Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  ‘They will be pretty fierce,’ he told Mary, but if anything they were romantic, already suffused with a kind of nostalgia. These were views of fires half-seen, of passers-by in shadow, of dark clouds cloaking the city skyline. One image, Incendiary, shows a single building mostly in darkness but for the light in the upper window where a human figure waited. There is a fireman on the roof, his face lit up by the blaze, and two figures watching from street level. It could be a moment of terror and uncertainty, and surely it was or it had been, but now it is transformed into something strange and otherworldly.

  In the last war Joe had laboured over every name and detail, but now he was more concerned with impressions and effects. He had learned from his study of camouflage that tone and texture mattered more. He was distilling the moment into a mood, a feeling, something more than simply seen.

  The men of RE8 were not the only artists to find a certain magic in the buildings shattered by German bombs. A War Artists Advisory Committee had already been established, and would collect hundreds of images of air raids, but Joe’s etchings would not be amongst them. He donated prints to regimental charities to raise money for veterans, and he promised them to his friends and colleagues – to James Meade, to Peregrine, to Jack Sayer; he even sold a set to his bank manager for some ready cash. He kept it personal and meaningful: that was what he wanted. Away in the future there was the possibility of making art full time and being with Mary, but not in this here and now. Joe wouldn’t think of tomorrow until he got there. It was rather like he had fallen in love all over again.

  So Joe was in love, but Mary was in Bath.

  [H]ere’s too the new phase of life, sweetheart. Am I writing too many love letters P.F.? Will you soon begin to take me for granted – as you used to say I took you (which I never did). Is it better to be ignored or adored? I do so adore you. Do you like being adored? X.

  Mary lived for each letter but wrote back less and less. The contrast between their two lives could not have been more acute. Joe was ricocheting all over the country, always so much in demand, and Mary stayed in Bath, where every day was the same. He realised he had to make an effort to visit, and tried to arrange field inspections that incorporated a stopover. ‘I have a job at Swindon which is not too far away and I hope to pop in for the night. So don’t get excited if you receive a telegram – it will only be to say I am coming.’ Of course he was careful, booking rooms at local pubs, paying his respects to Kitty Meade but never daring to impose as a guest.

  The trouble was, whenever Joe materialised, it caused a ‘disruption’. It was as if a bomb had dropped. He would be exhilarated from a long day’s flying and Mary would feel sidelined, even jealous. Joe was aware of the disparity between their lives but his usual strategies of appeasement didn’t work. Mary with her agile mind was easily agitated, and she felt under such scrutiny living back with her mother. She still loved Joe, with perhaps more intensity, and he felt entirely the same, yet they were slipping into a dreadful pattern – a brief encounter followed by an anguished parting. He always had to go back to his work, back to London, to the Board, to all his camouflage comrades. Mary felt she was fighting a whole other war with him, and not one she could win.

  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 Hermann Göring quoted in Juliet Gardiner, The Blitz: The British Under Attack, Harper Collins, London, 2011, p. 7

  2 James Meade in a letter to his wife Margaret, 10 September 1940, courtesy Charlotte Lewis

  is for Nets which are simply a frame For the garnishing on them, so garnish the same

  Joe worked all through Christmas and into January 1941. He was so busy writing and filing reports he barely had the energy for etching. He spent more time with Sayer, Dalgliesh and Johnny and Peregrine Churchill than he did with Mary. Then Wyatt ordered him off on a tour of the north of England – Birmingham, York, Darlington – then up to Scotland to see Le Breton-Simmons, who was now heading up another camouflage training school in Edinburgh. Joe was an ambassador for the cause of camouflage, there to convince everyone of its importance. It was freezing cold and the bad weather limited his time flying, but in terms of his talks it went well.

  ‘The personal contact is worth a thousand files going back and forwards and it means I meet all the Chief Engineers and Brigadiers and what not and explain where they go wrong and what we want and so on and so forth.’

  Camouflage was crucial, Joe said it over and over. It could save lives, it could protect industry, it could hinder and limit the Luftwaffe at every turn. By now his words were taking effect; camouflage wasn’t such a hard sell. After all, nobody wanted to go to work in a brand new factory exposed from every angle. Camouflage boosted morale and made people feel protected, and that had an impact on the war effort.

  Joe returned to London late in February exhausted but elated, feeling that the trip had been ‘a great success and must be repeated regularly’. And the good news kept trickling in: of steel wool hayricks and fir trees being used to disguise the King’s own aerodrome,1 of steel wool covers at Fighter Command HQ2 and a whole landscape fabricated at Eynsham to hide a vast Air Ministry bomb store. Steel wool was proving useful, hard-wearing and endlessly versatile. It was creating large and small illusions just as he had hoped.

  Peregrine Churchill remained the stalwart believer, and he was now consultant engineer at M&E Equipment, busily designing covers for the Air Ministry on priority sites up and down the country. Taking Joe’s Camouflage and Air Defence as the basis for his ideas on structural camouflage, Peregrine drew up plans for trees, houses and hedges of steel wool and eagerly put them to use. Johnny at Stanmore had commandeered an old Anson bomber and was flying around the country examining and photographing anti-aircraft positions to see how much was visible from the air. For the first time these two very different brothers were united in a single enterprise.

