GULLING THE HUN.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 April 1919, Page 7

GULLING THE HUN.

HOW WE KEPT HIM GUESSING.

References in Sir Douglas Haig's victory dispatch to dodges of camouflage by which the very gullible German was tricked give only a pale suggestion of the numerous artifices actually used.

Tanks offered, perhaps, the best

opening, because the Germans were so terrified of them. One stalwart colonel of Tanks spent months in Prance entraining and detraining the same little squad of tanks for the sole edification of enemy airmen and possible spies. The writer has since seen a German intelligence report complaining that the airmen always reported tanks, even Avhen 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 Flanders. HUN BARK AGE ON DUMMY TANKS. We used tanks made of lath and canvas as early as September. 1916, leaving them on tin* skyline :;t dawn and drawing a furious barrage. A fine little flotilla of these dummies was used in front of the Hindenburg line in October last. but. the effect was. or should have been, rather spoiled by the effects of a strong wind which got under the canvas and totally capsized one.

It was betrayed very much like the wood guns in the dummy Agamemnon which gaily floated oft' on the surface of the Mediterranean when thc ! ship was struck. Happily, in both cases the Germans duly reported the destruction of the target.

I Our airmen, when the enemy were ! always attempting to deceive, ' were ; themselves adepts at deception. False aerodromes with false tents and even false machines littered the country, and some were riddled with bombs. .As soon as enemy night bombers were reported an electric light or tw.o would be switched on in the dummy, while the neighbouring reality reposed in safe obscurity. SHAM TENTS AND MEN. In the second battle of Messines a whole corps, the Eighth, was given n, purely dummy part. A sham camp 1 was rigged up at night, and quantities of dummy figures at least as plausible as any of the false heads used oy Gorman snipers, were shown in support trenches. The lure worked to perfection, and i rary soon after dawn German bat tor- | ies poured shells among the empty j tents, and the infantry made all pre- | parations to resist an attack in force, ' afterwards duly chronicled in the German communique as if a real assault had been stopped. The writer has seen German artillery "drawn" in all sorts of ways (says a "Daily Mail" correspondent). In one .of the Thiivpval attacks clouds of smoke were released on one flank, r.ncl the fear of what, might be lurking in it drew down an intense barrage just at the moment when the real as-

sault wa s delivered on the right wing. TRICKS ON THE COAST.

With equal success buoys were placed in the night along- the Belgian coast when we advertised a sham tii rcai. and it was great sport the next day, to watch the German shore batteries and huge single guns "registering" for all they were worth on these suspicious anchorages Both sides had many sham batteries made of iron pipes, or even trees, ana the enemy went so far as to shoot sham flashes from sham guns. But the iinmene superiority of our airmen i n observation and photography made us much less gullible than the Germans even when their efforts were more J elaborate.

THE HUNS GUESSED WRONG. *' The final testimonial to the success of all this pretence came from a rather unexpected direction. It was found in the report of the chief German intelligence officer before the battle of Arras. He.had before hiin plentiful evidence of an approaching attack, but came to the triumphant conclusion

that the trains observed by German aii-men were empty, that the tanks were the result of nerves, that extra hospitals and what not were mere pretence, and reported to headquarters that 310 British offensive was meditat-

ed.. A copy of this document, taken in the actual attack, made delicious

reading

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