Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  Fortunately, Dick wasn’t the type to need one. He arrived like a warm breeze, giving Maureen a fatherly embrace and tickling Patricia under her chin. He brought presents and compliments for everyone and settled himself in amongst them with his usual easy charm. Maureen thought he looked extremely well. She noted the paradox – how war robbed people of life whilst giving some a fresh chance at it.

  John, meanwhile, gave Dick the sort of look he reserved for suspicious objects on station platforms.

  Peering at Dick over his thick spectacles, he cast his newspaper aside.

  ‘So tell me. How long will you be in London?’

  Dick smiled.

  ‘Just long enough to get married.’

  A silence like a gasp of breath. Maureen had heard perfectly. Confused, she glanced over at her mother, then she looked back at Dick, who reached over and clasped her hands in his.

  ‘I have asked your mother to marry me. I hope that’s all right.’

  Maureen smiled back, though still she didn’t understand. This was the first time she’d heard anything about it.

  ‘It’s good news, I hope.’ Dick’s look was now rather imploring.

  Maureen turned to John. Had he known, as well? But no, John gripped the arms of his chair, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He was utterly lost for words.

  ‘Yes!’ Nancy exclaimed brightly. ‘I am delighted. Dick asked me to be his wife. We are to be married tomorrow.’

  John sunk further into his chair. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Now that was extraordinary,’ Maureen remembers. ‘There I was, pregnant, with my own mother acting like a teenager. Dick was the same. I have a clear memory of him lightly skipping down the stairs from our flat, singing: “We’re getting married in the morning!”’

  We have come out to lunch at a nearby hotel. It’s a stone’s throw from her nursing home but too far for her to walk. I have pushed her here in a wheelchair, swaddled in blankets like a child. Although it is a bright winter day, she feels the cold terribly.

  ‘You must have been surprised.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Maureen sighs. ‘Of course I’d known him a long time. Such a lovely, good-hearted chap. You couldn’t not like him. But it came out of the blue. All I remember later on is John saying that Dick would look after Nancy – and how that was a relief – and he was right. Dick looked after everyone. Your mum and her sisters adored him.’

  This I know is true. Dick was there jiggling babies on his knee, playing games, reading books and telling the wildest stories. If ever I ask my aunts about Dick, they lift their heads and smile. They can talk about Dick endlessly, his humour and his patience. Dick was more of a grandfather than Joe ever was, and a more devoted husband to Nancy than she could have wished for. He adored her.

  They were married on 8 September without fuss or family members. There was no party afterwards or any formal announcement. Nancy used Maureen’s address on their marriage certificate, which seems a bit rich considering Maureen wasn’t there. But what surprises me most is the date. Nancy and Dick were married two weeks before Joe and Mary. When I tell Maureen this she stares at the tablecloth.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  She says it in such a measured, quiet way. It’s perhaps the only way she can say it. She takes a long pause.

  ‘I was sure Joe had already married Mary.’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Were you told that, or was that just what you assumed? Joe waited. I think he was always trying to do the right thing, so he let Nancy go first.’

  I do now believe this. Yes, Joe procrastinated terribly, but in all of his letters he stressed the need to do things ‘in the right way’. He wanted Nancy to be looked after, so he let her take the lead and sort out her affairs. The moment she married Dick, that’s when he was free.

  It is ironic: for all Joe’s interest in appearances, he lost control of how he was seen. He would forever be the unfaithful husband, the wayward artist, the gallivanting camoufleur. He was of course all of those things, but he was more.

  As we start our meal I mention my theory about Joe and his pension to Maureen.

  ‘He’d seen it, in the last war. People had no money. He wanted Nancy to be taken care of, even as his widow. Once she married Dick, she wasn’t his responsibility.’

  Maureen dabs at her mouth, not saying anything. I can’t tell what she is thinking. I want to reassure her I am not trying to redeem or excuse Joe, I am not trying to make some comforting illusion, but I feel it needs to be said. Then I catch her smiling. After a few minutes’ silence she takes a sip of wine.

  ‘The thing is,’ she begins.

  She presses her fingers on the tablecloth, dabbing at the knife and fork. I’ve noticed she often does this when she is trying to order her words. She will play with her napkin or straighten the cutlery.

  I lean in.

  After a long moment, she levels her eyes on me.

  ‘He did say something about that . . . it was when I took Patricia to Marlow, all those years later, and we had that awful discussion about art. Well, he took me to one side and we walked around by the flowerbeds, and he said: “You should know, you do know, don’t you? . . . Dick was there before Mary.”’

  I press my hands into my knees. ‘Dick was there before Mary.’

  Maureen nods and lifts her finger. ‘Yes. He said: “Dick was there first. You realise that, I hope.” He wanted me to know.’

  I sit back. It is of course what I had suspected. I can see them: Nancy and Dick, leaning close at the card table, lingering in the corridors of the Sutherland, eyes meeting, fingers touching. Dick was there first. But what catches me out is how Maureen can confirm it. The way she is looking at me now, with eyebrows raised, puzzles me. Is this some new memory bobbing to the surface or an old one she’s long locked away? She gives a little sigh and shake of her head. I wish she had told me sooner, but no, I don’t think she would have. I had to get there on my own.

