Broadcasting (Jan - Jun 1944)

Nothing Can Escape the Wire Recorder THE MAGNETIC wire recorder has gone to war, but like a wise old hedge-artist it hasn't forgotten that some day it will return to peace. Therefore its most recent and by all odds least dangerous assignment — re cording two musical numbers in Pellegrin a quiet apartment in a lovely Naples villa — was pei'haps its most unusual. Up to last night the recorder had seen a good bit of war in this theater. It had been through air raids, strafing and bombing; it had been operated in tents, dugouts, foxholes, ruined buildings, artillery O.P's and warships. By jeep and by hand it had been hauled up the precipitous trails of these Italian mountains. It was in a forward command post hacked out of rock during the shelling and bombing of Monte Troccio. It was present on the Anzio beachhead, lashed to the fire control bridge of a U. S. destroyer. It was on a Monte Gagliardo cliff looking directly up at Montecassino when the famous Abbey received its first bombing. In Italian Action It went through Sicily with John Hersey of Time; hit the Salerno beachhead with Don Hollenbeck of NBC; saw action in Italy with Farnsworth Fowle of CBS; climbed into an artillery O.P. atop a ruined farmhouse with George Hicks of Blue and the battalion commander to direct the shelling of Cassino. And it has been other places with other people. It has been much more mobile of late, due to a combination of circumstances often found in a war zone where necessity is the mother of, etc., and where one's primal instinct makes one adept at playing The Old Army Game of finder's keepers. This new mobility came about as follows: The recorder (Model 50) requires 60 cycle, 115-volt A.C. electric power. Commercial power in Italy varies with the community: From Foxhole to Living Room, Sturdy Qadget Covers the Conflict By MAJ. FRANK E. PELLEGRIN Public Relations Officer, Allied Force Headquarters in Italy in Naples it is 40 cycles, 150 volts; in Rome (we think) 48 cycles, and so forth. The best solution lies in U. S. Army Signal Corps generators— when one can be found. Up forward these are understandably few and far between; thus the recorder's mobility was reduced accordingly. But your correspondent located a worn-out generator and managed to "borrow" it, the promise to return it being satisfactorily indefinite. Then he found a small trailer to hold the generator. Then appeared Major Luther J. Reid, former CBS publicity director, now in this theater on special assignment from Army Service Forces, War Dept., to report on ASF operations as he finds them. And Then a Jeep En route here from Africa he had also negotiated the "loan" of a jeep, which had been requisitioned along with many others by some unit here, on condition that after using it "briefly" he would consummate the delivery to the ultimate consignee — a very sensible arrangement as all will agree, especially your correspondent and Maj. Reid. The trailer was hooked behind the jeep and hauled to an Ordnance Repair Depot, where the old generator was exchanged for a rebuilt job which functions often enough for our purposes. To this have now been added, by devious methods which need not be detailed at this point, several power leads now totaling a couple of hundred feet; a few necessary tools; two folding Army cots, and some miscellaneous field equipment. Now, by the simple expedient of tossing in our bedrolls, we are a Mobile Unit. We take the wire recorder and its own power supply anywhere that a jeep can go FRESH from recording the shelling of the Salerno beachhead, the bombing of Monte Troccio, the sounds of battle at the Anzio landings, where it was lashed to the bridge of a U. S. destroyer, the Army's wire recorder got an unusual assignment. One moonlight night by the Bay of Naples, it helped preserve two melodies composed by a British Army Captain before he left for the war front. Maj. Frank Pellegrin, brilliantly covering the Italian action with the advanced echelon, Public Relations staff, tells of the incident. Frank, you recall, was NAB Director of Broadcast Advertising before going into the armed forces. (which is almost everywhere), and when that remarkable vehicle falters, there are always plenty of willing GI's to manhandle the generator over the final stretch of rocks or mud or hill. Rare Opportunity To compensate Major Reid for his very considerable contribution to this menage it is necessary to cover many ASF operations, but I hasten to add that this has been a distinct pleasure and often a rare opportunity. It has enabled the machine for example to record the heartwarming story of the miraculous cures being effected by the use of penicillin on gas gangrene cases, in Army hospitals under shell fire; of blood transfusions given to their wounded buddies by frontline soldiers, who knock off 24 hours for the job and then go back to their foxholes; of the mobile QM bath units that enable the doughfoots to get their first hot shower in five or six months; of the unsung heroes of the mule pack train, who take over "at the end of the line" and lead their loaded animals up shell-torn mountain trails in the black of night, to supply at constant risk of their lives with food and water and ammunition the fighting men dug in on the mountain cliffs and crags; even of the "frontline M.P." whose job it is — believe it or not — to police the most advanced cross-road and keep people from straying accidentally into the German lines. These stories, and many others, have been made possible by the simple expedient of pooling our resources. Shows the Strain So, as we started out to say, the recorder has seen a bit of war. It shows the strain, and continues to function only by grace of the technical wizardy of Capt. Frederick 0. Wickham, Signal Corps, former director of the police radio network in Missouri, and solicitous care also by Lt. Carl Zimmerman, former Milwaukee announcer. But the payoff came last night. For a week one of our guests has been Capt. K. C. Harvey of the British Army, former BBC announcer and London music critic, who had just finished two piano compositions. He was ordered to join his division at the front in three days. He was saying that he would have no opportunity to score the melodies once he joined his division, and that when he might finally find the time, perhaps not until after the war, it was entirely possible that parts of his compositions would be forgotten. So up spoke the resourceful Maj. Reid. "Hey, Pellegrin, here's one for your wire recorder." Recording Music When the workings of the machine were explained to Capt. Harvey he was enthusiastic almost to the point of rapture. In almost no time the project was under way. There is a piano in the apartment of Signor and Signore Gino Cacace, a manufacturer who lives one floor above us in the Villa Elena (named for his wife). They speak no English; we speak no Italian. But they sensed the situation because no one could have been more charming and cooperative. The generator was hauled into the courtyard last evening; the power line was run up outside the building and into a Cacace window. The recorder, very cold, was warmed up by Signore Cacace's own electric heating pad, and her lovely furniture was all cluttered up with greasy, muddy equipment only two days back from the Cassino front. When you cannot converse with a foreigner in his own tongue it helps somehow to talk a foreign language anyhow. He can't understand it but the psychological ef(Continued on page 57) NAVY WAR FILMS BEING TELEVISED NAVY FILMS may be televised within 36 hours after they arrive at the Naw Dept., according to the Navy Office of Public Relations. The service, available to all networks, has been in operation for over a year, and has been used sev eral times by NBC. Battle film, made either by the Navy or by newsreel war correspondents, is flown from the front to the Navy Dept. where it is pro cessed, reviewed and cut for se curity reasons. It is then sent to the newsreel firm which, by a rotating arrangement, is next in line to receive it. Official Navy films are screened before representatives of networks, OWI, March of Time (movie), the Army Special Coverage Division, and newsreel company reviewers, to whom duplicate prints are made available for tele vising or screening. NBC has requested several Navy films for televising within the last year, among them "Battle of Midway", "Navy and Its Planes", "Navy and its Men", "Navy and Its Ships", "Navy Men and Medicine", "History of Naval Aviation" All of these were made for the Navy by the March of Time. Page 16 • April 3, 1944 BROADCASTING • Broadcast Advertising