Stage-effects in earnest

Churchill’s Wizards, by Nicholas Rankin

Deception plays a large part in war, just as feinting plays a large part in sport. The British excel at it, and used it with much success in both the 20th century’s world wars, particularly in the second. That war’s conspiracy theorists are fond of suggesting even more deceptions than did in fact take place; luckily, there are now two sound history books by which they can be confuted. If a wartime deception is not mentioned either in Michael Howard’s Strategic Deception of 1990 or in Thaddeus Holt’s The Deceivers of 2004, it is hardly likely that it happened: useful sticks with which to beat scaremongers.

Churchill’s Wizards forms an anecdotal appendage to these two books, with the storyline carried back to cover the first world war, in which several other large deceptive schemes succeeded. Nicholas Rankin takes the outlines of military history for granted, and fills in many  personal details, as well as bringing forward into public view several men who deserved well of their country, but have hitherto been given little or no credit. He singles out Solomon J. Solomon, RA, as the main originator of British battlefield camouflage, and shows both how sound Solomon’s ideas were and how wholly unsuited he was for work within the blinkers worn by the army’s administrative staffs.

Rankin has a long excursus about Hesketh Prichard, the great sniper, who because he was a first-class amateur bowler was a ‘Somebody’, and therefore could get the staff to listen to him and needed camouflage to protect his colleagues. Whenever Rankin passes a good story, he is inclined to insert it, whether it has much bearing on his subject or not; Warneford, VC, had a memorable encounter with a Zeppelin airship which he destroyed, but the tale really has nothing to do with the main theme.