  I stare at our half-eaten food.

  ‘Of course,’ she goes on. ‘By that time it barely mattered.’

  I disagree. I think it mattered a great deal. It was the last time Maureen saw her father alive, in the garden in Marlow, and he had finally told her the truth.

  ‘Joe put Mary off time and again,’ I say. ‘He did that so Dick and Nancy could sort themselves out, and he took the blame and kept it secret.’

  Maureen smiles. ‘He was good at that.’

  Looking back, it all makes sense.

  Maureen lifts her hand again. ‘I remember on Norfolk Square . . . I told you that time Dad was so angry, rapping the railings with his stick. He was friends with Dick, they had been friends. “Touch of the tar-brush” was what he said. Where did that come from?’ She nods. ‘Oh yes. He was angry.’

  I picture it so vividly I feel I could be there. I had long wondered if Joe had met Mary when he was writing about camouflage and that these two deceptions wove together. But Dick and Nancy were the inspiration for everything. How to hide in plain sight – Joe learned from the best.

  His marriage had barely survived the move south. Nobody could have fixed it. It was a relief, perhaps, that Dick was there, waiting for his life-changing event, his watershed moment. Meeting Nancy was like the strike of a match. It made things easier that Joe actually liked Dick. I am sure he could imagine Nancy happier with a respectable engineer, a good soldier who wore his heart on his sleeve. Dick was solid, and Dick was persistent, and most importantly Dick was there. It’s something I haven’t considered enough, how the very act of being there can come to mean so much. My grandmother has always been there for me, the rock and root of everything. Now I’ve built a family of my own I understand what’s needed. I’m far from perfect, but I’m there. When you love someone, you have to stay, you have to listen. There is a certain surrender, an abdication of self. Dick would become Nancy’s constant companion.

  And Joe hoped that by giving Nancy a second chance, he might get the same. When he met Mary, when he spent his first ni
ght with her, he pretended he was free because he knew Dick was in love with Nancy. But he wasn’t free and he wouldn’t be, not until Nancy committed to Dick.

  Two weeks after Nancy married Dick, Joe married Mary. There was no need to wait around. Joe could pretend it had all worked out just as he had planned. Hadn’t it all come right in the end? Standing back and looking from a distance, everything was fitting into place.

  A few days before Mary Meade became Mary Gray, her mother wrote to Joe. ‘You know I wish you both the very best and mind you are good to my Mary or else I can be simply horrible beyond words!!’ It was her final warning to him, but she signed herself with affection, ‘Mrs Mumbles’. Yes, Joe had talked everyone round. James Meade wasn’t able to go to the wedding because he was then working in Washington, so Margaret took his place.

  ‘Mary was married yesterday,’ she wrote.

  The ceremony took place in the Chelsea Register Office, which was rather shocking for your mother, and she still can’t feel that it’s quite legal. Your cousin Toby gave the bride away, and young Churchill was best man. I was best girl! After that we all went to the Waldorf Hotel for a reception – about 60 people – a few relatives, a few Bathonians and a good many in uniforms from Gray’s office. It was all very successful and Mary looked very well and happy.

  Jack Sayer, Dalgliesh and the other members of the ‘crazy gang’ were there. Sayer overheard Mary reminding Joe: ‘You’ve got to go round and talk to your guests, not just stand up at the bar grinning the whole time.’ She knew Joe’s ways well enough. Though perhaps Mary didn’t anticipate her own family members, not being used to alcohol, becoming quite drunk and having to be ‘deposited on a secluded sofa and dosed by a delighted Johnny Churchill with cups of black coffee’.3

  I have several photographs of Joe and Mary from their wedding day, all taken out in the street. Joe is in uniform and grinning broadly, his arm interlaced with Mary’s. She wears a dark beret, a coat that is neatly nipped in at her waist, and a rather luxurious fox fur draped around her shoulders. Her coat and dress stop just at the knee, showing off those splendid legs.

  There is another photograph of Joe and Mary with Johnny Churchill, and then another of Joe flanked by the two Marys, then a final one of all four of them togther. There are no photographs of any other guests or of the reception, so I consider once more this neat quartet. Joe and Johnny and their two Marys, they look so smart and still young – Joe looks far younger than his years – and full of promise. It’s a bright, clear day and everybody is smiling. At last, everybody is smiling.

  GOOD RECEPTION

  Let us drink to the Bride –

  Come, fill ev’ry glass! –

  And may she decide

  That her newly formed Class

  (In a class by himself is our Joseph)

  Will achieve, if not honours, a Pass.

  Let us drink to each Guest

  As they come in the door,

  All perfectly dressed – and sober, what’s more.

  May the drinking of healths with such fervour

  Deposit but few on the floor.

  Let us drink to Joe’s Bank –

  Here’s dust in their eyes!

  Though Joe’s little prank

  May cause them surprise

  May they boost up his overdraft promptly

  To a truly phenomenal size.

  Let us drink to the Flat

  And its prevalent hue –

  We understand that

  Will be Jubilee blue.

