Forgotten life of a master of disguise
Author tells fascinating story of great grandfather
He spent the First World War using his artistic skills to reveal enemy positions. He spent the Second World War using his genius for light and shade to hide the machinery of war from the enemy.
Now the remarkable life of artist and camouflage pioneer Joseph Gray is told in a new book by his great granddaughter Mary Horlock.
And her step back into her family history helped explain not only her own artistic flair but also laid bare the sadness of her grandmother over the father she wished she’d known better.
Although born in South Shields, Joseph moved north and settled in Tayside, working as an illustrator for DC Thomson’s Dundee Courier.
He joined the local Black Watch Regiment at the start of the First World War in 1914 and was in the thick of the fighting for the next two years.
Joseph’s artistic skills were pressed into service as an observer, making drawings of German positions and targets.
“It must have been horrific and terrifying but I think drawing enabled him to escape it slightly,” said Mary.
“He was risking his life all the time, going out at dusk to make these sketches. Being an observer was really dangerous and you had to be wily to survive against the Germans who had better telescopic sights.
“But doing what he loved – he couldn’t not doodle, sketch, paint – made it much more bearable. And it also helped save his life.
“Because he was looking so intently at everything, the irregularities, the big guns and the snipers, I think he was able to last as long as he did.” His luck ran out when he was shot – although in his typically upbeat manner, he made light of it.
“He joked that it was his first lesson in camouflage,” said Mary.
“He said he was going over the top and his kilt flew up.
“He reckoned his very white backside made him an easy target.”
Joseph was treated for his bullet wound at the front, but he was subsequently invalided out with rheumatic fever.
He suffered badly with his lungs for years and was regularly hospitalised back in Dundee where he married and had a daughter, Maureen.
Some of his remarkable drawings from the trenches found their way into the Imperial War Museum, where they are still held.
He continued to work as an artist, but tough times during the Great Depression of the late 1920s and ‘30s made life very difficult for Joseph. And fears of another global conflict occupied his mind.
“It came to obsess him,” said Mary. “That generation had been through the ‘war to end all wars’, only to realise they were going to have to face it again.
“There was a lot of fear of the Luftwaffe delivering knockout blows that would totally disable our cities. He thought a lot about how to use lessons he’d learned about hiding things during the First World War and take them to a bigger scale.
“Some of the amazing camouflage drawings he did are also in the Imperial War Museum.”
He had an affair and left his wife Agnes, a decision that had a profound effect on his daughter Maureen
“He wasn’t always a great father,” says Mary. “There is no doubt that my grandmother missed his