Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  Joe shook his head. ‘I cannot. You know what your mother thinks about all this. I agree with her. Absolutely.’

  (But did he really?)

  ‘John will look after me.’

  ‘I can look after you.’

  Maureen stood up and faced him. She knew she was supposed to bow her head and defer to her father’s judgement.

  ‘I am terribly sorry, Dad, but I’m going to do it anyway.’

  It was quite a blow. Major Joseph Gray was able to convince brigadiers of the vast potential of static cover, he had a score of new recruits eating from his hand, but he couldn’t convince his daughter of the dangers of marrying young.

  He took a step back. ‘I am very disappointed.’

  Maureen kept her head up and said nothing.

  It was an impasse.

  But the worst was still to come.

  Nancy. Joe would have to deliver this news back to his wife. He had promised her he would put things right. He had failed. It was damnable. Impossible. No, he simply couldn’t face her. He had other things to attend to, after all.

  He kissed his daughter lightly on the forehead and walked briskly away.

  Then he did what he did best – he disappeared.

  Notes

  CAB = Cabinet Papers

  CD, TC, CDTC = Camouglage Development and Training Centre

  HO= Home Office

  IWM = Imperial War Museum

  PREM = Prime Minister’s Office Records

  TNA = The National Archives

  WO = War Office

  Jack Sayer, ‘The Camouflage Game’, refers to his unpublished, hand-written memoir, courtesy of Gillian Ward.

  To avoid repetition, the majority of quotes from Joseph’s letters to Mary are not noted. Unless stated otherwise, they form part of the Barclay family archive. Similarly, images reproduced form part of this archive, except where credited otherwise.

  1 H. J. Barclay memoir, courtesy Victoria Barclay

  2 Air Raid Precautions, set up in 1937 to protect civilians from bombing

  Self-portrait, 1953, charcoal on paper.

  A Ration Party of the 4th Black Watch at the Battle Of Neuve Chapelle, 1915, 1919, oil on canvas.

  After Neuve Chapelle (10 March 1915), 1922, oil on canvas.

  John Dye, Maureen and Joe Gray (right) in the garden at Broughty Ferry, c. 1921.

  Joseph Gray at work on After Neuve Chapelle.

  After Neuve Chapelle, 13 March 1915: a Private of the Black Watch, after the battle, 1917, pen and ink on paper.

  Joseph Gray, c. 1916

  Scottish landscape, drypoint etching, c. 1928.

  Agnes (Nancy) Gray, c. 1922.

  Sample of steel wool material (centre) compared to scrim (above) and photograph of steel wool in use at Cobham (bottom).

  John Churchill, The Retreat to Dunkirk, May 1940, The Beaches, reproduction of pen and ink drawing first published in Illustrated London News.

  Group photograph of ‘Recruits of 1st and 2nd Camouflage Training Course, Larkhill, June 1940’.

  Maureen Gray and John Barclay, the Strand, October 1939.

  Snow-covered steel-wool cover at Cobham, January 1940.

  is the Job which has got to be done: The Camoufleur knows it and so does the Hun

  Joe didn’t simply run away, although that’s how it appeared. He ran to.

  After the outbreak of war the newly created Ministry of Home Security took charge of civil camouflage. Joe was now deputy assistant director of the new operational research section, known as RE8. RE8 was responsible for camouflage of all ‘Military Establishments, Fixed Permanent Defences, Royal Ordnance Factories (excluding Agency factories run by civil firms) [and] Ministry of Supply Establishments’.1

  There was a huge amount to organise. The disappointments and difficulties in his personal life only made Joe more determined to prove himself in other ways. He had to get his newly patented, rust-proofed steel wool accepted by the War Office. Steel wool was the answer. It had to be put into large-scale production before the year was out. That became his singular obsession.

