Previous

Next

Part Five

"The events described in this book are true. Everything Jasper Maskelyne is credited with doing he actually accomplished..." The War Magician

We resume our story with Jasper Maskelyne arriving in Egypt in early 1941.

In Guy Hartcup's book "Camouflage" (1979), I came across the following humorous reference: "Maskelyne's principal duty was to provide counterfeit currency notes and other properties for agents, though his credibility on arrival in Egypt was slightly diminished when he complained of lack of cash."

Apart from Fisher's brief reference to Maskelyne's skills in "counterfeiting and forgery" , I have not found any other mention of his alleged involvement in 'funny money'. It might be yet another story without foundation designed to add to his mystique.

However, Jasper's arrival in Egypt with no money is almost certainly related to Barkas' anecdote recorded in last month's article. And Alistair Maskeleyne regards this aspect of the anecdote as credible : "I never knew my father to be any other way."

After an inauspicious start — being treated as an interloper, a mere conjuror who should be entertaining on the stage instead of making a fool of himself in the fighting arena — Jasper Maskelyne, according to Fisher, was given the bizarre task of confronting the Imam of the Whirling Dervish tribe.

The Imam had placed restrictions upon British soldiers moving through his domain and had warned that any such manoeuvres would trigger a jihad.

However, in light of the growing German threat to Egypt and the Middle East, if evacuation proved necessary , it would be advantageous for retreating British troops to directly cross the Imam's territory. To ensure that these defensive troop withdrawals could be carried out without causing offence, Prince Hassan, sympathetic to the British, arranged a meeting between Maskelyne and the Imam in Damascus. Hassan had known Jasper's father Nevil Maskelyne when he had worked for Lawrence of Arabia in the First World War. (Note: Nevil Maskelyne's work for Lawrence of Arabia is recorded in "White Magic". I have doubts regarding the authenticity of this secret exercise - the sending of trained magicians into the desert to help foment rebellion. I am yet to find any confirmation of this mission in the many biographies of T.E. Lawrence.)

The encounter with the ageing Imam quickly developed into a duel of tricks with the English conjuror matching the fraudulent holy man and then surpassing him.

The exact details of the duel differ in "The War Magician" and "Magic-Top Secret" but the two main feats are mentioned in both : Maskelyne's version of the gun trick where he pretends to fire a bullet straight through the palm of his hand; and the Imam's fake penetration of a spear through the stomach , achieved by using a flexible weapon and a gimmicked belt.

Impressed with Maskelyne's magical abilities and fearing that his own secret methods might be exposed, the Imam agreed to allow the British safe passage through Syria.

Or so the story goes...

This duel with the Imam is a curious episode. There are some discrepancies in timing and context, which the table below helps illustrate.

I strongly doubt that such a duel between the Imam and Maskelyne ever took place. There may have been a meeting at some stage and perhaps there was a competitive display of magical prowess, but there is no confirmatory evidence that the meeting , if it did take place, was of any military importance. From a novelist's viewpoint the 'duel' seems like a wonderful tale and could be readily adapted to an Indiana Jones adventure.

Encounter with the Imam of the Whirling Dervishes

The 'gold watch' story will surface again , but in a different context. John Booth in his Linking Ring article recalled that during his visit to Kenya, Jasper Maskelyne showed him an impressive gold watch. Maskelyne claimed it had been given to him by King Farouk after a special palace performance. Fisher's version of the performance and his linking it with the Abdin palace incident will be critically blowtorched in a future article when we discuss Maskelyne's work for MI-9.

Additional note: the Whirling Dervishes have been demonised in popular history as a group of religious fanatics and rabble-rousers , implacably hostile to foreigners. There are also accounts of dervishes performing strange 'impossible' feats such as fire walking, chewing red-hot charcoals, eating glass and handling poisonous snakes.

However, it might be unfair to dismiss them either as fraudulent miracle men or as irrational and deranged members of an extreme sect. Dervishes are a branch of the Sufi religion which is in turn a legitimate offshoot of Islam. Their early leaders preached an ethic of radical poverty. Indeed, the word 'dervish' appears to mean 'beggar '.

