This 1940s, silent training film by the Boy Scouts of America Visual Education Service shows part of the Scouts’ Emergency Service Program “toughening process,” specifically obstacle training fields and communications relays. The film begins with a foreword describing the importance of “toughening up training” in Scouting, accomplished through hiking, camping, and obstacle and communications relays, which prepare Scouts for Emergency Service. The first part of the film (1:30) shows the Obstacle Training Field. Each obstacle in the film is accompanied by a title card. Black-and-white footage shows Scouts in uniform walking across a grass field in two lines towards a series of wooden obstacles. A title card for the first obstacle (2:30) describes the importance of rolling. Scouts somersault in between two rope lines as a troop leader observes. The next obstacle (2:38) is balance; Scouts walk across wooden balance beams. Crawling (3:04) has Scouts army crawl under a series of wooden dowels without knocking any off. At 4:10, Scouts tandem walk across logs placed over a water pit. Scouts climb ladders (4:15), use stepping stones (4:40), jump over a narrow ditch (5:05), do monkey bars (5:26), and climb the Scaling Wall (6:00). They crawl through a culvert pipe for the Culvert Crawl (6:27), navigate a “blowdown,” or pile of branches and other forest debris (6:51), vault over a wooden fence (7:19), and finish the relay by passing a neckerchief to the next team member in line. At 7:44, steps for mastering the hand-over-hand rope climb are shown. A Scout climbs and descends (8:26) the rope. At 8:59, a title card describes the importance of relaying messages in emergency situations when other communication methods are unavailable. At 9:36, a troop leader hands a Scout a message to wear around his neck, and times him as he bikes down a paved road to the next waiting Scout. The boy passes on the necklace, and the second Scout runs up a hill, over a fence, and to the next Scout waiting by a pond (10:30). This Scout rows across the pond, where another Scout is waiting (11:12). The Scout takes off his clothes and swims across a pond to another Scout (12:02). The next Scout takes the necklace and runs to another Scout with a canoe (12:31). The next Scout canoes across a pond and passes the necklace to another Scout, who runs “home.” A title card at 13:31 describes how each relay team’s time is compared to previous teams’ runs. The final Scout in the relay returns to the troop leader.

Motion picture films don’t last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. For almost two decades, we’ve worked to collect, scan and preserve the world as it was captured on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies — including home movies, industrial films, and other non-fiction. If you have endangered films you’d like to have scanned, or wish to donate celluloid to Periscope Film so that we can share them with the world, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us via the weblink below.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com