  So Joe ran from a situation he felt he couldn’t change and focused on something he might. He saw steel wool to be crucial. Screening a few oil tanks had only ever been just the start. In his mind’s eye, he envisaged acres of bristling threads, stretched out over frames, moulded into hedgerows and hayricks, suspended on poles to make fake trees.

  He gave a copy of Camouflage and Air Defence to Eugene Mollo, drawing his attention to the parts where he discusses the need for large-scale covers. They talked about Solomon J. Solomon and his theories about German camouflage schemes. Joe sensed they understood each other, that Mollo saw, as he did, that more needed to be done.

  ‘I am very worried,’ Joe admitted. Even though steel wool had made an impact, things weren’t progressing as he’d hoped. He felt both Simmons and Brigadier Sayer had recognised its potential but didn’t quite know how to apply it. He felt steel wool was being ‘played with’.2 With Simmons off in France Joe feared the momentum might vanish. Old-style netting was still the mainstay material, with a woefully inadequate amount of coloured hessian woven into it. Joe predicted that now war was declared, the Army would stick with what it knew, even if netting was far from the magic cover everyone assumed.

  He had to get the War Office on side and there was only one way to do it. Ever the artist, he proposed an exhibition. Firing off memos left and right, he spread the word about steel wool, emphasising its versatility and how quickly it might now be mass-produced. To prove the point he asked that M&E produce a dozen rolls, twenty-five yards long, and persuaded Peregrine Churchill to design some more ambitious covers. They had to strike a balance between making straighforward builds – so that unskilled labour could be used – but equally they had to impress, amaze and of course conceal. Joe wanted everyone to see that steel wool wasn’t some ‘niche’ material, and could do far more than paint or netting combined.

  One thing now counting in Joe’s favour was that by mid-November the supply of hessian-garnished nets was running into problems – raw materials were not coming forward. He seized the moment; in a memorandum dated 20 November 1939, he wrote:

  In view of the present urgent need for standardised camouflage materials I venture to submit that consideration might be given to the use of this material in the field. When hemp netting and scrim were standardised and ordered in large quantities it was presumed that a fireproofing treatment had been evolved. But actually such a treatment had not . . . As the conditions in France are static or semi-static the use of wire-netting appears to deserve consideration.3

  Brigadier Sayer felt nervous about the expense and recommended that trials be kept to a modest scale, focusing on pillboxes – those concrete guard posts that were springing up all over the landscape. ‘[Steel Wool] should be tried practically in the field as soon as possible,’ he wrote. ‘It would appear particularly suitable for Pill Boxes, Anti-Tank and M.G. gun emplacements and perhaps also for certain obstacles in the defensive positions now under preparation.’4

  Having secured some green space at Cobham, a short distance out of London, Mollo and his men began work on covers to conceal cars and guns. They conducted various trials into December to see how the material weathered, and experimented with different textures. (‘Coarse is better and slightly more like grass in appearance although the difference between the two is indistinguishable from the air.’5) The preparation of steel wool needed care, but end results proved its value. ‘In its final processed form it had plenty of contained shadow and when viewed from the air or from a distance provided a perfect screen, even though from the underside it seemed absurdly sparse.’6

  Joe was pleased with his ‘babies’ but was soon needed elsewhere. Richard Buckley had organised the very first camouflage training course at Netheravon and summoned Joe there to lecture. The course was designed primarily to deal with camouflage for troops going on active service. Johnny Churchill attended before being dispatche
d to France, as did portrait painter Tom Van Oss, Surrealists Julian Trevelyan and Roland Penrose, and a renowned zoologist by the name of Hugh B. Cott (‘mostly artists . . . a few scientists, film experts and other queer birds,’7 noted Van Oss in a letter home). Although Buckley was in charge he was swiftly overwhelmed and lost his voice,8 which meant Joe had to step into the breach. ‘Just got a minute before another lecture!’ he told Mary. ‘We are having a terrific time and go at it again after dinner every night.’

