Tucked away in a forest on the southern coast of the Moray Firth, is the remains of 80-year-old pillbox camouflage; possibly the only example of this type left in Great Britain. The pillbox has been draped with fine galvanised wire netting, onto which camouflage materials would have been laid or woven to break up the distinctive sharp lines of the concrete machine gun post. This is the only pillbox retaining this feature along the entire defensive line of over 20 pillboxes.
The rarity of wire netting remaining on pillboxes may be in part to the directive issued on 21 August 1944 from GHQ Home Forces. It read:
In view of the fact that there is a serious shortage of wire netting throughout the country which is currently required for chicken runs, rabbit netting etc. it has been decided that the wire netting used on pill boxes (sic) for camouflage purposes is no longer necessary as although in most cases the wire netting is still good the camouflage material which was mounted on it has deteriorated so badly that it has almost disappeared. (…) Commands will therefore consider this question of removing wire netting from caouflaged pill boxes and make arrangemnts for the wire netting to be taken from these pill boxes where the camouflage material has deteriorated and from those where it is considered that there is no further operational necessity for the pill boxes to be camouflaged. The wire netting will be disposed of under command salvage arrangements.
