by Mary Horlock
This was all too embarrassing to talk about directly, but in black and white Kitty felt there was no ambiguity. She had been prompted by these whisperings about Mary taking another job outside of Bath. (‘I am working hard on your behalf,’ Joe had promised, ‘all nice places 3/4 of an hour or so from London so P.C. could come home at night.’) Kitty had been outraged. She did not trust Joe’s motives in the slightest. Using his influence to ‘fix things’ was a ruse to get Mary out of the family home and living nearer him, so they might continue ‘carrying on’ in their unmarried state. Tired of the procrastinations and politeness, and no longer able to turn a blind eye, Mrs Meade demanded answers.
But Joe decided not to write back. He chose instead to speak with Kitty directly, improvising a handful of assurances over tea that weekend. He assured her that ‘everything was under control’ and ‘everything would come right’. If it calmed Kitty temporarily, it had the opposite effect on Mary. She was incensed. It was bad enough when Joe patronised her, but to behave in such a way to her mother. She felt twice as foolish, and she raged at him on the station platform, practically pushing him onto a train back to London.
The moment he was back in the office he wrote to her. ‘I really objected to your remarks about P.C. being weak. Very much the contrary I should say – or I would not have answered your mother’s letter face to face – completely exposed to attack from any quarter. I have always insisted on working our problem out in my own way.’
But Mary had had enough of Joe doing things in his own way. She’d already decided she would not now take any job that would make it any easier for them to be together, rather she would take the job that best suited her skills and she didn’t care where. She refused to let him control her.
As if he could. He knew he was trying and failing on all fronts. Nancy had called him twice at work and left messages, which perhaps meant something, but it was now impossible to get hold of her. He sat by the telephone and waited, trying not to feel too worried or too hopeful. He considered calling Johnny and getting the number of a friend who had recently been divorced. They had talked about it over lunch the other week. There were people who could help. But when the call came through it wasn’t what he expected.
Tom Van Oss had been killed.
At first Joe couldn’t believe it – nobody at the Board could. He stared at the reports from his last trip to York, the letter Tom had sent him. It was literally in front of him on the desk. He had written back, his reply now somewhere at the sorting office.
It couldn’t be true, it made no sense. Tom had been inspecting coast defence batteries – ‘praying for a calm sea inspection and a dropping of the N.E. wind’2 – when his ship had struck a mine. Out of a crew of fifteen there were no survivors.
It was terrible. Tom had been one of Joe’s very first recruits, a dear friend and a father to three young boys. If ever there was a reminder of how cruel war could be – this took Joe straight back to the trenches, to all his best friends dying. Death kept catching him by surprise.
‘Darling P.F. I do love you frightfully,’ he scrawled. ‘We are very lucky really in spite of everything. When one thinks of what millions of people have to go through.’ He was thinking of course of ‘Poor Mrs Tommy Van Oss, I will write to her tomorrow. Tommy was really one of the most brilliant chaps we had . . . it is a great, great loss . . . They were at sea and the ship struck a mine. It is unlikely it was anything bigger than a destroyer. Probably one of those fast armed launches like the one I had.’ Joe thought back to the ships he had travelled on, the inspections he had done. It could so easily have been him. Did he wish it had been? He’d survived the Blitz and a plane crash, and yet still there was a danger in making plans, in assuming there was a future to fight for. He sat in the same chair, in the same position, and at the same desk, as when he had interviewed Tommy on his first application. He remembered it vividly. He imagined Tommy right there in front of him. ‘Then we were 4. Now we are 250 and more – and all very hot (– those that are left).’ He felt blighted, weary, the old optimism gone. ‘I hope my next plane will chose a[n] opportune moment for its disintegration – or if it doesn’t perhaps the launch will oblige . . .’ Yes. That would solve all his problems. Nancy could be a war widow and Mary would be free to do as she pleased. A future that didn’t involve him.
‘My dear Mary, my dear darling Mary . . .’ He stared at the words and then crossed them out, unable to find the right expression. He couldn’t write her the letter she so wanted and needed. The days had swept by in a blur. Mary had come to London to finalise the details of her new job, a job that might take her further from him. He was scared and confused.
How they had argued. How he was tired of it. And all because of the stupid telephone. Mary had been so desperate to get hold of Joe that she had made the operator interrupt him on a call. When she realised he had been speaking to Nancy, she had flown into a fury. It was ridiculous – a terrible misunderstanding – but Mary was still so very jealous. Joe assured her she had nothing to be jealous of. ‘You are both divorced in my mind.’ It was, of course, the wrong word to use. To Mary, this showed how Joe juggled his women. Joe for his part, could not abide Mary’s lack of faith. All these people doubting him just because he waited.
I thought that you knew me implicitly and in every way and now I see you don’t – I don’t think you know anything about me at all. I see no dishonour in asking A.G. to divorce me. I see incredible dishonour in not acknowledging responsibility for her physical welfare. I have held certain principles about the behaviour of men and women all my life. I have stuck to them and I still hold them and have no intention of changing them. What sort of a man would you want me to be? If you don’t agree with me then we should part at once and avoid inevitable disaster at a later date.