  Joe improvised lectures on different aspects of camouflage – ‘a matter of common sense and good discipline’9 – and discussed individual and then collective concealment, and the basics of aerial photography. He also listed the various materials for camouflage and how to use them: from canvas (cut into strips to garnish nets), to scrim (absorbs light, can be used to cover guns), to coir (good for dark tones) and netting (for general static cover). But it was too good a chance not to publicise his new material as well. When Buckley recovered he was both grateful and receptive to Joe’s descriptions of steel wool. He agreed to inspect the camouflage trials and offer his opinion.

  December was a bitterly cold month, but steel wool withstood heavy rain and snow, freezing temperatures and gale force winds. Even if a cover was damaged it made no difference ‘because natural fields are full of patches and variations and incidents of different kinds’.10 M&E grew more and more confident in their handling of it and they even covered a small stretch of water. The exhibits generated ‘first-class’ results.11 Jack Sayer was one of a steady stream of visitors at the time. There is a photograph of him standing with Joe and Schofield and various men in suits. They all look to Joe, their faces tense and serious, and he stoops pensively with hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He doesn’t look happy. Why doesn’t he look happy? Why?

  Two days before Christmas Joe had to take leave to return to London, although he only went as far as Raynes Park. Maureen was expecting him, immaculate in her best jacket and skirt. Not a wedding dress because she couldn’t afford one, and she didn’t think it right.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Joe told her.

  She was relieved that he had come.

  He smiled, then stopped himself. ‘But you know, it’s not too late.’

  Maureen clasped her hands together.

  ‘Don’t try to dissuade me, Dad. I am marrying John today.’

  She said it very firmly, as if she were now the adult talking to a child.

  Joe sighed and held out his hand.

  ‘Well, let’s get a move on, then.’

  He had hired a taxi to take them to Richmond register office, where John would be waiting. Nancy had decided not to come to the wedding. She would instead preside over a ‘celebration’ lunch, which was to be held at the nearby Stuart Hotel. Everything was deferred, however, because, in a strange twist on tradition, the groom was running late. There was a dense and icy fog that delayed all the trains to Richmond, and this meant John missed the time allotted for the service. Furious to be kept waiting, Joe bundled Maureen back into the taxi.

  They drove in circles around Richmond Park. Staring out at the frozen landscape, Joe still tried his best to change his daughter’s mind. Didn’t she see what a dreadful mistake this was? A hasty marriage in the shadow of war was bound to fail. What would she do about work? She would be better off leaving London and becoming a land girl.

  ‘I could find you something. I am sure I could. Let me have a few days to call people.’

  Maureen began to wonder if Joe had arranged the fog especially, but she didn’t dare make it into a joke. Joe was too deadly serious.

  ‘You have no idea what this war will be like.’

  ‘Which is why I want to be married,’ she replied.

  The war only clarified Maureen’s choices: it made the world in black and white. For Joe there were too many shades of grey. He talked on, his words echoing round the taxi as it completed its second circuit. Nothing worked. Maureen was her father’s daughter, and her mind was quite made up.

  After an hour and a half John finally materialised. By now Joe was worn out, and he was at least more convinced of the depth of Maureen’s feelings. The sight of John beaming broadly on the steps of the register office even gave him some relief. They clearly loved each other, there was no denying or mistaking it.

  Perhaps, just perhaps, they would prove everyone wrong.

  John and Maureen joined a long and winding queue of people waiting to be married, and after the shortest of ceremonies, they retired to the Stuart Hotel, where Nancy waited with a few other guests, tight-lipped and po-faced and thoroughly disapproving.

  There are no surviving photographs of the happy occasion. Not a single one. The story was they didn’t come out ‘because of the bad weather’. This seems very odd, especially when there are endless black-and-white photographs dated from the weeks that followed. All of them show an empty, snow-filled landscape. (Proof, at least, of the bad weather.) Of course, those snowy hills are less than half the story.

  Joe had taken a day off to see his only daughter married, and then refused all Christmas leave and returned directly to Cobham. An idea was forming in his mind. M&E were satisfied with their work but he wanted more. He wanted something bigger and bolder.

