 Tirana, capital of Albania, celebrated its independence day on November the 28th. On that day too, its citizens joyfully celebrated their liberation. On the main street of the city they marched in procession. Modern Tirana consists of two cities, the old Albanian town and the new, which was built during the Italian occupation. And here it was that the Albanians celebrated the second liberation of their country from oppression. Overhead flew RAF Halifaxes in salute. Dropping leaflets and food for the last time. At the saluting base stood members of the allied military missions, among them Russians, Yugoslavs, American and British. These are the troops of Albania's guerrilla army, the men who never admitted the occupation of their country. During four years from their mountain strongholds, they fought the fascists and later the Nazis. And now they were marching in triumph as an army under their own flag. At the Cenotaph in Sydney, Australia, men of the film industry paid tribute to Damien Parra, Australian war correspondent. This young cameraman lost his life while recording the heroism of his fighting comrades in the Pacific. His camera's eye had roved over many scenes, glorious and ghastly. Libya, the tragedy of Crete and the immortal siege of Tobruk. And when the Australian imperial forces moved to the Pacific, Damien Parra went with them. The assault on Salomar. In the steaming jungles of New Guinea, he risked his life a hundred times to bring the pictures of that terrible campaign to the outside world. He flew in to cover the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. And then, in the fighting on Peleliu, he fell. Damien Parra's story is that of other men who fought for the allied cause. Not with gun or grenade, but with pen, microphone and camera. And in so doing, have given their all. Logs like these once became furniture. Now, birch, maple and mahogany become plywood and are made into war weapons. Boiled till they are thoroughly tempered and still steaming, the logs take us kindly to the razor as a well-soaked beard. About a mile of veneer can be peeled from a log in one long sheet. The sheet can be as thin as human hair. Cut to manageable size, the veneers are run through mechanical dryers. One of the secrets of the enormous strength of present-day plywood is the glue used. Alternate flimsy sheets of glue and veneer are interleaved. At this stage, the leaves can be flicked over like the pages of a book. In the hot press, the glue disappears completely into the wood. In this workshop, narrow strips of veneer are joined up edge to edge to be shaped into auxiliary fuel tanks. The army also uses numbers of folding plywood boats. Very buoyant, they've saved the infantry any amount of pneumonia. Lengths of 20 feet, the ply for horse gliders is supplied already cut to shape. This means a great saving of labor. Gliders are built strongly to crash land in safety on a few yards of uneven ground. The occupants don't suffer. All the planes of this war, mosquitoes have perhaps the most dramatic story. They were the answer to the RAF's call for a plane that could bomb Berlin in daylight and get away with it. First made in hundreds of scattered furniture factories while the Blitz was on, they established the right of present-day plywood to be considered a true engineer's material. Such ply will bear tremendous stresses. The mosquito hit the heart of Germany when she still thought herself all powerful. Plywood made the plane possible. That's one use for timber in wartime and here's another. But in Burma, machines give place to elephants. Captured from the Japanese, they are being used by the 14th Army to build roads and bridges. Plank with the precision of a carpenter. It can also lay off work with the same precision. In Burma, there were elephants who downed trunks at 5 p.m. in winter or summer alike. Being elephants, they never forgot. The answer to that evergreen question, how much wood would a woodchopper chop if a woodchopper would chop wood? At this woodchopper swing session in Australia, one of them hacked his way through in 34 seconds. What a useful man he'd be to have about the house.