There are different sects of dervishes, and it is probable that many were hostile to foreign powers and their compliant puppets but for sound and rational reasons. Although I have not found specific information about the leader of the Whirling Dervishes and his loyalties during wartime, I did come across a reference to an Imam based in Muscat who objected strongly to the drilling of oil in his lands — a dangerous stance diametrically opposed to western economic interests and one that was, no doubt , quickly combated and suppressed.

___________________________________________________________________________

Moving onwards to more verifiable events, Maskelyne became a member of the "Camouflage Experimental Section" led by Major Geoffrey Barkas. In return for promising to set up magic shows for the troops, Maskelyne was given leeway to establish his own camouflage team .

It was at this stage, according to Fisher, that Maskelyne and 'Frank Knox' formed the Magic Gang with the following key members :

1/ Michael Hill, a down-to-earth private, willing to cut corners and break regulations, and invaluable at procuring badly needed items;

2/ Theodore "Nails" Graham, a skilled carpenter ;

3/ Bill Robson, a short-sighted cartoonist and artist.

Note:the pacifist Punch cartoonist and magic gang member William ("Bill") Robson is described in Fisher's account as "bespectacled", "tall, over six feet", "very thin", "eyesight ... very poor".

In Magic - Top Secret, there is brief mention of "Rob of Punch , an artist whose name is known to thousands."

When reading Barkas' account of the desert war I noticed that the cartoon illustrations had been drawn by Brian Robb. Could this be the person that "Bill Robson" is based on? Interestingly, Barkas writes that Robb "was a full and fed-up private when we discovered him sitting disconsolately , for lack of either creative or destructive employment, beside a searchlight in the Sinai Desert." Might this have been defence duties for the Suez Canal? However, Barkas' physical description of Robb... "short, comfortably upholstered, and bald..." does not square with Fisher's description of "Robson".

I note too that Hartcup interviewed Brian Robb when he was researching his book on Camouflage in the 1970's.

4/ Philip Townsend, an upmarket artist

5/ Sergeant Jack Fuller, a more orthodox disciplinarian, who knew Cairo well and understood the ins and outs of Army bureaucracy.

If these are historical persons, then it is possible that one or two members of the Magic Gang are still alive today.

Fisher briefly records what became of them after the war. According to Fisher's epilogue, Sergeant Jack Fuller died in 1965. Robson taught fine arts at university level (he'd be c. eighty years old). Townsend later directed TV commercials. Theodore Graham owned a hardware shop in London (he'd also be c. eighty years old).

The two most likely to be still alive would be the youngest members : Michael Hill and his eventual wife Kathy Lewis. Even Hill would now be c. seventy-three years old.

(Author's note: we must now add ten more years to reach the year 2004. It is even less likely that a Magic Gang member is still alive.)

However, given the suspicion that Fisher has novelised his material and that these characters — perhaps based loosely on real people — have been redrawn and reconstructed with dramatic licence, such a search might be futile.

It is doubtful that any independent version of the activities of the Magic Gang will be found , apart from the details recorded in the basic 'diaries'.

Henceforth, whenever I mention a 'name' of a Magic Gang member, please keep in mind that the person might be a fictional construct.

__________________________________________________________________________

According to Fisher, in May 1941 Barkas gave the Magic Gang their first big job, which was to conjure up ten thousand gallons of camouflage paint. Over two hundred British tanks originally intended for Greece had just arrived in Alexandria. They were painted green - the wrong colour for the desert.

Townsend knew about the chemistry of paints. Essentially, the camouflage gang needed a pigment to produce the colour and a liquid 'base' to fix and preserve it.

Eventually, the team discovered a huge dump, a warehouse of miscellaneous junk north of Cairo. Amid the rotting debris were tainted batches of Worcestershire sauce in endless rows of tin drums. This would provide the base. They also found further ingredients for their unique recipe, namely, flour and cement. But the master stroke was their solving of the pigment problem; an appropriate camouflage colour could be extracted from camel dung.

