More ghosts

Abelicio Baca Barela is not the only member of the Ghost Army with ties to New Mexico.

According to the Ghost Army Legacy Project website, at least two other New Mexico natives were part of the secretive unit, and a number of others not born in the state had connections to it.

Gilivaldo Martinez,

a member of 23rd Headquarters Company, was born in Tucumcari in July 1923, and

Henry Hernandez Trujillo,

part of Signal Company Special, was born in July 1924 in Albuquerque. Martinez served as a Ghost Army truck driver in France, but he returned to New Mexico after the war and settled in Clovis, where he worked as a butcher and owned and operated tortilla businesses. He died in Clovis in October 2006. Trujillo installed and maintained telephone wire in the European Theater during the war and then returned to Albuquerque. The Legacy Project website reports he appears to have been employed by the Public Service Company of New Mexico. He died in 1995. And then there’s ...

Arthur Rosskam Abrams,

603 Engineer Camouflage Battalion, was born in Philadelphia. An artist, he painted abstract impressions of mountains and deserts in Taos from 1969-73. He died in 1981.

William Addison Gaskill,

3133rd Signal Service, worked in sonic deception with the Ghost Army. He was a native of Nebraska, but prior to the war he spent more than two years studying electrical engineering at what is now New Mexico State. He died in 2018.

Oliver Kenneth Johnson,

406th Engineer Combat Company, was born in Texas, but was working on a ranch in Hatch when he went into the Army. A truck driver, he was wounded in action in Luxembourg. After his discharge he settled in Deming, where he worked as an auto mechanic. He died there in 2005.

Fowler Benjamin McShan Jr.,

Signal Company Special, was also born in Texas but moved with his family to Roswell when still young. He served in Europe during the war and returned to New Mexico when he was discharged. He worked as a liquid fuel tank installer and master mechanic, lived in Hobbs and Roswell and died at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque in 2000.

Paul John Regusis, 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, was a native of New York City and an artist who created posters used in camouflage training. He moved to Albuquerque in 1955, where he taught arts and crafts at the University of Albuquerque. He lived in New Mexico for much of the rest of his life, died in 2007 and is buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.

Olavi Toivo Sihvonen,

603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, was born in Brooklyn, New York, and used his art skills in the camouflage battalion. He lived from 1956-1967 in Taos, where he painted large canvases and was considered one of a group of artists known as the Taos Modernists. He also taught at the University of New Mexico. He died in 1991.

Crawford Lorenza Wall,

Army Experimental Station at Pine Camp, New York, was born in Georgia, but after his wartime service he moved to Pinos Altos, New Mexico, and later Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He worked in the timber industry and then owned a construction business. He died in Dell City, Texas, in 2004.