  Peregrine’s ambitious project at Eynsham impressed Joe when he went to inspect it with Sayer. The magazines had been positioned in the hollow of a ridge, which allowed for a steel wool cover to be placed on top, on a frame, so that from the air it appeared like an innocent grassy slope. Peregrine had also added a few dummy hedges to enhance the overall effect. It was perfect, Joe thought, quite perfect.

  ‘Looking down through the netting one could discern the mounded magazines with their bombs and the system of service roads that led to them. The overhead cover extended right up until the point where the entry road left the public highway.’3

  Steel wool was now available in two widths and two colours, but could be spray painted to merge with its environment. It could withstand gales and snow, it could be used as both a screen and for decoys – no wonder everyone was asking for it. But Joe knew the cost all too well and was quick to issue his own recommendations and ‘notes on use’. He needed to emphasise that it was for priority sites, such as the entrances to aircraft hangars and secret wireless stations. He also advised that no single method of camouflage should ever be used – too much then depended on its success. It was always better to use a combination of good concealment and create ‘false areas’ and decoys.

  Peregrine took his advice and when he came to camouflage a new large gun site in Dover, he produced a precise example of Joe’s intentions – they used steel wool screens to shield the real gun positions but constructed decoys at a suitable distance, creating a fake
railway line out of old and condemned track, making it run for about a mile beyond the real guns. Two decoy gun positions were then covered in less effective camouflage in the form of painted coir covers, about half a mile apart along this dummy track. As a finishing touch Peregrine constructed dummy cranes and concrete mixers around his dummies to give the impression of activity.

  The plan was completed by March 1941 and Joe reckoned in the future it would take a month for completion of similar schemes. For this particular site no direct hits were recorded, and although both the real and dummy guns attracted the enemy’s attention, there was enough uncertainty as to their exact location.

  The problem with steel wool was that it was fast becoming so popular that camoufleurs had to be continually reminded not to use it wastefully: ‘How often are we implored to issue twenty-five rolls of steel wool . . . only to find when we came round to see what has happened to it, that it has been spread in neat strips over a muddy mess that need never have been made at all! Or else it had been lavishly swathed around a pill box like bandages round a bad head wound.’4

  A common misconception was that camouflage was some kind of ‘concrete object which is applied to make things “invisible”’,5 and Joe worried steel wool was too good at hiding things, which might create a dangerous complacency. Bad habits were all too easy to fall into.

  After three weeks of solid flying in March he felt he deserved a rest. He had missed Mary terribly and was desperate for time alone with her. But as he swept into Bath, expecting a warm welcome, he was quickly disppointed. James Meade was also visiting and the tension in the air was palpable. James found Joe’s ‘soldier back from the war’ routine more than a little exasperating. Writing to Margaret, he complained: ‘Mary is still carrying on with Gray (who as you know is married). Mother, of course, gets fearfully worried about this and Mary is so nervy that she bites your head off whatever you say. I am sorry for Mary, who is made all nervy both by the war and by being muddled up with Gray; but she really has become almost impossible to live with . . . This jolly atmosphere was all much heightened by the drone of German bombers at night!’6

  Of course Joe sensed a storm was brewing. The War Office expert on spotting bad cover wasn’t blind to the disruption that he himself created. But he wouldn’t stop. Everybody now seemed to know about him and Mary, so there seemed no point hiding away. And camouflage was never just about concealment. He wondered if Johnny Churchill, such a dear friend, his best male friend, might now be useful as a decoy.

  Johnny, despite his own enormous workload, had still found time to fall madly in love. The object of his affections was Mary Cookson, a stunningly pretty FANY7 who was his driver at Stanmore. Having already been married and divorced, Johnny was more than happy to get engaged all over again. Joe invited the happy couple to Bath with him the following weekend. He thought they’d make a jolly party. Mary Cookson was terribly sweet and refreshingly prim, and Joe felt sure the two Marys would have great fun together. As for Kitty Meade, a visit from the nephew of the prime minister was a great prospect. Kitty was, after all, a bit of a snob.

  ‘Is he someone?’ she’d ask hopefully.

  Well, Johnny really was. What could possibly go wrong?

  Or put another way, what could possibly go right?

  Joe, Johnny and Mary Cookson arrived in Bath in very high spirits, determined to bring a bit of the Blitz to Bath. Johnny liked to let off steam and was, by his own admission, the most terrible show-off. Back at Stanmore the AA Command had shared a vast Mess with Fighter Command, where the parties were often scandalous. Johnny launched himself on sleepy Bath with as much enthusiasm, insisting they start drinking immediately, first beer and then gin, stopping at several scenic bars before they reached the Crescent.

