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René Bache, POPULAR SCIENCE: Pity the Poor Ducks, in the Portsmouth Daily Times (Portsmouth OH), May 24, 1919—
Duck hunters and other sportsmen in pursuit of game will no longer require "blinds" or other such means of concealment. They will wear snipers' suits instead.
The "cap of invisibility," which, when donned, rendered its wearer viewless, has figured in more than one fairy story. In the sniper's suit (as developed during the war) its miraculous function has been fairly realized.
What is a sniper's suit like? Most people have no definite notion on the subject beyond the fact that it is "camouflage" for the person. The matter, however, is easily explained, and can be made so clear that anybody may put together such a costume for his own use.
It needs no tailor's skill, goodness knows. The prime requisite of a proper suit of clothes is fit. But the sniper's suit must not fit at all. On the contrary, it must be vastly loose and baggy, not conforming in the least with the contour of the wearer. It must have no angles, for in nature angles are few.
The sniper's suit—for hunting snipe, or ducks, or what not—must be contrived and colored as to enable him to resemble as closely as possible his surroundings; to melt into them, as it were. It is made of the coarsest and cheapest kind of burlap, rubbed with mud or daubed with green or brown paint to imitate the color scheme of his immediate environment.
An essential part of it is a headpiece that can be pulled hood-fashion over head and face, the eyes of the wearer looking out through places that have been thinned for the purpose by the simple process of removing the burlap threads running horizontally. Tufts of grass or other natural vegetation growing in the immediate vicinity of the hunter's lurking place are fastened here and there to parts of his costume. He may even attach a few pebbles to it with short lengths of wire. His very gun is wrapped in a loose burlap bag, provided with a fringe of grass or leaves, leaving only the trigger and the sight free.
Now, if the hunter thus equipped were to walk about he would, of course, alarm the game. If he were merely to stand erect, he would attract attention (though immovable), because differing in form from his surroundings. But when he lies prone, and perfectly still, he becomes in appearance merely a normal irregularity in the landscape. In effect, he is invisible.
The noblest of all game animals is man. In warfare he becomes just that. During the recent conflict suits corresponding to the above description were commonly worn not only by snipers, but also by machine gunners, and by men who took part in raids across No Man's Land.
