Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  Dated from June 1942, the cover was more successful than the raid it supported. Operation Rutter was first scheduled for July, with Combined Operations wanting to test if it would be possible to capture a fortified seaport large enough to be used afterwards by invading troops. Dieppe was seventy miles from Newhaven, close enough to allow a surprise attack with a force approaching under the cover of darkness, and well within range of Fighter Command’s aircraft.

  Army commandos were reinforced by Canadian troops and after weeks of training they embarked. But bad weather stalled their advance and German bombers spotted them in the Solent, so the operation was postponed. Some thought it should be cancelled. General Montgomery, in charge of the South Eastern Command, worried about security breaches. ‘All the troops had been fully informed of the objective of the raid; it was reasonable to expect that it was now a common subject of conversation in billets and pubs in the south of England.’7 Montgomery, however, was summoned to Egypt to command the Eighth Army and promptly removed from the picture.

  The rescheduled raid, Operation Jubilee, took place on 19 August but resulted in a massacre. Out of a combined landing force of 6,100, about 4,100 were reported killed, wounded or captured. The main reason for this disaster? The woeful inadequacy of Allied intelligence. They had completely underestimated the extent of German defences, and the Germans themselves were on high alert, having been tipped off by French double agents. British press reports tried to play down this humiliating defeat but there came a powerful backlash. Questions were swiftly raised about the purpose of the raid, the poor organisation, the lack of intelligence. There was even the suggestion that Canadian soldiers had been knowingly sacrificed, and that Allied commanders saw Commonwealth troops as more expendable than those in the British Army.

  Churchill would later rationalise Dieppe as a costly but crucial precursor to the next stage, an exercise that brought home the realities of a cross-Channel assault. Any future attack would need far greater intelligence, advance saturation bombing, tanks to support the first wave of assault troops and, most importantly of all, a complete rethink about the point of invasion.

  All of this meant static camouflage was still important. As Peregrine forged ahead with his large-scale covers, so did Eugene Mollo, who had been drafted into the Army as a lieutenant. As an acknowledged expert in ‘structural concealment’ and large-scale covers he’d soon be lecturing on it at Farnham. ‘Whether or not the Germans really covered vast stretches of the country with concealment, as suggested by Solomon J. Solomon, Lt. Mollo said he didn’t know . . . but he knew such structures were possible. Screens must be sited to merge with adjacent countryside. Overhead covers give men “added sense of security”.’8

  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 Life, July 1941, p. 48

  2 Memo, 21 January 1942, TNA WO199/1629

  3 J. Gray, lecture notes, Barclay Archive

  4 M. Farrar Bell in a letter dated 1947, IWM Archive Gray Documents.4273

  5 Cover Time magazine, 8 June 1942, vol. xxxix

  6 Ibid., p. 25

  7 Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York, 1958, p. 70

  8 ‘Structural Concealment in the Field’, a lecture by Eugene Mollo, 16 January 1943, CDTC, IWM Archive Havinden Documents.7762

  is for Tracks, which will photograph light, And disclose your activities; keep them from sight

  The survivors of Dieppe1 were brought by ambulance to Basingstoke. Mary watched them come in, an endless stream of men on stretchers, soaked, bloodied, overcome with pain and exhaustion. She wanted to help but didn’t know how. In the end she retreated to her small office. Joe had spent the last three years telling her to get some perspective. Finally she had it.

  ‘I have complete faith in you. I love you devotedly. I am sure you will find your place and your use. You are the most wonderful person I have ever met, more wonderful than anything I could have imagined.’

  Through the early months of 1942 Joe had written to her daily, encouraging her, and she kept his letters in her desk drawer, close to hand, but she was now in a place that he couldn’t often get to, and she was surrounded by people with years of medical training. It was a long way from anything she had done before. Out of her depth, Mary kept on swimming, sending pleas to the draughtsmen of RE8 to come up with some decent designs for her poor patients to work with, asking Joe for suggestions.

  It seemed ridiculous to expect the battle-weary men of Dieppe to show an interest in stitching, but many had already surprised her with their eagerness. They liked her, they called her the ‘craft lady’, which was an acccurate enough description, and she was a good teacher.

  ‘Occupational therapy involves any kind of mental or physical activity, medically prescribed, for the purpose of aiding recovery from disease or injury,’ reported The Times. ‘Work of this kind was found to be of very great help to soldier patients during the last War suffering from both nervous and physical disabilities.’2

  Mary hadn’t had formal training as a therapist but she came with recommendations from the Crafts Council and the Royal College of Needlework, and she was a kind and curious mentor. She looked good on paper, and so did Hackwood House, her grand new background. ‘Johnny says there should be a painting of his in the hospital. It is set onto the wall so he doesn’t think it could be removed easily. He did it for Lord Camrose after he bought the house from Canyon.’ Lord this, Lord that. The connections were still there to be made. Camrose was a newspaper man and had used Hackwood as his country retreat before handing it to the Canadian Army for the duration of the war. It now housed 200 beds and acted as both an army hospital and a general emergency hospital, with Nissen huts sprawling over the vast lawn like giant metal caterpillars.