He read his words back over. All this scared him more than he’d dare admit, but he wouldn’t cross any of it out. Mary needed to be reminded that she could still be free.
‘I make you the following offer. (You know I love you – the point is do you love me or not?) I will ask Ag to divorce me so that I can marry you.’
There, he had said it: ‘I will ask Ag to divorce me so that I can marry you.’
He stared long and hard at the words now fixed in thick black ink on the page.
It was the promise Mary needed.
Yes, he would marry her.
Though he still did not say when.
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 Quoted from Jerrard Tickell, Moon Squadron, Allan Wingate, London, 1956, p. 66
2 Capt. T. Van Oss in a letter to his wife, 2 November 1941, courtesy Richard Van Oss
Joe Gray on ‘aerial reconnaisance’, c. 1940.
Joe Gray with Captain Kenneth Dalgliesh, York, 1941.
Drawing of frame for steel-wool cover by M&E Equipment.
Joe Gray letter, 24 September 1940.
Incendiary, drypoint etching, 1940.
Gray letter, 24 April 1941.
Blitz, Dawn, drypoint etching, 1940.
The Bells of St Clements, drypoint etching, alongside original sketch from 13 May 1941.
Steel-wool dummy trees under construction, c. 1941.
Steel-wool dummy farmhouse, c. 1941.
Joe Gray inspecting dummy gun, Sound City studios, 1941.
Lieutenant Eugene Mollo supervising the paint
ing of steel wool, c. 1942–3.
Joe Gray with Mary Meade and Johnny Churchill (above), and (left) with Mary Cookson and Mary Meade, on the steps of 12 Lansdown Crescent, Bath, 1941.
Joe and Mary Gray on their wedding day, London, 20 September 1943.
Camouflaged pumping station for PLUTO, c. 1943.
PLUTO pumping station covered with netting and steel wool, Dungeness, Kent, c. 1943/4.
Grumble, York Aerodrome, 1941.
Waves, undated, oil on canvas.
stands for Siting, for Spoil or for Scrim 3 covers 2 but on 1 sink or swim
It would have made a fine painting. The Café Royal: bursting with life and light on this freezing December evening. What a contrast to the blacked-out streets. Every table was full. You could almost forget there was a war going on, though uniforms were everywhere in evidence. Joe’s eyes went straight to Mary, still his Mary, sat between Johnny and James. She had come, as she had said she would. Things were better now. How quickly storms could pass. Four days in London, her new job all decided, and James had organised this little party. ‘James Meade of the War Office’, as they called him, or ‘the Prof.’ just for fun. He had brought along one of his economist friends, Richard Stone. Both would end up with Nobel Prizes, but right now, in this little party, economists and artists were out to make merry. Johnny and Little Mary, Sonia and Coldstream.
‘I say! Grumble!’ Johnny had spun round, glass lifted. ‘What a wumble!’
Johnny was on his usual form, vivacious and charming and pouring drinks for everyone. Joe considered Johnny ‘the best chap I have ever met’ except perhaps for James. It was marvellous, perfectly marvellous, an interlude of warmth and merriment in amongst the horrors.
‘Let’s make the most of the moment,’ was what everyone kept saying, and even Mary Meade agreed. She had sought Joe out at his office and read his last letter to her whilst sitting at his desk. She had seen all his papers, all his drawings and files. She understood a little better, or so he hoped.
Much was still uncertain, but then such was war. This moment, this evening, they were celebrating, raising toasts to Mary’s new job. She had accepted a post as an occupational therapist. It was ideally suited to her skills and knowledge, and it would take her out of Bath, which now seemed essential. But she would be working in Basingstoke. This wasn’t the posting Joe had hoped for, and it certainly wasn’t going to facilitate, as Kitty Meade had feared, some freshly disreputable living arrangements for them.
Basingstoke wasn’t a place Joe could easily get to, and James for one couldn’t conceal his delight. He thought it a decent test of their commitment to one another. James was also glad Mary had made up her own mind, rather than hang around waiting for Joe to make up his. Joe naturally felt anxious but any lingering unease was dispelled by Johnny’s laughter and his stories, and his continuing adoration of his own ‘Little Mary’. The presence of William and Sonia further reassured Joe. Friends all together, and still alive. Things would be all right.
And for three nights they really were. Joe and Mary stayed at the Grosvenor in adjoining rooms. Everything was as glorious as it had ever been. ‘Dear darling Mary, I am not going to try to say what I feel about the Grosvenor excepting that I regard it, and shall always regard it, as the most wonderful thing in the world.’ Joe would forever call it their honeymoon, with Mary his ‘Mrs Mumble’.
She told him he meant everything to her, and they declared it a whole new beginning. Unfortunately, it was, but not in the way anyone hoped.
On 7 December Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. ‘Situation in the Pacific now very serious.’ This meant America would join forces with Britain, but the war would not be over any time soon – ‘No, the wumble is about to beginumble.’ And camouflage still had a crucial part to play.
