whyah duck decoy, whyah no chicken hunting cartoon

Above This is the cover of the October 20, 1909, issue of Puck, an American humor magazine that was founded in 1875 and continued until 1918. This cartoon was published about five years prior to the official adoption (by the French Army) of the practice of wartime camouflage. So although it doesn't use the word, it is nevertheless a portrayal of camouflage, such as the employment of decoys.

In the cartoon, two hunters armed with shotguns (labeled on their clothing as "Political Boss" and "Public Service Corporation") are concealed in the reeds on the edge of a lake, waiting for birds overhead to alight. On the water in front of them are various bird decoys, labeled "Respectable Candidates," with which they hope to lure the flocks of birds (labeled "Votes") to land. The text below the cartoon reads "They know the kinds of decoys to use."

Also see Abbott H. Thayer's Vanishing Ducks: Surveillance, Art and Camouflage.

RELATED LINKS 

Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

full-sized battleground dummies of browsing cows

Above News photograph from the New York Times on September 23, 1917, the year that the US entered the war. The caption reads: “A Pastoral Scene Through Which Runs an Important Railway Link Between the French Firing Line and a Base of Supplies. Only the Browsing Cow Happens to be Papier-Maché.” 

In earlier posts, we have featured comparable photographs of full-sized dummies of browsing cows (made of papier-maché), horse carcasses made of plaster, or human figures for the purpose of deceiving enemy observers.

Harrison S. Morris | His memories of Abbott H. Thayer

Harrison S. Morris

Above Photograph of Harrison S. Morris (1856-1948), a writer, editor, and arts administrator. From 1893-1905, he was the managing director of the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the nation’s oldest art school. In 1896, he married Anna Wharton, whose father was Joseph Wharton, a prominent industrialist who co-founded Bethlehem Steel, as well as Swarthmore College. Morris was the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, and the art editor of the Ladies Home Journal. A prolific writer, he was the author of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was in frequent contact with artistic and literary figures of his time, including (as described below) Abbott Handerson Thayer and George de Forest Brush.

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Harrison S. Morris, Confessions in Art. New York: Sears Publishing, 1930, pp. 142-144—

It was he [Abbott H. Thayer] and George de Forest Brush who, I believe, first thought of camouflage for ships at sea. They had pondered much and experimented much over the scientific problems of light and color, even outside the uses of pigment. They were among those to whom art brings ripened intellect, like Morse and Fulton, inventors who revolutionized the world's methods of contact.

So when we were in the war with Spain, Brush and Thayer disinterestedly went to Washington and offered their services and discoveries to the Secretary of the Navy. Of course, he was skeptical, as official life always is of change. He wanted to know, you know, and all that sort of thing. But while he was deliberating, and telling perhaps why the scheme was no good, one of the painters stuck in the ground a slender stick which he held in his hand, painted after their theory of protective coloration. Then Brush alluded and pointed in the course of conversation to the stick before them. To the Secretary of the Navy, there was no stick in sight. He went on speaking his conventional thought. But quietly and as if accidentally one of the painters turned the slender stick around in its place, so that the sun touched it another way, and, would you believe it, there was the stick which the Secretary could not see.

I rather think nothing came of the offer in the day of the Spanish War. But we know vividly enough what came of it later, and what ships and lives were saved by the wisdom of the two incomparable artists who thus could coordinate their art to the uses of life.

Thayer holding one of his duck decoys upsidedown

And another time, so Brush tells me, Thayer was invited to lecture on his theories of color before a Royal Institution of Science in London. He had before him on the platform a table on which was visible a decoy duck of wood such as sportsmen use in gunning. In his address, he alluded much to these ducks before him, and as well before the audience. At last, the patience of one of the English pundits could stand this no longer. He got up in some irritation at the offense to his intellect of speaking of ducks when there was only one duck in view. Would the learned gentleman be pleased to explain why he referred to ducks, thus plural, when there was only one duck in sight? He sat down well satisfied with exposing an American impostor who didn't know how to use the English language.

Thayer then gave a quick twist to a wooden duck, made invisible by his coloring, and the second bird was exposed in all its solidity. So was the English skeptic.

Historic examples of camouflage by Mexican forces

Above Pancho Villa (1914).