  Mary Meade was fond of Johnny but they were already a little at war over Joe. She was also terribly worried what her mother would think. Kitty Meade, a paragon of politesse and gentility, was rather prone to migraines, and Mary was certain her mother would retreat to a darkened room at the first opportunity. But in fact Kitty was rather bowled over by Johnny. Yes, he was outrageous – he was a brilliant mimic and raconteur – but he was also very endearing. There was something about Johnny that brought out the maternal side in many women. Kitty was very flattered, if flustered, and then quickly excused Johnny some of his ebullience when she learned that he was celebrating his engagement.

  How that now grated.

  Joe didn’t see it. He should have, but he didn’t. He was too busy bubbling on the surface to see the undercurrents swirling round his feet. That evening Joe and Johnny, Mary Meade and ‘Little Mary’ (as she was now called) went to the Assembly Rooms, partly to dance and partly to marvel at its grand interior. Mary Meade had imagined this to be great fun: a pleasant way of mixing old friends with new, of showing her neighbours and colleagues dear Joe and his clever camouflage comrade. But Johnny, being Johnny, could not stop his antics and of course his drinking. Little Mary thought it tremendously funny – she was not much older than Maureen, so had at least youth as an excuse – and there was Joe playing the part of the genial major, good old ‘Uncle Grumble’. Johnny shrieked and teased Mary Meade terribly, while Joe remained passive, exhausted and indulgent.

  Perhaps the drink made her oversensitive, and perhaps Johnny enjoyed provoking her. She came to detest Johnny that evening and to see him as a genuine threat. She hated his closeness to Joe – and worse, so much worse, was Johnny’s theatrical devotion to his new love, his fiancée. Little Mary was explaining to all and sundry how they were going to great lengths to have a church wedding, even though Johnny was divorced and her parents thoroughly disapproved of him. They were flushed and giddy with the inappropriateness of it all.

  By the end of the evening Mary Meade felt she could barely breathe. She sat there like an unexploded bomb, inert but full of menace. Didn’t Joe consider how this might hurt her? If someone as chaotic as Johnny had managed to extricate himself from an unhappy marriage and become engaged all over again, why on earth couldn’t he? It was a perfectly reasonable question.

  Joe sensed something had changed but was too drunk to fix it. The next morning Johnny took several photographs of them all, sunning themselves on the steps of Lansdown Cresent. Joe sat on the doorstep in his uniform, head bent over an open book. Mary Meade was propped to the side of the doorway on a stool, lighting a cigarette, her long and slender legs stretched out in front of her. Little Mary was perched neatly beside them, on the other side of the doorway, looking rather tired. Nobody was smiling for the camera, and nobody was talking.

  14/5/41

  Dear Mary

  I am frightfully sorry I brought Johnny and little Mary down. Of course Johnny is very difficult to understand owing to his understatement of serious things and his overstatement on non-serious things. However, I must thank you and your mother for the splendid way in which you handled the business.

  Both went away very happy and delighted, with no idea of the real position. Your remarks about making a fool out of you in public are quite incredible and impossible and I should say insane. I frankly do not know what you are talking about. Johnny thinks a lot of you and so does Little Mary. You know what I think.

  I object to the suggestion that Johnny and I are drunkards – if we were we could not do our work – and also we would look it. I agree we may have got rather tight now and then – about once every 6 months – but it has always been a sort of undergraduate or student affair and not the sort of thing you suggest – In any case I don’t get dead drunk as you say – I go to sleep and wake up in an hour or so perfectly fit in every way.

  If you had any realisation of my responsibilities and work with the army and the Ministry, or if you had any idea of Johnny’s responsibilities with Fighter Command and the hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles he covers each week in car or aeroplane in addition to being responsible for enemy A.A. gun sites in the country – you might probably realise that it is not unnatural to rather overdo t
hings in the rare occasions we have a few hours off duty and meet. He is my best man friend.

  Also, of course, you don’t know anything about a real Blitz! (sorry!) – and I don’t want you to. Your remarks about rich friends and living in the Ritz and Claridges are nonsense.

  Your remarks about A.G. are completely wide of the mark. A.G. has opened an account with my bank who pays in a proper sum each month. Maureen’s husband is earning £10 a week and they require no financial assistance from me – Maureen had a first-class education and never lacked anything in her life but my guidance at one time. But she is very happy and as far as Maureen is concerned everything has turned out for the best.

  It is very easy to say (and some people might say) ‘get divorced and marry Mary Mumble’. If it was that easy I would have done it years ago. You have said at one time or another that I sit on the fence or am afraid to take a drastic step – but I cannot allow myself to be influenced by what you say in an emotional moment – I have got to think of what you will say in the future.

  I hate being so far away from you and I hate this fantastic Blitz life of living in hotels or clubs or the office. I am sorry we didn’t have time to talk about your job. The only reason I think Bath is best at the moment is that Bath is safest.

  I am very sorry to hear that you had an argument with your mother but it is only natural that she should be worried at something which cuts so violently against her own traditions and experience – perhaps it is not fair that I should ever have come to Bath but you know that you always blamed me for not coming.