scout's oath / true boys do not chew gum in classroom

CAMOUFLAGE in The Clinton County Times (Lockhaven PA), December 6, 1918—

Long before the word was used there were boys who practiced camouflage. When a boy in school gets a book up before his face apparently to study, but in reality to chew gum, he is guilty of camouflage. Camouflage is used when a boy who has not looked at his lesson attempts to make an impressive recitation, or when he looks straight at the teacher while his mind is traveling off to the baseball ground. In war, camouflage has its place, but it has no place in the life of a true boy.

british dazzle plane is mostly black and jazzy yellow

DAZZLE PLANE IS ENGLAND’S LATEST in Times Daily, March 3, 1925—

LONDON, England (UP)—Airplanes “like flying zebras” have joined the British air navy.

Officially, they are known as “dazzle planes.” They [are] splashed with color in an extension of camouflage so that even a short distance away, while in flight, it is impossible to tell what kind of machine it is.

Tests with several of these airplanes were made at one of the Royal Air Force stations.

Witnesses said that the “dazzle planes” seemed “all out of proportion,” with the fuselage in some places apparently badly bent. It looked, said one, as if the wings were about to fall off.

The colors chosen were mostly black and also jazzy yellow.

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Image credit: Animated version of print from David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens, Iowa Insect Series (2012)

dazzle / pied pigment is a nuisance in a crowded port

USS West Galoc / 22 August 1918

RAZZLE, DAZZLE, NEW CAMOUFLAGE EFFECT in Pittsburg Press, February 24, 1918—

NEW YORK, Feb 23—Camouflage is all right on the high seas but it is a nuisance in port. So say skippers on the harbor ferries here.

A great liner with razzle, dazzle decorations almost cut a Lackawanna ferry in two when the steamship emerged from her self established concealment the other day.

With the port full of pied pigment, commuters are wearing goggles to avoid paint shock. Whereas the early idea of camouflage was to make the ship blend into the sea and air, the latest wrinkle is to so dazzle enemy gunners with startling designs that they are unable to properly adjust their range finders.

The steamer that almost sank the ferryboat was a work of art. Light blue covered her bow for twenty feet than appeared three green and white semi-circles while a great black band ran from the poop deck at the sheer strake to a point on the waterline abaft the foremast. It was thirty feet broad. This black streak sprang from an arrangement of black and white concentric circles.

a frieze of tiny men in uniform take pot shots at doves

Donald Friend. Anne Gray, Ed. The Diaries of Donald Friend. Vol 1. National Library of Australia (Canberra), 2001—

One day the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald came to Peter Bellew with a tin helmet: the editor was an Air Raid Warden, and he wanted his helmet “camouflaged.” Could Bellew get one of his artist friends to do the job? Peter gave it to me to do. Of course the camouflage idea for a warden was sheer frivolity. I suppose the editor thought it would look prettier that way—or fashionable, or useful or something. I was delighted to do the job. I took it home and painted on it numbers of fat, white, vapid peace doves, flying around with olive branches in their beaks, and on the lower part of it, a frieze of little men in uniform take pot shots at the birds with cannon and rifles.

French Infantry helmet broken up by painted lines

POILUS CAMOUFLAGE EVEN HELMETS NOW in Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport CT), September 13, 1918—

The French poilus [slang term for WWI French soldiers] have startled the Hun [German forces] repeatedly with their cunning in fighting materials. The latest bit of strategy pulled by the French fighters is the camouflage helmet. The poilu found that the ordinary steel helmet was visible for some distance against the mottled background of brush and barbed wire. So the army artists were called upon to help. Now the helmets are marked with a series of white lines which makes them blend with the background and helps make the wearer part of the landscape.

Veil on Helmet intended to Deflect Flying Fragments

Above WWI infantry helmet (1918) with a suspended veil of chain, which was supposed to lessen the damage caused by flying schrapnel fragments. Public domain NARA photograph 533656.

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CAMOUFLAGED NOISE LATEST FROM FRONT: Burlap Coverings Prevent Tin Derbies from Playing Tunes on Wire, in Stars and Stripes (France), April 5, 1918—

The camouflaged tin hat is the latest in spring styles in the Army. It appeared first among a number of men a few weeks ago, and is now becoming a real sensation.

The camouflage hat is a homemade affair, in so far as the camouflage goes. You take a piece of burlap, fit it neatly to the helmet, and then bind it in place on the inside rim with threaded cord. The main idea of the camouflage is to keep your hat from being noisy in the trenches. Wire and strips of camouflage are stretched across the trenches at intervals, and you have to duck under them. If you raise up too soon and your helmet scratches against the wire, it fairly rings. Hence the burlap-noise-camouflage idea.

Every day that goes by brings more affection for the tin hat from the American fighting man. There are few who have been in the trenches, or about artillery emplacements who have not had shell pieces pounced off their helmets. Without the tin hat these shell pieces would have meant death or at least a serious wound.…