GULLING THE HUN

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 161, 2 April 1919, Page 8

GULLING THE HUN

HOW WE KEPT HIH GUESSING

DUMMY ARMS AND MEN

Eefercnces in Sir Douglas Haig's victory dispatch to dodges of camouflage bv which tho vo.\v gullible German was tricked give only a pale suggestion of the numerous artifices actually used.

Tanks offered perhaps the best opening, because the Germans wero so terrified of them. One stalwart colonel of tanks spent months in Flanders, entraining and detraining the some little squad of tanks for the sole edification of enemy airmen nnd possible spies. The writer has since seen a German intelligence report complaining that tho airmen always . reported tanks, even when there was none, and refusing utterly to credit their news of real tanks assembling behind Arras because information had been so wrong in Flanders and elsewhere. Wo used tanks made of lath and canvas as early as September, 1916, leaving them on the skyline at dawn, and drawing a furious barrage. A fine little flotilla of these dummies was used in front of the Hindenburg line in October hist, but the effect v. as, or should have been, rather spoiled by the effects of a slronK wind whicli got under the canvas ond totally eap:!ized one. It was betrayed very much like the wood Runs in the dummy Agamemnon, which gaily floated off on Ihe surface of the Mediterranean when the ship was struck. Happily, in both eases the Germans duly reported the destruction of the target. Our airmen, whom tho enemy were always attempting to deceive, were themselves adept at deception. False aerodromes with false tents and even false jnachines littered the country, and some were riddled with bombs, As soon as enemy night 'bombers were reported an electric light or two would be switched on in the dummy, while tho neighbouring reality reposed in safe obscurity. In the second" battle of Messines a whole corps, the Eighth, was given a purely dummy part. A sham camp was rigged up at night, and quantities of dummy figures, at least os plausible as any of the false heads used by German [ 6nipers, wero shown in support trenches.

The lure worked to perfection and very soon after dawn Gorman batteries poured shells among the empty tents, and the infantry mode all preparations to resist an attack in force, afterwards duly chronicled in the German communique as if a- real assault had been stopped.

Tlie writer has seen German artillery "drawn" in all sorts of way?. In one of the Thiepval attacks clouds of smoke were released on one flank, and the fear of what. might be lurking within it drew >down an intense barrage just at tho moment when the real assault was delivered on the. right wing.' With equal success buoys were placed* in the night along the Belgian coast when we advertised a sham threat, and it was great sport the next day to watch tfie German- shore batteries and hugo singlo guns "registering" for all they were worth ou these suspicions anchorages. Both sides had many sham batteries made of iron pipes, or o\Au trees, and the enemy went so far. as to shoot sham flashes from sham guns. But tho immense superiority of our airmen in observation and photography made us much lees guWiblo than the Germans, even when their efforts were more elaborate. ' The final testimonial to tho success of all this pretence came from a rather unexpected, direction. It was found in the report of the chief German intelligence officer before tho Battle of Arras. He had before him plentiful evidence of an approaching attack, but camo to the triumphant conclusion that the trains observed by German airmen were empty, that the tanks were the results of nerves, that extra hospitals and what not were mere' pretence, and reported to hendquartera that no British offensive was meditated. A copy of this document, taken in the actual attack, made delicious reading.

So far has the art of camouflage advanced that now the schools have two distinct branches of activity, one for "dissimulation" or hiding what exists, one for "simafetion" or displaying what does not exist.