Camouflage

Camouflage: From the French word Camoufler, to blind or veil; also Italian Camuflare, to "make up." Camoufle was the term in the 17th and 18th Centuries for the screen in front (towards the audience) of the candles of the footlights in a theatre.

The word was first adopted in the War by the French, to express deceptive concealment – actually, the concealment of the fact that a deception is being practised, the essential feature being deception. On land, at the outset of the War, a simple method of concealment, in particular for gun positions, was employed by means of boughs of trees and grass etc., strewn over canvas screens netting. This gave place to camouflage proper in an unlimited variety of forms, the general idea being to make the camouflaged object harmonise with its surroundings, and be either undistinguishable, or readily mistaken for something else. Devices were innumerable. Outlaying snipers were camouflaged in canvas garments painted to tally exactly with their surroundings. Guns and limbers, transport wagons, railway carriages, all underwent various processes of treatment to that end. The head-dress of troops in chalky districts was whitened, and in muddy districts browned, steel helmets were covered with sandbag cloth; roads were camouflaged with stretches of screen along the sides painted with scenery in keeping with the natural features of the neighbourhood, and so on. In France and England some hundreds of people were kept busy producing camouflage materials etc., for every kind of deceptive purpose.

Most noteworthy perhaps of all the achievements of camouflage in the War was the part played in the strategy of the autumn campaign on 1918 in Palestine by the 15,000 camouflaged dummy horses (sack of straw on sticks) set up in abandoned cavalry camps in the Jordan Valley, which, by completely deceiving the enemy airmen, enabled Lord Allenby to transfer his entire cavalry forces secretly, right across the whole country to the coast, from one flank of the Army to the other, without the enemy having the least idea of what was happening, or where the attack was to be delivered.

In the Navy, at the outset of operations, a system of painting was adopted to make it difficult for the enemy to judge range in action. Then, the painting of an imitation bow-wave was adopted, to give the impression of speed. With the extension of German submarine activity dazzle painting came in, with the idea of making it difficult for a submarine to make out the course of a proposed victim. "Etienne" in A Naval Lieutenant tells this story:


 * There is a letter from a camouflage officer to a merchant skipper who protested against the vivid splashes of blue and green and red with which his ship was being decorated. The camouflage officer wrote in reply: 'Dear Sir, The object of camouflage is not, as you suggest, to turn your ship into an imitation of a West African parrot, a rainbow in a naval pantomime, or a gay woman. The object of camouflage is rather to give the impression that your head is where your stern is.'

Beyond its Service use, the word camouflage came into vogue as an expression implying any deception. A prevarication or half-lie would be "camouflaged truth"; a doubtful patriot might find himself called a "camouflaged Hun"; Private Jones, whose smartness was questionable, would be referred to as "Jones camouflaged as a soldier."

The official post-War definition of "camouflage" is "the art of concealing that something is concealed." ''(Manual of Field Works, 1921, p.23).