  ‘Gray had revolutionary ideas,’ recalled Cecil Schofield, with more than a note of unease. There was a modest-sized quarry next to their test site, and Joe declared with some flourish that this was the spot. He proposed that M&E cover the quarry with steel wool so that it would blend in with the surrounding hillside. It would be a grand set piece and definitive proof of steel wool’s potential.

  Even a showman like Schofield baulked. He was rightly worrying about the cost. ‘I must confess we were reluctant to undertake this work, as Camouflage on this scale did not appear to be a practicable proposition and Major Gray wanted it done without payment.’12

  But Joe had that glint in his eye. He argued that camouflage on such a scale was possible and would soon be necessary. He said the Germans were probably already doing it, and he produced his manuscript and insisted Schofield read it. Still Schofield hesitated. He liked Joe, theirs had been a friendship oiled by good whisky and late nights, but he had to think of it from the business point of view.

  In the end, it wasn’t Joe who convinced him, it was Mollo.

  ‘I regarded the proposition from a very different angle,’ Mollo reflected. ‘I believed great things may be done in Army camouflage . . . Gray said he did not intend material to imitate only grass, but it could be cut and twisted and spray painted to make trees and even small woods, hedges, haystacks, bushes and practically anything.’13

  The threat of Nazi invasion was now very real, and Mollo had first-hand experience of what this could mean. He had been thirteen years old when the Russian Revolution broke out, and had served in the White Russian River Fleet before being captured by the Red Army. Perhaps because of this, and because of his own artistic background, Mollo was keen to keep on with the experiments. He told Schofield they should do it, that it was worth the investment of time and men and money. After all, if the cover was a success, they’d soon be reimbursed.

  Camouflage could be business, after all.

  John Mollo, Eugene’s son, visited Cobham a number of times with his father and watched the project take shape. To a child it was a wondrous sight: a giant frame rather like a circus tent being lifted into place. Tubular steel posts had to be erected around the edge of the quarry, dropped into sockets of concrete. They were then joined by steel fencing strand wire, stretched and tied, creating a giant cat’s cradle. In some parts these wires were strong enough for men to balance on. Steel wool, spray painted to match the surrounding grassland, was then rolled out and secured to the wires.

  The overall effect was amazing, worryingly so.

  ‘The quarry vanished and in its place appeared undulating grass slopes with bushes and saplings here and there. It was so effective even at the closest
range, that it was dangerous to approach as one could not see where the grass ended and the cover began. It was necessary to wire it in to prevent accidents,’ noted Cecil Schofield. ‘This cover was inspected and approved in my presence by representatives of General Staff War Office, Air Ministry, Admiralty, Home Office and French Army. It was, I submit, “the pathfinder” and the prototype for all that followed.’14

  Word spread fast and towards the end of January 1940 Freddie Beddington flew back from France for a special viewing. He met Buckley at Cobham so they could compare notes. An officer present reported that both men flew over all of ‘the exhibits’ separately at different times of the day. They were astonished by what they saw, or rather what they didn’t see. It was unanimously agreed that Joe’s cover provided 100 per cent concealment. It was also noted that out of four different-coloured rolls also laid out for inspection, none could be seen except when circling at a few hundred feet. Ground reconaissance proved equally challenging and in fact ‘very dangerous’15 since nobody knew where reality ended and artifice began.

  Beddington felt both ‘enthusiasm and relief’ at what he found. ‘The position,’ he wrote, ‘was critical. Camouflage materials were in terribly short supply, there was no material specially designed for static purposes in existence . . . In pressing Gray from France to give priority to this material I had written “I hope to God your material comes forward in time” – I meant it.’16

  Knowing he would be heading back over the Channel at any moment, Beddington asked that an order be made for 10,000 square yards of steel wool to take back with him, coloured the beet clay colour of north-east France.