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Context:
When Allied soldiers landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day reporters from the BBC and other broadcasting organisations went with them. It was an early example of reporters being 'embedded' with troops so that they could report the war from the front-line.
To help the reporters the BBC engineering department created a new light-weight recorder called 'the midget' - war correspondent Robin Duff can be seen using one in the picture. The midget worked like a wind-up gramophone, with a needle recording sound onto large discs, like 'long-playing' records, which could record for two minutes. The machine was apparently extremely unreliable - but nonetheless allowed many of the most extraordinary recordings of the War to be made.
Transcript:
The paratroops are landing...they're landing all round me as I speak...they've come in from the sea and they're fluttering down...and they're just about the best thing that we've seen for a good many hours. They're showering in...there's no other word for it.
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