Camouflage organization was carefully developed for both the field and the factory, while one of the most important duties, that of instruction, was carried out in Army and corps schools and artillery camps, where thousands of officers and men were taught both the necessity and the methods of camouflage.
Our undertakings in this direction were based largely upon the methods developed by the French and British. In one respect camouflage was a matter of quantity production. This was in the manufacture of material used for concealing guns, roads, and other strategic locations which fall under the eyes of enemy observers on the ground or in the air.
In this work the British did nothing without the most careful scientific investigation, including the aerial photography of all their materials used, while the French relied more on their innate artistic sense of color and form. The camouflage material produced in quantity by the British consisted principally of burlap cut in strips about 1 inch wide and 12 inches long, colored in the desired hues with oil-emulsion paint. For artillery cover this was knotted in fish nets and chicken wire. The French for this purpose used raffia, a common product of Madagascar, whose natives use it largely for making their fantastic garments. The raffia was dyed and then knotted on nets and wire in the French camouflage factories.
After a careful study we adopted the British system and used burlap. Our Engineers made this decision because of the impossibility of finding permanent dyes for raffia and because raffia is more inflammable than burlap and scarcer and higher in price.
The first demand for camouflage material which we received embraced coverings for guns, sniper's suits, dummy heads, silhouettes, and some airplane hangar covers. In order to supply this material at the outset the engineering forces abroad leased a factory building in Paris and turned out a sufficient quantity with a working force of 30 enlisted soldiers and 100 French women.
But, as the American troops at the front increased in number, the demands for camouflage material became rapidly heavier. Battery positions of some types required about 4,000 square yards of camouflage cover. Aviation hangar covers were demanded in large numbers, and each one was a special order due to the varying conditions of terrain encountered. It became evident that we needed a vast increase in our camouflage-factory space.
In January, 1918, the Engineers secured about 20 acres of ground in Dijon, Haute Marne, a city on the main supply line north through the regulating station at Is-sur-Tille. They started to erect buildings immediately, and within 20 days this plant began turning out material. By November the Dijon factory numbered about 40 buildings, including blacksmith and machine shop, a sewing shop, a paint shop, laboratory, and a toy shop where dummies and silhouettes were made. The factory turned out artillery cover at the rate of 50,000 square yards per day.
The total output of camouflage cover for all purposes required about 3,000,000 square yards of burlap per month. When the fighting stopped the American Expeditionary Forces were using camouflage materials to the value of $1,500,000 monthly.
By new methods of manufacture, we succeeded in reducing the weight of fish-net covers. We designed two important field devices, one being an improved frame and set for mobile artillery protection, this equipment being later adopted by the British, and the other an umbrella machine-gun cover having special advantages. The central camouflage works of the American Expeditionary Forces at Dijon was declared by unprejudiced observers to be the best equipped and most efficient of any on the western front.