The threat of a Japanese attack on the western coast of America seemed very real in early 1942, and after Japanese submarines were tracked close to Santa Barbara, panic ensued. The Americans responded quickly and worked from the British example. Colonel John F. Ohmer had visited Britain in the late 1940s and seen first-hand the camouflage schemes implemented at air bases and factories during the Blitz. For months before Pearl Harbor he had argued relentlessly for the protective cover of American targets at home. Each time his proposals had been dismissed as too costly and of dubious value. Not any more.
Following Colonel Turner’s example, Ohmer looked to the film studios for help. Hollywood’s finest – MGM, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox – all became involved and their set designers and carpenters crafted ingenious covers in the national interest, creating acres of innocent hillside or quiet suburbia where once there had been air bases and factories. Photographs of the Lockheed Burbank aircraft plant show it hidden beneath an elaborate construction of ‘chicken wire covered in chicken feathers and painted’; a vast canopy held up by telegraph poles, across which paid actors would sporadically traverse to give the impression of activity. There are fake shrubs, plywood buildings – it’s the kind of landscape Joe had dreamed of. But what of his steel wool? Cecil Schofield had secured the American patent the previous year, and by 1942 it was making appearances in the press. Life magazine reported that the Army was waking up to being at war. ‘All U.S. guns and trucks are being painted a dull olive drab. The Corps of Engineers, in charge of camouflage, is conducting experiments in foliage preservation, non-fading paint, steel wool as a garnishing material, infra-red paint to deceive infra-red photography . . .’1 There were accompanying photographs of snipers adorned in steel wool and hiding down a ‘spider hole’ – it looks like reliquary of the last war, but what the newspapers reported was the smallest tip of the iceberg.
Whilst camouflage stepped up in America it was being scaled back in England. A new Civil Camouflage Assessment Committee was meant to bring a more consistent policy and conserve valuable materials – instituting degrees or grades of camouflage. ‘The present state of static camouflage is being reviewed,’ states one of Joe’s ‘most secret’ memos from 1942. ‘The object is to enable the War Office to assess the importance of camouflage for military property in comparison with property of other service and civil departments and to calculate accordingly the disposal of material and labour, limitations of which are controlling factors.’2 It was all about balancing priorities, but it was also an attempt to make camouflage more efficient. Joe was now able to advise on proposed extensions or building works ahead of time, and in some cases, as at Southern Command, he designed the layout of a new War Department depot to incorporate camouflage from the outset.
His workload didn’t seem to change. Steel wool was used for top-priority sites – secret army wireless stations and bomb stores. ‘This morning inspected a very hush-hush design. M&E have just got another 500,000 sq yds job from AM [Air Ministry].’ The growing sophistication of aerial photographic interpretation meant camouflage had to work even harder, and for once it felt like the Germans were lagging behind. ‘The Germans have lately developed a great weakness for large-scale and often apparently pointless static camouflage,’ Joe noted. He had been shown photographs of the Focke-Wulf works in Rotterdam where ‘a housing etstate’ had been built over the factory roof and a fake park created nearby. All of this was entirely pointless since ‘the harbour predicts the position and it is mainly a night-bombing target’.3 Similarly, other photos taken over one of the large German cities showed very poor attempts to hide a lake. Joe was delighted, not just by the growing evidence of German incompetence but also by the British ability to detect it.
In February 1942 he was dispatched by the War Office to Northern Ireland, to advise one of his old students, Michael Farrar Bell, on the camouflage of base installations, coast defences and anti-aircraft batteries ahead of the arrival of the first American troops who were to take command thereafter.4
Steel wool remained the most effective and efficient static cover, and what now became clear was that it could hide not just vital equipment but also, crucially, works and men. The pressure was growing fo
r a second front in Europe. After Dunkirk, Churchill had set up commando units to conduct raids and harass garrisons in German-occupied territories. By 1942 they were the poster boys for the British military. There’s a sketch of Lord Louis Mountbatten on the cover of Time magazine from that summer, his likeness depicted against a backdrop of flames. ‘Mountbatten of the Commandos,’ reads the caption, ‘His boys in blackface will see the day of wrath.’5
As head of Combined Operations, Mountbatten was tasked with co-ordinating a series of commando raids along the North Sea and Atlantic coastlines of enemy-held territory, and ultimately planning and preparing for the re-invasion of Europe. Time describes ‘Lord Louis’ as one who now personifies the second front and gives a detailed account of the recruitment and training of commandos: ‘They must know how to stalk, unseen, in woods, fields, mountains . . . Commandomen must learn to kill. They prefer to kill quietly . . . For night attack, they black their faces and shoes, wear black uniforms, partly for camouflage, partly for the effect on enemy morale.’6
Commandos were like snipers and stalkers of old, and every raid required weeks of careful reconnaissance, the painstaking study of land maps, ocean charts and weather cyles, and in-depth tactical planning. Steel wool provided an ideal cover for them. Peregrine Churchill had always stressed its value in offensive as well as defensive operations and now he could prove it. He created an ‘enormous cover’ for the Combined Operations attack on the French coast, to conceal the assembly point of the Commando Forces.