The 'dung patrol' was born, collecting fresh camel dung from the city streets and chasing up departing Arab caravans.

Maskelyne's men were able to produce two thousand gallons a week of this strange brew.

Freshly painted tanks were then left out in the sun to get rid of the stench of the camel excrement. This was a wonderful example of improvisation. Maskelyne, according to Fisher, advised his crew: "Remember, when someone asks you if we can do the job, the answer is yes. Don't think about it, don't worry about it, the answer is yes."

There is also a similar line in "Magic - Top Secret".

This is a highly amusing anecdote of ingenuity in the face of shortages, but is it true?

On first reading , I found it highly plausible. However, there are some discrepancies to the story. In "Magic-Top Secret", the request occurs later in the year , after the Magic Gang is well established and has already manufactured many items of dummy equipment for the army.

The order is also for a larger quantity — half a million gallons — not merely ten-thousand gallons.

However, this alternative account, which places the incident later in the campaign, runs into its own problems. It is likely that more sophisticated paint making methods were available by this time. Certainly, by 1942, 'camcolour' or 'camemulsion' , cheaper substitutes for paint, were being produced on a large scale in the Middle East. Presumably, without the camel dung ingredient!

I am also concerned that there is a similar paint story told by Hartcup of camouflage artist Peter Proud who helped out at Tobruk:

"Ten tons of useless Italian flour made an effective adhesive with which to apply sand to vehicles and tents to make them inconspicuous. Two thousand gallons of Worcester sauce unfit for human consumption were used to thin paint."

This again is a plausible anecdote, given the lack of materials at Tobruk and the urgent need for improvisation. Perhaps the two anecdotes have become fused and confused over time.

Proud, attached to an Australian unit, implemented some very interesting camouflage schemes at Tobruk . In a notable exercise in deceptive camouflage, he faked damage to the water purification centre so that it would appear severely bomb damaged and out of action.

Original Camouflage Scheme for the Distillery Plant, Tobruk, May 1941

The authenticity of the Magic Gang's 'dung patrol' is not then absolutely clear, but it is not my intention to spoil such a memorable wartime anecdote. Hinsley's mammoth and authoritative account of British Intelligence in the Second World War , with full access to the archives, does reveal that on May 12th, 1941, a valuable consignment of tanks (and Hurricane fighters) arrived in Alexandria . The convoy had been sent on the direct route through Gibraltar and across the Mediterranean instead of the safer but longer route down around the Cape. The new tanks definitely needed painting, camouflaging and refitting. Indeed, it took almost a month to get them ready for the desert conditions, in time for Operation Battleaxe discussed shortly.

Perhaps, then, the tale of the dung patrol — which is consistent with this independently verified event — should be given the benefit of the doubt.

___________________________________________________________________________

The next challenge from Barkas was to devise a convincing and practical way of disguising real tanks. General Wavell, under pressure from Churchill, planned to make a move (code named Operation Battleaxe) against the Afrika Korps and needed to bring his tanks up secretly into position without being spotted by German reconnaissance planes or ground observers.

In the earlier campaign against the Italians, the British had experimented with crude dummy tanks made from wood. Whether they had any military impact is highly doubtful. Some sceptics such as the late General Charles Richardson saw their use as "a pathetic last resort of British Arms facing total disaster."

However, Maskelyne's task was novel : instead of merely creating 'fakes' he had to go one step further and find a cheap and convenient way of camouflaging or disguising a real tank.

He hit upon the idea of transforming a tank into an innocent looking lorry by using fake lightweight frames nicknamed 'sunshields' .

This effective method of mimicry by Maskelyne and his Camouflage Experimental Section was quite an accomplishment, given the time constraints and the material shortages.

His neighbours in the Mechanical Experimental Establishment also developed a way of hiding the characteristic tank tread. A weighted trailing device was added to the rear of the camouflaged tank. This erased the telltale tank track and replaced it with one that simulated a lorry's tire track. A photograph of the track eraser can be found in Magic - Top Secret.

