Too Well Camouflaged – 2nd Infantry Division, Normandy, Summer 1944

The Sedalia Democrat carried a story about Staff Sgt. Louis J. Robertson of Company B, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, from Clinton, Missouri. Robertson tested a camouflage suit in an experiment with his squad—and blended in so completely with the landscape that his own men couldn’t spot him. When they finally did, they instinctively grabbed their rifles, thinking he was a German soldier.

Just prior to the Normandy invasion, there was a limited experimental issue of HBT camouflage uniforms to elements of the 2nd and 30th Infantry Divisions, the 17th Engineer Battalion, and the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division. It is often claimed that the uniform’s resemblance to German Waffen-SS camouflage smocks led to friendly-fire incidents and its eventual withdrawal—a claim that remains disputed. Other explanations instead point to practical shortcomings: the cost and difficulty of manufacturing the pattern, dye-lot inconsistencies, the fading seen in surviving uniforms, and the fact that the mottled pattern could actually draw more attention than a solid color once a soldier was moving. What is clear, however, is that the pattern caused genuine confusion among American troops, exactly as Robertson’s own experience illustrates.

These LIFE magazine photographs, taken by Frank Scherschel at Saint-Georges-d’Elle, Normandy, in July 1944, show that same type of camouflage in the field: a soldier of the 2nd Infantry Division wearing a spotted jacket while studying a map with two fellow soldiers in a dugout position. The unit patches on the other men’s shoulders were deliberately obscured by wartime censors to conceal the unit’s identity from the enemy.

Photos: LIFE Archives, Frank Scherschel, Saint-Georges-d’Elle, Normandy, July 1944.
Newspaper clipping:The Sedalia Democrat, September 7, 1944.