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DEAR FOLKS: We had a lot of fun today watching one of the men in the camouflage department ["somewhere in France"] matching up his paints and decorating the ambulances and ammunition wagons, so they could not be seen easily against the background. One of the boys in my company asked him why he didn't paint himself so as to be invisible. He replied in a joking way, "My dear friend, I don't want to waste any time on myself. And there is no use wasting any time on you, for I can't help it if you look naturally like a ________" [the missing word is in the completed drawing below].
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We live in Iowa, not far from an architectural firm called StruXture Architects. It was founded in 1934 by David B. Toenjes, who was the first person to earn an architectural degree at Iowa State University in Ames. He also served in France during World War I, where he was stationed at Dijon ("somewhere in France"), which was also the location of a major American camouflage production facility.
We recently found this brief news article, titled TEN YEARS AGO IN THE SERVICE, in The Waterloo Courier, September 8, 1928—
"I was stationed at Dijon, France, 10 years ago," said David B. Toenjes [of Waterloo IA]. "Our company had charge of getting supplies up to the front from Dijon base." Toenjes was first sergeant of Company C, 309th machine shop repair unit, MTC.
"At Dijon there was a camouflage park, where papier mache goats, cows and everything else were made. I went over one day to look around. Everything looked natural, but when I sat on a log, things weren't so natural. It was made of paper.
Armistice Day the boys put on a big celebration. The last one trailed in four days later with a woman's fur around his neck."
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