In 1916, Wig [Richard Sumner Meryman] joined the World War Ambulance Corps, bringing wounded from the front to French hospitals. When America entered the war in 1918, he transferred as a lieutenant into the Camouflage Corps, which was among the first units in France… [As a camoufleur] He was applying the principles he had helped illustrate in Abbott Thayer's 1909 book, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, the culmination of Thayer's obsession with the natural world. This book, adapted to uniforms and equipment, made Thayer the father of military camouflage.
[Note: Richard S. Meryman, Jr., appears in several interview clips, in which he talks about his father's association with Abbott Thayer and his camouflage research, in a documentary film titled Invisible: Abbott Thayer and the Art of Camouflage (PRP Productions), available as a dvd. Click here for an online roster of other camouflage artists.]