  (’tis sited next door to a Brewery

  Which is almost too good to be true.)

  Let us drink to Joe Gray

  As he gropes for his train

  At the dawn of each day

  And at nightfall again.

  And may missing the latter by seconds

  Not be found over-hard to explain.

  Let us drink to the Clock;

  In its hands, moving round,

  May a copious stock

  Of Good Fortune be found –

  And may all of the hours it points to

  In happiness greatly abound.

  20 SEPT 1943

  Written:

  ‘With best wishes from The Old Firm

  Foule – Wyatt – Sayer – Dalgliesh’

  POSTSCRIPT

  Though after some glasses

  We’re down on the floor

  We drink to a Grayling

  Or Graylings Galore;

  For Josephs are scarce

  And there ought to be more!4

  F.J.C.Wyatt

  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 As quoted in Rankin, Churchill’s Wizards, p. 367

  2 H. J. Barclay memoir, courtesy Victoria Barclay.

  3 Sayer, Camouflage Game, p. 40

  4 ‘Good Reception’, 20 September 1943, Barclay Archive.

  is for Waste. Please do not forget Steel wool is harder to replace than a net

  Joe settled into married life, or rather settled back into married life, but his life in camouflage wasn’t over. Steel wool had a final but crucial role to play. The possible re-invasion of Europe had been on the agenda ever since Dunkirk but it wasn’t until May 1943 that Churchill and President Roosevelt gave it their full attention.

  The point of invasion was hotly contested. The Pas de Calais, the narrowest point in the English Channel, seemed ideal. But Mountbatten, still in charge of Combined Operations, was completely opposed to it, pointing out that it was far too obvious.1 The Germans, he argued, were anticipating just such an attack and were rapidly building up military strength in considerable depth throughout the Calais area. But they had little motivation to do so further west, and had allotted nothing like the same fortification and military manpower to the defence of the Normandy beaches in the Baie de la Seine. The Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) team identified this area as a possible entry point, and so began the tireless gathering of intelligence. Aerial reconaissance mapped the area carefully, British frogmen slipped ashore, commando raids brought back prisoners, and members of the SOE parachuted in, all determined to grasp the fullest picture of what was waiting on the ground. There would be no repeats of what had happened at Dieppe.

  Operation Overlord was the codename given to this most crucial attack of the Second World War. It was a masterpiece of planning, shielded by an equally complex cover plan called Bodyguard (a nod to Winston Churchill’s observation that ‘in wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies’2).

  A deception plan for the cross-Channel attack, named Operation Fortitude, borrowed from the example of El Alamein and spun several separate stories. Firstly, everything was done to give the impression the assault could take place in any one of the occupied countries of Northern Europe, so that German troops would be drafted away from the action – this was called Fortitude North. The second thread came into play once it became clear that a cross-Channel assault would happen: everything then had to be done to convince the Germans that it would focus on the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy – this was Fortitude South. Thirdly, it was vital to convince the Germans that the attack would take place weeks later than it was actually scheduled.

  Fortitude North aimed to fuel Hitler’s obsession with the tactical value of Norway, and to this end a team of British officers were
dispatched to the upper reaches of Scotland to fill the airwaves with fake radio transmissions. This was complemented by the arrival of armies of dummy tanks and gliders, and the appearance of surplus ships and decoy landing craft lining the Firth of Forth, all of which created the impression of the build-up of an Allied ‘Fourth Army’, making ready to attack.

  Fortitude South was another crucial distraction, intended to give the impression of heightened activity in the areas around Dover and Folkstone instead. The Camouflage Development and Training Centre held practice camps and exercises teaching men how to improvise the impression of ‘false strength’ or ‘phantom brigades’. The First US Army Group (FUSAG) was really just that – a skeleton formation formed for purely administrative purposes – but the Germans were made to believe it was the main Allied threat and would be landing around Calais. Although camouflage was used to conceal its camps, it was deliberately inadequate: ‘concealment measures will be conspicuous and uneven’ and ‘the occupation of camps will be emphasised by smoke from cookers and incinerators’.3 It was even recommended that wood was the best and cheapest fuel to burn since this gave a thicker smoke.

  Alongside these activities, dummy landing craft appeared in the Thames and Medway estuaries, while the airfields of Kent and Essex filled up with plywood gliders just waiting to be spotted. Sound City designers also built hundreds of dummy landing barges made of canvas and wood that floated on empty oil drums. They were towed to the sort of place you might expect a landing craft to be anchored, left for a few days, then moved again, to give the impression of activity.4

  But the centrepiece of the illusion was a dummy oil-storage facility and docking station built near Dover, designed by architect Basil Spence and constructed by Sound City staff. This installation, stretching for miles along the shoreline, consisted of pipelines and pumping stations, jetties, truck bays, troop barracks and antiaircraft defences. Official inspections by King George V and General Montgomery were noted in the press but precautions were taken to keep the Luftwaffe above 30,000 feet, from which height it was impossible for enemy cameras to pick out any obvious flaws. The Germans had every reason to believe that this was a terminus for an underwater pipeline that would eventually lead to Calais, heralding an imminent invasion of that area.