The Ghost Army

World War II was a blend of strategies, battlefronts, and brave and warring men and women. Innumerable pages fill books about these individuals, but a group of creative and artistic men who participated in World War II recently captured my attention. These crews, known as the Ghost Army were not soldiers trained with assault weapons; instead they were actors and artists who successfully fought in World War II with an entirely different set of war tactics. Known by the Army as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, this 1,100-man Ghost Army started into action in June 1944 near Normandy. Their top-secret assignment was to use deception, trickery, and bluffs to save lives during World War II.

To accomplish this the Ghost Army set up their props from Normandy to the Rhine, staging twenty different battle deceptions while impersonating U.S. Army units in order to mislead the enemy. To accomplish this they used inflatable tanks, jeeps, trucks, and airplanes as well as giant speakers that broadcast sounds of artillery, troops, and fake radio transmissions. The author, Rick Beyer, stated that the Ghost Army traversed “the European Theater to put on a traveling road show of deception, two nights here, and a week there, with the German Army as their audience."

The camouflage engineers of the Ghost Army were responsible for the visual deceptions. Air compressors were used to inflate pump-up tanks, cannons, airplanes, trucks, and jeeps. After these were deflated they were hidden so they could not to be detected by air. The camouflage engineers from the Ghost Army could create dummy airfields, artillery batteries, motor pools, and tank formations within just a few hours. They also generated fake troop bivouacs that even included phony laundry hanging out on the line to dry.

The Ghost Troops also did some play-acting to mislead their enemies. At times their illusions involved driving trucks in looping convoys with just two men in the seats near the tailgate; this simulated a truck full of infantry under the canvas cover. Recorded sounds being played from the covered back of the vehicle assisted with the illusion of a full vehicle. Actors also posed as military police and were deployed at cross roads wearing appropriate divisional emblems. A few of the “ghost officers” simulated staff officers and generals, and visited towns where the enemy would be likely to see them. At times, actual artillery pieces and tanks were assigned to the Ghost Unit to make the imitations seem more realistic to the enemy from a distance.

The Ghost experts in sonic deception worked with engineers at Bell Laboratories. Before heading to Europe, this team went to Fort Knox and recorded sounds of armored and infantry troops. Sounds were recorded on state-of-the-art wire recorders, the forerunner of tape recorders. Once in Europe, these pre-recorded sounds were mixed to match the deception the Ghost Army was trying to make the enemy believe. On the battlefield, the sounds were blasted from huge amplifiers and speakers attached to half-tracks. These bogus sounds of battle could be heard fifteen miles away.

The United States Army gathered their Ghost Troops from the world of talented artists and actors. These men literally painted, sketched and acted their way across Europe during the war. The Ghost Army landed in France a few weeks after D-Day and ‘fought’ until the war ended. They staged over twenty battlefield deceptions and were usually functioning near the front lines.

Their first mission in France was to simulate a fake Mulberry Harbor at night using lights to entice German fire away from the actual troops. Next they assisted in confusing the German troops at Brest. Using speakers and pre-recorded sounds, the Ghost Army led the opposing forces to believe there were approximately 30,000 men nearby waiting to attack; far more than were actually there.

Members of the Ghost Army were talented artists previous to the beginning of World War II. Many of them spent their downtime while on the front lines, filling notebooks and journals with drawings of their surroundings, each other and their deceptions. After the war ended, the Ghost Soldiers continued in their chosen fields of artistic endeavors. A few recognizable names from the Ghost Army include: clothing designer, Bill Blass; sculptor Ellsworth Kelly; and wildlife artist Arthur Singer.

The Dark Hours of the Night

In my part of the world, we recently ended daylight saving time. This change, combined with the shortness of the winter days, result in mornings and evenings that are unusually dark. With my life being spent more in the dark because of these seasonal changes, I have noticed details about the lives of earlier people who spent time in the blackness as well.

In 1743 there were four men who were left by their crew in the Arctic and spent six years there before being rescued. This was not a malicious act, on the part of the crew aboard the ship. It was simply an attempt to save the ship, its cargo and crew already on board from being crushed by the swiftly freezing ice. Being at the top of the world meant that during certain parts of the year the sun did not appear above the horizon for weeks at a time. These forsaken men mostly remained in their double walled hut during these endlessly dark days to keep from freezing outside and to avoid being attacked by polar bears. They believed if they slept too much, they would be more susceptible to scurvy so their “goal of health” was to keep themselves awake nineteen hours out of each 24-hour period. To keep them awake during the unimaginably long, dark days and nights, their choice of activity was knot tying. They each had a lengthy rope and sat near a dim light, tying knots in their rope, one after the other after the other. Once they had tied their entire rope in knots, they would untie each individual knot until the rope was back to its usable form. Then . . . they started tying knots in the rope again and the entire process repeated over and over again.  Just the thought of tying and untying knots in a rope in darkness makes me drowsy.

During the mid-1600s in the Colony of New Netherland there was job that was conducted entirely in the dark by the night watchmen. Each night at 9:00, they rang a bell, which was a signal for people to retire to their homes for the evening; then these men remained in the dark streets. At the beginning of every hour they stood at the corner of each street, shook a rattle and loudly called out the time. Their final call was made at 4:00 a.m. when they were done with their night’s work.

World War II brought blackouts across Europe. When enemy aircraft was detected, sirens would blast a warning and within a matter of minutes, all lights had to be extinguished, even lighting a match to a cigarette was prohibited. This requirement for instant darkness caused some dangerous circumstances. For example, if you were walking home in the evening and the alarms sounded, you would have to make your way home in complete darkness. This was no small feat, considering there may also be cars attempting to get to their destinations as well. By law, cars could not use headlights of any kind or even have lighted dashboards during blackouts. Besides keeping out of the way of moving vehicles, pedestrians also stumbled along unlit sidewalks, and walked into trees, lampposts and street furniture. During the first four months of the war, 4,133 people were killed in Britain, not by enemy fire, but as a result of the darkness of the streets during the blackouts.

Today when we open our refrigerator doors, we are able to effortlessly beckon more light then was available to an entire 18^th century home.  Previous to my learning about life in the dark, I often pictured families going to bed early each evening because it was too dark to accomplish anything by candlelight. This notion is simply not true. It was a lot darker then but this did not stop people from gathering around their candle at the table each night. Although they were engaged in individual pursuits, they were seated close together, side-by-side in the same room, enjoying the flame of the same candle. A mother might be re-sewing a patch on the elbow of her husband’s shirtsleeve sitting next to her young son who is playing with his wooden horse. The husband may be calculating the amount of seed needed for the spring crop and how profitable last years yield was while his daughter is working on a piece of embroidery beside him. Surrounding the candlelight, this family is not squinting or hunched over the candle to get adequate light from the small flame, because this is the light they expect and the one they are used to; they probably cannot really imagine anything brighter. Instead they enjoy their simple candle, their time to sit down and rest from their day’s labors and the chance to be by each other and share the events of the day and prepare for the next one.