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Chapter Thirteen
Cinema De Luxe

Peanuts were sixpence a bag so we bought two bags, one for attack and one for defense. It has not yet been finally established whether the peanut boys regathered their stock from the floor and resold it to us next night at the guardhouse gate. That was the Samambula theatre and the boys were Indians with shining teeth and skinny legs. It was not built by us but enthusiastic sapper projectionists were the first to find a long-lost projector and pro-vide the evening entertainment Non-picture nights there brought ? us native concert parties, noteworthy boy choristers and Fijian basso profundos. The days saw us stretched out corpse-like after recent TAB or tet prop inoculations, or bearing up with difficulty under the heat and burden of a compulsory church parade.

Namaka nights saw us looking out to sea from the back of the hospital and enjoying the flicks on the brow of the hill below the fig trees. Even after the 'great scatter' we enjoyed our regular pill at the adjacent ITS screen on Three Tree Hill or ventured back to Namaka camp. In those days, however, our interest in theatres as such was no more than second hand. When we started to build for ourselves, something quite out of the ordinary appeared on the landscape.

To the many thousands of our patrons who came to see the movies at Engineer Theatres Unlimited, we wish to say, 'Thank you.' Theatres of the open-air variety have been our speciality and not only have they been heated nightly for your comfort but seating has been, on occasions, of the finest milled timber in the world. We feel that when the average production of the film industry reaches the quality of our cinemas de luxe then no page 75soldier in the tropics need ever fear boredom. Of course there were theatres other than our own which we patronized freely. The construction battalions which, like ourselves, found the theatre an early priority in any island, often showed a better film, or a different one. This was especially so on Nissan where the 'possibilities of selection for a movie were almost as good as in Cathedral Square, Christchurch.

Our first contact, after Fiji, with the open air theatre was at the US airfield of Plaine des Gaiacs in New Caledonia. From Nepoui, the nightly truck ran us up to lie on hard ground or ant-hills and watch the silver screen mirror the mozzies. A possible alternative then was to brave the red dustiness of Nepoui and visit the negro camp for their show. This was often a special treat since they might well lift up their voices and sing as for the jubilee.

We started our cinema building proper on the slope behind Taom roadhouse. This was a handy spot with a fine outlook on to Mt. Taom, especially fine when a full moon lit up the bush, river and mountain. Bamboo seating installed for upwards of 2,000 personnel was usually filled. Additional bodies lay at all angles to the platformed screen. The maintenance of bamboo seating when folks would persist in walking over the terraces proved a problem but, for the period that we stayed, the road-house cinema proved a most valuable adjunct in morale building. Not only pictures but USO shows, the Kiwi concert parties, the div band (when 'in the mood'), and most noteworthy the 37th Battalion show, all performed on our stage and were most wel-come. We might walk over through the moonlit glades of acajou and pandanus to a boxing tourney starring Tom Heeney as a visitor, or in the glorious New Caledonian sunlight of an early Sunday morn, already unpleasantly hot at 0700 hours, stroll sleepily over to Mass. Yet another engineer production in Necal was the Nepoui Valley show, the 37th Field Park's rustic seated erection. Later it was possible to visit the New Zealand mobile film unit which had a busy time playing to the demoiselles on the whitewashed walls of Bourail Place. Only such films as could be, by any means, construed as 'propaganda' were ever com-pletely unpopular, but those were even more unmistakably howled down than were the ball game shorts.

The Guadalcanal theatre off Le Sage Trail was a triumph for page 76the 20th Field. Virgin bush had to be felled there and road access and seating provided for 1,200 men. The result was a fine open air clearing festooned with lianas—a real jungle theatre. While there, enjoying such pictures as Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver, we might well expect to have a condition red upsetting things for a while. The frequency of conditions red (enemy attack imminent), however, was not so great as to worry us unduly after the first or second week; and since condition yellow (all clear) came back soon enough, and no condition black (in-vasion) appeared, we were able to enjoy our movies in relative peace, provided always that the mosquitoes were not feeling too aggressive. When the 14th Brigade moved on, personnel of the Field Park enjoyed themselves with the US rehabilitation sec-tion's shows or later still with the 4th Special Battalion.

Beyond the 'Canal' we improved ourselves and our theatres too. On Vella, the coconut plantation at Joroveto lent itself more easily to theatre building than had the Guadalcanal area since there was not the same amount of clearing to be done. Coconut logs made a smoother, less knobbly, seat than some jungle furn-ishings might. The Joroveto amphitheatre, seating 3,000 men, was such a pleasant spot in consequence of our fitting it up that even on the wettest night chaps could be found waiting patiently for the stroke of 7.15 p.m. For a recalcitrant dynamo they would wait till 8.30 p.m. The effective staging of band concerts here as well as of native shows, of 26th Field concerts with the 'Rhythm Rascals' or church parades with carol choirs, was greatly en-hanced by the provision, by 20th Field carpenters, of an elegant sound-shell in redwood. The whole thing was built up in strips and effectively threw out the sound to the 22nd Field Ambulance personnel seated up in the 'gods' behind the gonophones.

Here again we were delighted by the efforts of the 3rd Div band and able to make suitable comparisons. Here especially we listened in amazement to the Vella native Christians singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus unaccompanied and in excellent Eng-lish. On this stage, Christmas Eve, 1943, Padre Voyce of Kahili, Bougainville, paid public tribute, on our behalf, to the loyal and enthusiastic support of the fine native people of this island. The bats wheeled overhead with short shrill shrieks; around our socks, trouser legs neatly tucked in, the mozzies whispered. Between films we played a hand of bridge or chased a match up one side of page 77the crib board, read the latest Digest, tested each other's quiz capacities, or took a surreptitious swig.

But what was perhaps the finest engineer built jungle theatre was that of Torahatup on Nissan, the 20th's final work of art. Jt provided once more operator and stage and screen for half a brigade and more. Constructed in similar fashion to the Joroveto theatre it had the added advantage of a greater space cleared and smaller numbers to accommodate. Tiered seating was vastly-superior to anything the CBs showed us. Different films for 16 millimetre and 35 millimetre projectors enabled us to seek variety if there were no show for us. 'Snafu' appeared to remind us that mosquito repellent was for external application only. Here we saw ourselves as others saw us; landing on a waterless island and littering the jungle trails with dead Japs, LSTs giving birth to endless streams of lorries and dozers, the first few coconuts falling to the airstrip builders.

Not even the memory of a real white woman—and blonde-' coming in on a wing and a prayer,' or the vision of Henri Penn's merry men fiddling in the frescoed YM hut at LeClere's (our final entertainment en route home) can efface those starlight nights of the silver screen in a setting of jungle shadow. It was by keeping our movies outdoors that we maintained that fine old Shakes-pearean tradition of 'holding as 'twere the mirror up to nature.'