The Boston Globe

‘Ghost Army’ to receive Congress’s highest honor

Special troops saved US lives by deceiving Nazis

- By Christophe­r Klein

Weeks after the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, the young men of the 23rd Headquarte­rs Special Troops encountere­d D-Day’s lingering carnage as they waded ashore. Bloated bodies churned in the surf. Tree branches cradled the carcass of a cow blown skyward by explosives.

Fear and adrenaline coursed through the GIs, along with hope that they wouldn’t have to fire their rifles. Their mission, after all, wasn’t to kill Nazis but to perform for them.

Armed with sound effects, costumes, scripts, and props, the 23rd Headquarte­rs Special Troops and its sister unit, the 3133rd Signal Company Special, brandished Hollywood-worthy stagecraft in European theaters of war to dupe the German army about the location and size of Allied forces. The 1,100 sound engineers, radio broadcaste­rs, fashion designers, ad men, artists, actors, and theater set designers unofficial­ly known as the “Ghost Army” masquerade­d as a combat force more than 30 times its actual size.

Operating as close as a quarter mile from the front lines, the Ghost Army is credited with saving the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers by luring away the enemy during more than 20 full-scale deception campaigns.

Subterfuge has been an integral part of warfare from the time the Greeks wheeled a wooden horse to the gates of Troy. Even during World War II, Operation Fortitude’s elaborate ruse convinced German forces that the D-Day invasion would strike Calais, not Normandy.

Yet the Ghost Army, nicknamed the “Cecil B. DeMille Warriors” by one member, is unique in the annals of warfare, according to Rick Beyer, co-author of “The Ghost Army of World War II” and producer and director of a 2013 documentar­y.

“It’s the first mobile, multimedia, tactical deception unit in the history of warfare,” he said. “They are capable of projecting their deception — visual, sound, radio, special effects — through all these different means, and they are essentiall­y another arrow in the quiver of a battlefiel­d commander to maneuver the enemy.”

Although a US Army report credited the Ghost Army with saving the lives of between 15,000 and 30,000 servicemen, its story remained untold for decades as informatio­n about the force stayed classified until 1996. On Thursday, the top-secret unit will finally get its just due when it receives one of the country’s highest awards, the Congressio­nal Gold Medal.

Recruited from advertisin­g agencies, communicat­ions companies, and art schools — through vaguely worded notices seeking creative candidates for noncombat camouflage battalions — the Ghost Army hoodwinked the Germans about the location of General George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army as it swept eastward across France during the summer of 1944. The Americans fooled Nazis’ eyes by deploying fleets of inflatable rubber tanks, trucks, and airplanes and tricked their ears by broadcasti­ng phony radio chatter and playing prerecorde­d soundtrack­s of troop exercises from 500-pound loudspeake­rs.

Operations grew more sophistica­ted as actors donned uniforms with insignia of other units to impersonat­e officers and recited choreograp­hed scripts in phony command posts. When Patton found his line dangerousl­y thin along the Moselle River in September 1944, the Ghost Army rushed from Paris and kept the Germans at bay for a week by posing as the Sixth Armored Division.

In its final blockbuste­r performanc­e, the Ghost Army mimicked two Ninth Army divisions — a 40,000-man force — set to make the difficult crossing of the Rhine River in March 1945.

Moving like phantoms under the cloak of darkness, the unit set up operations 10 miles south of the intended attack location. They inflated 200 decoy trucks and tanks. They blared sounds of rumbling vehicles, hammering, and even soldiers swearing. They radioed false orders to simulate movement to the front and posed as loose-lipped colonels and generals while planting disinforma­tion for German spies to overhear in local bars and cafes.

“I guess we were successful because the Germans fired upon us,” said 100-year-old Ghost Army veteran Bernie Bluestein of Hoffman Estates, Ill., who specialize­d in fake signs and vehicle stencils. As the Germans moved their defenses and shelled the faux force, the real Ninth Army encountere­d token resistance as it forded the Rhine.

After the curtain fell on World War II, the military’s greatest showmen, which included artist Ellsworth Kelly and fashion designer Bill Blass, returned home to resume their creative lives. For decades, though, they were sworn to secrecy about their exploits in case the Cold War required similar subterfuge. “Some of these guys went to their graves without telling anybody in their families what this unit was involved in,” Beyer said.

“I didn’t even tell my wife until the 1990s, when the secrecy came off,” said 100-year-old veteran Seymour Nussenbaum of Monroe Township, N.J. The Pratt Institute graduate and retired package designer joked that because of his decoy-inflating experience, whenever family members asked him what he did in the war, he could answer truthfully: “I blew up tanks!”

Following a grass-roots lobbying effort launched by Beyer and other Ghost Army Legacy Project volunteers in 2015, President Biden signed a bill in 2022 authorizin­g the awarding of the Congressio­nal Gold Medal to the master illusionis­ts. Of the unit’s seven known surviving members, Bluestein, Nussenbaum, and 99year-old John Christman of Leesburg, N.J., plan to attend Thursday’s ceremony at the US Capitol.

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 ?? GHOST ARMY LEGACY PROJECT PHOTOS ?? Above: Ghost Army inflatable tanks along the Rhine River in March 1945. Left: Ghost Army members put new bumper markings on a jeep as part of their “special effects” program.
GHOST ARMY LEGACY PROJECT PHOTOS Above: Ghost Army inflatable tanks along the Rhine River in March 1945. Left: Ghost Army members put new bumper markings on a jeep as part of their “special effects” program.

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