The trials of the 'sunshields' proved successful. Fisher's description of the test run is quite dramatic :

"As the officers scoured the column, the lead truck suddenly split precisely in half, as if it had been sliced down its centre by a mammoth butcher's knife. The two sides collapsed lazily onto the desert. Like some surrealistic monster emerging from a wood-and-canvas cocoon, the Matilda charged forward its thin, deadly snout aimed directly at the dune."

Wavell gave the go-ahead for the large-scale production of 'sunshields'.

The 'sunshield' could be considered Jasper Maskelyne's masterpiece of deception, and might be deemed the most important 'illusion' ever devised by a magician.

But was Maskelyne the inventor?

Without wishing to seem churlish, I was surprised to discover that Barkas' own account does not directly credit Maskelyne with the development of 'sunshields'.

When discussing the deception plan used on the eve of Alamein (October 1942) Barkas writes : "The concealment of armour was the direct outcome of a suggestion which reached me in General Wavell's own hand not long after my arrival in Middle East. On a buff slip he had drawn a little sketch of a tank with a kind of canopy over it. Underneath he had written and initialled in blue pencil, "Why not some kind of quickly detachable cover fixed to A.F.V.'s to make them look like thin-skinned vehicles ?"

The whole idea was there. It was only a matter of design, development, and arrangements for manufacture. More than a thousand of these contrivances, christened "Sunshields", had been produced. They now came into their own."

Even "The War Magician" partly concedes that the impetus came from General Wavell but gives a different interpretation. There is a scene where Barkas hands Maskelyne a page from Wavell's notebook: "On it the General had sketched the profile of a tank surmounted by a large flat board. A second sketch showed that an aerial view of a truck had been drawn on the board. Theoretically, at least, an observer flying overhead would look down on this and be fooled into believing it was a common lorry."

Maskelyne, Fisher writes, immediately saw the limitations of this design: "The shadow cast by a tank in no way resembles that of a truck, and the shadow of a flat board looks like nothing else except a flat board. In addition, unless the spotter aircraft was flying directly overhead the observer would be able to see under the board."

The evidence, then, is somewhat confusing and conflicting about the origin of 'sunshields'.

Fisher's account emphasises Maskelyne's role in their development. and implies that Wavell's primitive diagrams were merely the catalyst to action.

Barkas' memoirs highlight Wavell's role, do not specifically refer to Maskelyne, and imply that their manufacture was simply a matter of matching Wavell's powerful idea with the materials at hand.

October 2004 Update: I believe I've sorted this controversy out by tracking down a photograph of Wavell's note in the records. Fisher's account is misleading. Barkas' account is more accurate, though not verbatim.

Clearly, Wavell drew a canopy over the tank, not a flat board.

For the first time, web viewers can make their own mind up.

An updated discussion of 'sunshields' will be placed on this web site shortly.

___________________________________________________________________________

The records confirm that Sunshields were employed on the eve of 'Battleaxe' to bring Wavell tanks secretly into position.

However, their début performance in real warfare had no significant impact on the outcome of this battle.

Unfortunately for the British, Rommel's own SIGINT team , led by the remarkable Oberleutnant Seebohm, had intercepted vital radio messages including a code-word 'Peter' that correctly led them to believe that a major attack was imminent.

Rommel's 88mm guns, originally designed as anti-aircraft weapons, were to prove devastating tank-killers.

Operation Battleaxe , launched on 15th June 1941, was an embarrassing failure for General Wavell. Ninety-one British tanks were destroyed. In contrast, the Germans only lost twelve tanks.

Rommel's reputation for 'Fingerspitzengefuhl' grew. (Literally "an intuition in the fingers" but translated idiomatically as "uncanny intuition" or "sixth sense".

The same month, according to Fisher, Barkas had yet another 'mission impossible' for the Magic Gang: the vital Mediterranean port of Alexandria had to be protected from the punishing night-time bombing raids of the Luftwaffe.

Could Maskelyne's team find a way of hiding this target ?

Could they give a new twist to conceptualising war as 'la grande illusion' ?

Return to Top