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Roger Pocock, The Art of Concealment: Devices on Land and Sea. The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) January 3, 1918, p. 6—
On the permanent staff of the Natural History Museum in London there are two little wooden ducks. They are dressed in gray flannel, and each housed in a glass case, with a grey flannel background. No. 1 duck is dressed in plain gray flannel and you can see her plainly at a hundred yards, because of the dark shadow cast by her neck and body, as well as by the brightness of her back. No. 2 duck to slightly whitened underneath to counteract the shadows, and slightly bronzed on top to counteract the light. Even at six feet the showcase appears to be empty. There is not a sign of duck. No hawk, no fox, no sportsman with a scatter-gun and a small dog could possibly discover or kill the invisible duck unless she moved, or made foolish quacks to guide her enemies. A great many years ago I wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty, imploring them to go and see the invisible duck, who could teach them priceless lessons in the art of concealing battleships and cruisers. They promised faithfully, so l have no doubt they called and left their card.
Am I giving away a secret, or letting cats out of bags? From all I hear the British navy of today can show the invisible duck that she in a mere beginner in the art of camouflage. In the current number of Punch you may see a tramp steamer impersonating a German sausage works. That's a joke, but the British fleet delights in playing practical jokes on the Germans. You may have noticed, for example, that the U-boat campaign is not a complete success, and that the British Lion does not as yet sit up to beg for mercy.
If you would study camouflage by land go look at the wild animals. See how the tawny lion and striped tiger are painted to resemble the tall yellow bunch grass at the jungle. The giraffe is painted with a quaint diamond-pattern exactly like the flickering lights among the acacias trees on which he feeds. The leopard, the jaguar, and all spotted cats, the spotted deer, and the dappled horse are painted to imitate the dappled light under a shady tree. The pig is patched pink and brown like the sunlight, and shadow of the denser woods, The elephant is painted a hazy brown, exactly like the great trees at the deepest forest. So all the wild beasts are colored for concealment in their natural landscape, while many of them change their clothes with the seasons. wearing white for the snowy winters, brown for the torrid summer. In exactly the same way our British armies are clothed in tawny dun for the tropics, and in khaki—a Hindu word for dung color—for warfare in temperate regions.
The khaki blends exactly with the cranes and timbers of North Western Europe. As for the German field-grey, it is a capital imitation of the shadows cast by woods or entrenchments on a sunny day, and blends very nicely either with rain or fog. The horizon blue of the French armies tones well into average landscape. All are useful colors. In the early part of the war the British made one mistake. The service cap was kept taut and smart with a wire hoop inside the rim of its flat top. So stretched, the cloth reflected sunlight, and presented a fine target for enemy marksmen, until we found out what was wrong. Then we moved the wire, and the cap was no longer a target. When, during air raids, our men get the order "to stand fast," the army is almost altogether invisible at 2,500 feet.
In the old days our bell tents made excellent targets for heavy artillery, being visible at a distance of many miles. Now all of them are painted with a special sort of distemper, and the bolder the patches, the stronger the colors, the better. Strong painting breaks the contours of any sheet, and so not only tents, but guns, timbers, wagon covers and huts are made to look just like the patched and broken ground of camps and roadways. Beyond such elementary trifles in camouflage the writer may not go with discretion. But the thing is certainly a wonderful and complete art today.
At the present time Fritz [the German military] is surely puzzled, he even, when we let his airplane observers enjoy a peep at our lines, the things that they see are not really there at all, while the guns, which they can neither see nor photograph, are playing havoc with the fond ambitions of the super-man.
One must own that Fritz is artful himself, but the British army, like the navy, has many a merry jest at the expense of the bewildered enemy.
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