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The Daily Empire (Juneau AK), October 1, 1918, p. 5—

JUAREZ, Mexico—Camouflage as a war art was known in Mexico long before it was used in Europe although not by that name. Mexican soldiers, since the days of [Porfirio] Diaz, have practiced concealment for military advantage. They have been known to place their high crowned hats on poles stuck in sandhills in such a way as to make the enemy force believe they were defending the hill, then flank the enemy from another direction. [Victoriano] Huerta’s Federal soldiers used camouflage to conceal the portholes in the sides of armored railroad cards. A checkerboard pattern was painted on the sides of these cars, and black and white squares concealed the rifle ports.

The Mexican fighting men have also used the trick of covering their high hats and bodies with brush to advance on enemy positions through thickets. [Pancho] Villa originated the plan of driving a herd of cattle into a besieged town at night in order to draw the fire of the defenders and to explode any mines in the streets.

The most primitive though effective application of camouflage in Mexico was the practice of the Tarahuamara Indian scouts with [Francisco I.] Madero’s revolutionary army. These half-naked scouts would precede the army and by doing a kind of patter dance, raised a cloud of dust that concealed them from the view of the enemy and permitted them to approach enemy positions without being detected in their envelope of dust which resembled a whirl common on Mexican deserts.

Quaker guns and non-functioning decoy cannons

Wooden artillery used for training purposes

During World War I, non-functioning imitation cannons served two purposes. If they were more or less accurate models of actual battlefield artillery (above), they could be used to train soldiers to become accustomed to their use.

At the same time, there was also a need for non-functioning dummy cannons, traditionally known as “Quaker guns,” to throw off the enemy’s estimates of the size and location of forces. These were often crudely built from scrap lumber, since they would only be seen from a distance. Others (like the one below, probably made from papier maché) were more convincingly modeled. Once assembled and put into position, it was important to camouflage them as if they were genuine functioning guns.

Non-functioning decoy cannon, not yet camouflaged

WWI German version of a dummy trench observer

This is one example of the use of the same camouflage trick by the two opposing sides during World War I. Snipers stationed at the front were poised and ready to shoot at anyone in the enemy’s trench who was foolish enough to look over the edge. As a result, both sides made dummy imitation soldiers’ heads (made of papier-mache or plaster), which were mounted on sticks and held up above the top of the trench.

If the dummy was shot at, it might enable the targeted side to determine the sniper’s location. This public domain photograph, which was initially published in Le Miroir on January 28, 1917, shows a French Army corpsman examining a captured German version of a dummy trench observer (complete with a German helmet and duplicitous field glasses), mounted on a wooden stick.

Camouflage Artists | The Kearton Brothers

The Keartons' stuffed cow decoy

One of our favorite websites, hands down, is that of The Public Domain Review. Once there, perhaps our favorite essay (and one that's especially pertinent to our camouflage blog) is John Bevis' account of two turn-of-the-century wildlife photographers, the Kearton brothers. Titled Stuffed Ox, Dummy Tree, Artificial Rock: Deception the Work of Richard and Cherry Kearton, the essay describes and illustrates the ingenious attempts of these British pranksters to cleverly conceal themselves, in order to take candid photographs of animals in their natural habitat. They then published the results in several books (all of which are in public domain and available online). Bevis (author of the essay) has himself published a book about these phenomenal, pioneering naturalists, titled The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography (Uniformbooks, 2016).

Above are two of their photographs, showing two views of one of their inventions, a stuffed ox, (in Bevis' words)—

a hide realistically shaped over a padded frame, whose interior was just sufficiently capacious for both camera, mounted in the brisket and focusing through a hole in the hide, and photographer, bent into an excruciatingly uncomfortable posture…The stuffed ox enjoyed a brilliant but brief working life, being retired damaged at the end of the 1900 season after being blown over with Cherry [Kearton] inside.

But there's more—much more—such as a stuffed sheep, a large artificial rock, a spurious hollow tree trunk, a mask that shields the photographer's face, and a phony rubbish heap. Anyone familiar with various wartime camouflage tricks (see for example the decoy papier maché cow below, held aloft by World War I French camoufleurs), said to have originated with artists, will recognize that the Keartons' inventions anticipate those by at least a decade.

French camoufleurs with cow decoy