Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Inflatable decoys kept WWII afloat
Documentary stars ‘Ghost Army’ that duped Germans
PHILADELPHIA — Bernie Mason spent World War II moving Army tanks, sometimes picking them up and setting them down with his bare hands.
He’s not superhuman. And the tanksweren’t some ultralight secretweapon. Itwas combat trickery. As a 21-year-old lieutenant, Mason helped lead a hand-picked unit of artists and creative thinkers who deployed and arranged highly detailed, inflatable rubber tanks — and trucks, jeeps and artillery — to fool the Germans into thinking the Americans had more firepower than they actually did or that the equipmentwas somewhere other than where it reallywas.
Officially, the unit was the 23rdHeadquarters Special Troops. Unofficially, it was the Ghost Army.
“It was like putting on a show,” saidMason, ofWynnewood, Pa., who turns 93 this month.
A show, at least, until the Germans bought the deception.
Mason had barely set foot in Europe in June 1944 when he found himself hugging the bottom of a foxhole as shells exploded all around, the enemy determined to destroy what it thought was a U.S. artillery emplacement.
This month, Mason will be featured in a new PBS documentary that extols the unit’s unique mission— making up fake divisions, sham headquarters and illusory convoys in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.
“The Ghost Army,” written and directed by Rick Beyer, premieresMay 21.
The men, as the film describes, were the Cecil B. DeMilles of the European Theater, drawn heavily from New York and Philadelphia art schools.
Beginning soon after the Normandy landings, through to the crossing of the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the GhostArmy used truckloads of inflatables and a cache of sound-effect recordings to create their performances.
The soldiers even altered their uniform insignia to match those of the units theywere impersonating.
Trucks blared the noises of armored and infantry units. Radio operators broadcast false word of troop movements, knowing the Germans were listening.
The inflatables — called “dummies” — were camouflaged as real machines would be, but in a way that made sure German observation planes would get a peek.
When dummies got hit by shrapnel, sagging as their air escaped, the soldiers patched and pumped them up.
The fakery was classified, kept quiet for decades after the war. Now the Ghost Army is getting wider recognition, though a dwindling number of its ranks are around to enjoy it.
“I was fascinated because it is so different than your typical World War II story,” said Beyer, who first heard of the Ghost Army from the niece of a veteran, and who then spent eight years making the movie. “It’s this weirdly different, absurd and yet unsung story.”
Beyer liked how the tale played against the stereotype of rigid military thinking, showing officers and troops employing imagination and ingenuity. Several of the Ghost Army soldiers later became famous, including fashion designer Bill Blass and painter Ellsworth Kelly. Mason went on to a civilian career in portraiture and multimedia.
“My con artists,” Ralph Ingersoll called them. As a staff officer, the author helped develop the Ghost Army.
The first mission began eight days after the Normandy invasion in June 1944 — with Mason in charge, leading a 15-man force into France. Task Force Mason landed at a makeshift air strip at Omaha Beach. Mason recalls stepping past the bodies of German soldiers and the bizarre sight of a cow impaled high on a tree.
The task force set up phantom artillery a mile in front of the real 980th Field Artillery Battalion.
“They wanted to see if the concept of deception would actually work under battlefield conditions,” Mason said in an interview in his home artist’s studio.
The deafening German response convinced him it did.
The rest of the Ghost Army— camouflage, signal, radio and combat engineer components — caught up a month later, ultimately staging more than 20 ploys in Europe.
Today, films of the Ghost Army at rest look hilarious: A soldier casually pulls a truckover onto its side. Two men bat a tank turret around as though it were a volleyball.
“We had no real weapons,” former Cpl. Al Albrecht told the filmmakers.
The goalwas to make the Germans act— or not act— based on what they thought they saw.
In September 1944, the Ghost Army plugged a hole in Gen. George Patton’s line on the Moselle river, the operation designed to look as though the 6th Armored Division were moving in as reinforcement. The Ghost Army filled the gap for almost aweek until the real 6th Division arrived.