Islands Troops In Film
p. 43 · Read in the full issue
DURING the recent stay in Sydney of the First Battalion of the Pacific Islanders enlisted under the De Gaulle banner a film was made by M.
J. M. X. Chollot, of “Le Courrier Aus tralien”. Its first screening was given before members of the Pacific Islands Society at the Carlton Hotel, on August 27, in the presence of M. Andre Brenac, leader of the Free French Movement in Australia, and Madame Brenac. Partly in colour, and titled both in French and English, this excellent record of the Tahitians and New Caledonians in camp at Liverpool, marching through Sydney, and at the La Perouse memorial, Botany Bay, will later be screened in Noumea and Papeete.
It is learned that the New Caledonian Foyer, or Club, run in London, for Cale donians serving with the Free French Forces, with funds raised in the Colony, was entirely destroyed in a recent Ger man raid on Britain. But the work will go on, for new funds are being raised to re-open the club in another building.
Mr. Trafford Smith, the Colonial Office official, who has been touring the Paci fic, is now temporarily attached to the office of the British High Commissioner in Canada who, strangely enough, is Mr.
Malcolm MacDonald, his old chief at the Dominions Office in London. Mr. and Mrs. Smith travelled by mission schooner from Funafuti in the Ellice Group direct to Suva, and there caught a Matson boat for the USA.