Release date : October 19, [eBook ] Most recently updated: October 24, Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document. When I was in France I made arrangements with my friend Mr.
Low Warren, at that time Editor of the Kinematograph Weekly , to arrange the manuscript I sent him for publication in book form. The manuscript has in no way been altered in any material respect, and is in the form in which I originally wrote it. Fate has not been unkind to me. I have had my chances, particularly during the last two or three years, and—well, I have done my best to make the most of what has come my way. That and nothing more. How I came to be entrusted with the important commission of acting as Official War Office Kinematographer is an interesting story, and the first few chapters of this book recount the sequence of events that led up to my being given the appointment.
Let me begin by saying that I am not a writer, I am just a "movie man," as they called me out there. My mind is stored full to overflowing with the impressions of all I have seen and heard; recollections of adventures crowd upon me thick and fast.
Thoughts flash through my mind, and almost tumble over one another as I strive to record them. Yet at times, when I take pen in hand to write them down, they seem to elude me for the moment, and make the task more difficult than I had anticipated. In the following chapters I have merely aimed at setting down, in simple language, a record of my impressions, so far as I can recall them, of what I have seen of many and varied phases of the Great [4] Drama which has now been played to a finish on the other side of the English Channel.
Most of those recollections were penned at odd moments, soon after the events chronicled, when they were still fresh in mind, often within range of the guns. It was my good fortune for two years to be one of the Official War Office Kinematographers. I was privileged to move about on the Western Front with considerable freedom.
