From: Herr Bookmonger (bookmonger@verizon.net)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 20:26:25 PST
I just read a book review that perhaps the group might find of interest. It
is about camouflage, a subject near and dear to many MV collectors. I've
provided the link to the article, and a brief excerpt.
I had no idea the desert pattern was so old. I'd love to read the book, but
it's a bit too expensive. (Even with my discount !)
Herr Bookmonger
-------------------------
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1419611,00.html
How we have come to look like trees
DISRUPTIVE PATTERN MATERIAL: An Encyclopędia of Camouflage: Nature,
Military, Culture
By Hardy Blechman
"Army Surplus" - selling battlefield gear for camping and other recreations,
including college life - was a phenomenon of the Baby Boom years in the
United States, that strange moment of relieved optimism after 1945. One
happy consequence of the Second World War was astonishing improvements in
mass production. And there was a lot of production left over for the masses.
Maybe you did not buy a Consolidated Liberator B24 bomber, but you might buy
a bivouac tent or ETO (European Theatre of Operations) fatigues.
Camouflage is a 20th-century phenomenon, a direct consequence of new
military technologies. Observation balloons had been used in the American
Civil War, but they were tethered and had limited effect on the conflict
which remained essentially close combat. But the arrival, first, of
machineguns, then of spotter planes, changed the geometry and scale of
battle.
Soldiers were once brightly coloured for purposes of threatening martial
display as well as ready recognition, but when a belt-fed recoil-operated
Maxim gun had a range of several hundred yards, high visibility became a
liability for the squaddie more than an operational convenience for the
commanding officer. Early in the First World War French soldiers suffered
heavy casualties, partly on account of their bright red trousers.
Accordingly, a Section de Camouflage was created in 1915, recruiting stage
designers and artists.
the United States has done more work on camouflage than any other nation.
What's Norman Schwarzkopf wearing? That's "six-colour desert camouflage
pattern for dry hot terrains" designed in 1962, issued first in 1981. Army
BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) camouflage began development at the Engineering
Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The evolution
of the popular "Woodland" pattern was a response in the Sixties to the
arrival of night-vision goggles. Research eventually determined that a
mixture of: light green 354, dark green 355, brown 356, and black 357
provided, when printed on 50/50 nylon cotton, an effect that "closely
mimicked the visual and near-infrared spectral reflectance properties of
typical woodland". Which is to say soldiers looked like trees. And then what
happened? In 2004 "Woodland" was replaced by a digitally generated pattern.
DPM Ltd, £100; 944pp, 2 vols
ISBN 0 954 34040 X
($190.71 !)
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