  The official name was ‘No. 1 Neurological Hospital’; sometimes they just called it ‘No. 1 Nuts’, since, as in the last war, not all wounds were physical. The great number of Mary’s patients were suffering ‘psychoneurosis’, often the result of ‘battle fatigue’. There were also those who had been seriously injured or disabled, with broken backs and shattered limbs. The idea was that an active engagement in a craft could aid both their physical and mental rehabilitation. Mary’s patients felt marginalised, most were exhausted, all seemed depressed. But whatever brought them here, she tried to remind them what they could still do.

  The hospital was continually growing, always busy with troops shipped in and out. Joe terrified himself with the prospect of Mary treating handsome wounded RAF pilots. ‘As far as that is concerned I have no doubt that a lot of these people will fall temporarily or really in love with you. Troops in hospital usually do. As far as that is concerned I leave my honour in your hands (very ’ot!).’

  His tone was jovial but it was no joke. Bath had been safe in more ways than one and now Mary was surrounded by men. Some of them were single, possibly eligible. The nature of her work meant close, daily contact. She was attractive and clever. Suddenly Joe saw her as other men might.

  They were apart for much of February. Off in Northern Ireland Joe drank himself into a poetic stupor, imagining a future where he’d be dead, ‘at the bottom of the Irish Sea’, and blessing her ‘for all the wonderful ways you have been to me and all the wonderful times we have had together’. He was sure
she would marry a doctor, or someone young and virile.

  ‘I wrote you some marvellous letters when I was away and then in a mad moment I thought you didn’t really love me at all and tore them all up. Actually when I did that I had just come down from a very bad flight in awful weather and suddenly thought you were probably dancing about with Bloody drunken Canadians and had forgotten all about me. However, that was unworthy of me and unworthy of you.’

  Mary wasn’t and hadn’t, of course. It was a ridiculous notion. Her life wasn’t half as glamorous as Joe imagined. She was lodging with an elderly couple in a little house on Cliddesden Road, and she cycled to Hackwood each day, come rain or shine.

  Joe rushed there once he’d returned to England and made a point of visiting the hospital and shaking hands with the doctors and nurses, determined to make them aware of his existence, but then he beat a hasty retreat. Basingstoke was ‘a stuffy sort of place’ and not somewhere he’d want to visit again. ‘I felt it would be impossible to meet you in Basingstoke like a comparative stranger. I can’t do it anymore darling.’

  It was his turn to feel jealous. He was no longer at the centre of Mary’s world and it made for a difficult adjustment. She had a tendency to overexert herself, and was now always rushing. She forgot to wear a scarf and caught a terrible cold. It happened once, it happened twice. She lost her voice and couldn’t talk. Joe saved money to buy her a better coat, and begged her to take care of herself.

  ‘Your success cannot be measured by the quantity of finished work. Don’t forget – a negative result for you may be a very positive one from the medical point of view.’ But Mary wanted perfection, the kind she couldn’t have in her life. She wanted decent results from all her patients that offered concrete proof to the doctors. Feeling more than a little sidelined, Joe acted like a child. ‘I was sorry if I was difficult but I can’t camouflage what I feel and I won’t try to. I am at the moment in a very vulnerable position, and very sensitive to what you say . . . You must let me do things in my own way. I won’t do things in anybody else’s way. I am trying to do my best for us and I will do what I said I would do.’

  His own work was now more focused on lecturing at Farnham: ‘I walk around the room, don’t use notes or stand on the platform, but talk informally most of the time.’ He was arming men with the knowledge required to use camouflage in offensive as well as defensive strategies. There was much focus on special schemes. ‘The attacker can be deceived by means of dummy positions and dummy minefields, he can be misled by alternative positions.’ The development of decoys, or ‘devices of visual misdirection’, was the order of the day.

  ‘Consider what might be dummified,’ Joe scribbled in his notebook.3

  Was that even a verb?

  ‘Of course it is no good posting this, so you will read it tomorrow night! Lucky Popcorn – and clever Popcorn to think out how to tell you how much he loves you in a room full of people and nobody having the slightest idea (perhaps!).’ He’d wait for the colour to rise in her face, reassuring himself of the effect he still had. ‘I love watching you reading my letters – in public places, surrounded by strangers and here we are in our own private world and none of them know anything about it or us.’ For so long Joe had kept everything hidden, but now he needed proof.

  He also suggested a new background. Cecil Schofield had rented Moulsford Grange for the duration of the war, a charming Queen Anne property with gardens stretching down to the Thames, tucked away in a picturesque Oxfordshire village. Schofield lived there with his wife Valerie, and the taciturn Peregrine as an irregular lodger. ‘There is no possible misunderstanding about us,’ Joe assured Mary. ‘Both Cecil and Valerie and Peregrine know all about us and sympathise.’

