – so it was left to ‘The Feet’ (i.e. the line infantry) to do the job – but I did find a Salonika connection during the evening.

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A Night at the Palace Cinema

Amongst the souvenirs of the campaign collected by Private Herbert Price of the ASC Supply Department is a rather fragile flyer for Salonika’s Palace Cinema for the week beginning Monday 30 October 1916. Two films were on offer, the first a French silent film from the previous year, Strass & Compagnie, described as ‘a grand patriotic and poignant drama … in four long parts’, which doesn’t seem a great choice for men seeking escapism from war. In which case, maybe Herbert’s preference was for the 1912 American short, A Millionaire for A Day. Described by one US paper as ‘a screaming comedy’, this 1912 American silent short – based on a true story – is about a mechanic who goes to New York City and squanders his inheritance in a single day, returning home broke but wiser (Wikipedia). On the coming Friday, the film Pont du Diable (Devil’s Bridge) was promised, although this sounds uncomfortably like a location in the Struma valley!

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Take Your Partners …

With BBC Radio Three celebrating a ‘Day of Dance’, I thought I would see if I could find a suitable photo in the IWM’s online collection. As I suspected, there are a number showing Serbian troops and British medical staff dancing a kolo – a Serbian circle dance – but, as I have used some of those before, I was keen to find something different. Well, I think this is certainly different …

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The Salonika campaign’s so boring!

No, this isn’t a sudden cri de couer after twenty years of reading about and studying the Salonika campaign, but rather an acknowledgment of the tedium experienced by many of those who served in Macedonia between 1915 and 1919. This was the subject of a fascinating podcast I recently came across.

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