1921] on Strategic Camouflage 313 



partly cover areas as large for agricultural shows which might last 

 a week, or that the German method was more economical than our 

 own ; for the material we employ for the construction of 100 huts 

 would, laid out in German fashion, effectively conceal 13,000 troops. 



Some models were shown. 



One, of an erection with sides sloping at an angle of ten degrees, 

 which, unlike an upright structure, casts no shadow until the sun is 

 low : the principle employed by the Germans in the lay-out of their 

 covering material. 



Another, of a cottage, was explained, known after a visit to 

 St. Pierre Cape.le, to be only 9 feet from the ground to the eaves. 

 Its shadow was four times as wide as that of a sham pasteboard 

 house, placed in the same parallel on top of the camouflage covering 

 (to give it the sense of solid ground), and which, because of the 

 narrowness of its shadow, could not have been high enough to 

 accommodate a big dog. 



Another model showed the tricks used by the camoufleur to alter 

 the angle of shadow. 



On the screen an aerial picture of real fields in harvest time was 

 contrasted with the imitation of such fields. In the real, shorn 

 ground appeared like velvet, and each patch of root crops or grass 

 was clearly distinguishable, but on the hangar surfaces (which made 

 up the picture of worked fields with sham stooks on them) there was 

 not a sign of vegetation, and clear proof that they were composed of 

 iron, with wide corrugations for the sake of drainage, ply board, and 

 large areas of tarred paper. Breaks in the material were marked 

 features in the photograph, and samples of the stuff used gathered 

 in Flanders in 1920 were shown. 



A dummy tram track on top of this roofing affected by the 

 undulations made a serpentine line, whereas the path it imitated was 

 shown to be quite straight. And the soil beside it is being ploughed 

 for the first time since the German occupation in July 1921. Had 

 the population not been deported there would have been no cessation 

 of labour in the fields. They were returning to their ruined village 

 in driblets, as huts were erected for them in 1921. The fixed shadows 

 of trees painted on the road covers were two hours too early 

 for the position of the sun, but the distorting of real shadows 

 in their proximity gives some idea of the thoroughness of the 

 camoufleur. 



Concrete blockhouses, always the first thing put up by the 

 Germans, were standing in 1920, where they stood in 1917, sup- 

 porting the landscape roofing. 



Among the pictures of the imitation landscape was a deserted 

 Red Cross camp within five miles of Amiens. These explain the 

 long waits between the 1918 offensives. In that inhospitable country 

 such cover had to be devised for the men before they were brought 

 up. Let me add that, although the military authorities refused to 