  Mary visited Moulsford with Joe for a few days’ leave and Valerie fussed around them happily, glad to have more people to look after. Joe thought Cecil a fantastic fellow – gregarious, generous and charismatic – but Mary found him slippery as an eel. She felt he exploited Joe and she also didn’t approve of how he took Valerie for granted. There was some talk of other women.

  ‘Cecil & V seem to have a workable arrangement which suits him, though it wouldn’t suit many people,’ Joe concluded, by which he meant Valerie spent a lot of time at home whilst Cecil gallivanted off in the blackout.

  For Joe, this felt like a life long past. He was a reformed character, no longer adrift. He just wanted to be with Mary. ‘I wish to God we were married, meantime we have a lot to be thankful for. I might be in Libya or God knows where. I keep thinking about Moulsford. I never imagined before we met, that such a complete union was possible. It is all very wonderful.’

  There are photographs of them all together one fine summer’s afternoon. Joe, in uniform, has gained weight. He squints in the sunshine, smiling and chatting to colleagues and friends. Mary looks as thin as ever, smokes constantly, and has her hair tied up in a Liberty scarf. Peregrine is also there, hovering in the background, hands tucked into the pockets of his suit. He too is slim but has that unmissable Churchillian jowliness. Cecil Schofield, meanwhile, is still turning away, escaping out of every picture. He is handsome and elegantly suited. His wife, Valerie, is also impeccably dressed. She is much smaller than Mary, with soft round features and blonde hair curled up under an elaborate hat. She wears a fox fur round her neck despite the gloriously sunny day and holds her baby proudly, who is clad in swathes of white lace and frowning as if embarrassed. John Mollo, Eugene Mollo’s son, identified Valerie instantly. ‘I remember they were awfully flash. If I’d dressed an actress in a wartime film like that I would have been hooted off the set!’ And he is an Oscar-winning costume designer so he knows whereof he speaks.

  Moulsford was meant to be Joe and Mary’s escape, but every weekend came with qualifications, corrections and amendments.

  Both Cecil and Valerie and Peregrine do think a tremendous lot of you and they all do really sympathise with the present position. There is no doubt they both have many good qualities and are both kind and hospitable. I regard Cecil’s fights and intrigues with ‘big business’ with great interest and considerable appreciation and amusement.

  I told the Ministry of Supply the other day at Cecil’s request that he [had] withdrawn his claim to a patent in favour of me, being the original inventor. I am rather anxious that you should not form an adverse opinion of Cecil, although neither you nor I could appreciate his personal or private affairs. I was particularly worried for fear that you – when I told you about Cecil – would perhaps ‘do a Mary’ on the lines that ‘these people think that Grumble and I are like Cecil etc.

  Joe was desperate to reassure Mary that whatever Cecil was up to, there could be no comparison, but she had her suspicions, and with good reason. The patent for steel wool camouflage was never withdrawn – Cecil Schofield’s name is all over it, to this day. Joe always called Mary naive, but they both were. Joe took too much on trust and Cecil would play him at his own game, softening him up with the occasional handout. The already muddied waters thickened.

  The war, the war, the war, how it had consumed and exhausted them. Joe was so weary of his flitting around the country and living like a gypsy. His dilapidated office ‘lie-low’ (‘lilo’or ‘lylow’ – he always spelled it in a different way) had been patched up one time too many, and so in desperation he risked his last bit of money on digs in Bayswater Road, a drab upper-floor room that he begged ‘Mrs Grumble’ to make homely. He thought they could pass as a married couple but it didn’t quite work out. He knew it then. Enough was enough.

  I rang up the solicitor but he was engaged tonight. So I went to the Grosvenor and saw old Levy and said: ‘Look here – what we want is proper evidence and could you fix it and would the hotel mind and so on’ and when he had finished laughing – which he did, he said he would fix it alright if we liked and no need to take a flat, and he always knew we were two ‘innocents abroad’ and that seems the most practicable plan, my darling. So the Grosvenor it is. From the manager down they
are all genuine friends. We must see what the solicitor says.

  Joe steered towards the tried and tested route to divorce, where he’d be ‘caught’ in a hotel room with another woman and give Nancy grounds for divorce. Mary agreed to play ‘the other woman’ for one time only. Joe reassured her about everyone being most understanding and the staff counted as friends.

  A.G. is taking it well. I am very glad that the B. Reids are to handle it as they have a personal interest and are really anxious to help and it makes it much easier for A.G., dealing with people she knows intimately. Mrs B. Reid says most of the expenses are at the beginning and says we should let A.G. have between £30 and £40, say £35 or £40. She says we can rely on the expenses being reduced to a minimum – I don’t think there is any doubt about that. A.G. says she thought everything would not be more than £50. I posted the money and am busy composing the initial letter which must be short and to the point.

  All that was required was one final deceptive display at the Grosvenor. After that there’d be no need to hide, and no excuse either.

  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