The Ghost Army

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

At Long Last, a Gold Medal for America’s World War II ‘Ghost Army’

Only seven of the original 1,100 soldiers who carried out psychological operations against the Axis powers are believed to survive.

 

For most of his life, Bernie Bluestein was not allowed to say anything about what he did during World War II in Western Europe.

Mr. Bluestein was a sophomore at Cleveland School of the Arts in 1943 when he left to join the U.S. Army. He then trained in a secret unit that landed at Normandy, France, shortly after D-Day in June 1944.

“What we did is we attracted the Germans’ attention so that the real units could do whatever they had to do elsewhere,” Mr. Bluestein, age 100, said in an interview.

As a private first class serving in the 603rd Camouflage Engineer Battalion, he created fake shoulder patches that his fellow soldiers wore on their uniforms to impersonate different elements of an infantry division. He also painted truck bumpers to falsely display markings of Army units that were actually elsewhere.

In his final mission, Mr. Bluestein said, the ruses devised by the roughly 360 soldiers of his battalion forced German commanders to spread their defenses thin in eastern France. That, he said, allowed the U.S. Army’s 90th Division — which was actually 10 miles north of the 603rd — to cross the Rhine River with less resistance.

“We saved the lives of about 30,000 soldiers,” Mr. Bluestein said.

 

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An aerial photograph of dummy tanks and other vehicles during Operation Viersen, near the German border, in 1945. The decoy helped stretch the defenses of the Germans, alleviating pressure on other U.S. forces. Credit...Ghost Army Legacy Project

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A colorized photo of a vehicle mounted with giant speakers that was part of the “sonic deception” campaign designed to confuse enemy forces.Credit...Ghost Army Legacy Project

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A colorized photo of an inflatable tank developed by the 603rd Engineering Battalion during World War II.Credit...Ghost Army Legacy Project

The 603rd and similar units came to be known as the “Ghost Army,” which numbered about 1,100 troops. Together, they inflated rubber tanks, created fake airfields, blasted the sounds of troops marching from speakers placed on trucks and designed other diversions to fool German soldiers.

The mission of these lightly armed soldiers, who were a precursor to the Army’s current psychological warfare units, was officially declassified only in 1996.

On Thursday, Mr. Bluestein and two other members of the Ghost Army — Seymour Nussenbaum, age 100, and John Christman, 99 — received the Congressional Gold Medal on Capitol Hill before a crowd of more than 600 that included family members and friends.

 

Many in attendance wore lapel pins depicting a shield with a cartoon ghost that has orange lightning bolts coming from its left hand, the unofficial insignia of a unit whose mission went unacknowledged for more than 50 years.

President Biden signed the legislation authorizing the medal in 2022.

Only seven of the original 1,100 soldiers of the Ghost Army are believed to survive.

 

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Speaker Mike Johnson handing the Congressional Gold Medal to Mr. Bluestein, who was seated next to Seymour Nussenbaum. John Christman, a third fellow soldier, was standing third from left.Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times

Mike Bagby flew from Birmingham, Ala., to attend the ceremony in honor of his father, Wilbur Wright Bagby, who served as an officer in the Ghost Army but died in 1992, before his unit’s activities were declassified.

“He took it to the grave with him,” his son said. “He just didn’t want to talk about it.”

“The way I found out about it was I hired a guy to research his history while he was in the war, just to get a timeline. And the researcher said ‘Wow. Your dad was in the Ghost Army, huh?’ I said, ‘Really?’ I had no idea.”

 

Mr. Bagby said his father left the service shortly after the war and worked as a structural and mechanical engineer, mostly in the coal industry.

 

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Mike Bagby attended the ceremony on behalf of his father, Wilbur Wright Bagby, who was a soldier in the Ghost Army. “He took it to the grave with him,” he said of his father’s secretive work during the war. Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times

“He had a temper like a match head, No. 1, but he had an amazing vocabulary and did the New York Times Sunday crossword in 15 minutes,” Mr. Bagby said. “But all of his conversational language surrounded four letters.”

“This was a unit of nothing but a bunch of liars,” he joked. “You know, they presented themselves as a lot of different armies.”

He said that in a letter to his mother during the war, his father wrote, “I’ve worn more insignias than most people in the whole army.”

Getting the Congressional Gold Medal for the soldiers took years of work, much of it initiated by Rick Beyer, a film producer. He learned about the unit 19 years ago from a friend’s colleague who said someone should make a documentary about them.

“It took us four sessions of Congress to do it, and it took a whole team,” Mr. Beyer said in an interview. “We had 40 or 50 people who were volunteer lobbyists. They were emailing. They were calling. They were visiting offices in person. Covid hit in the middle of that, but we readjusted our way of doing things and kept going. And by God, we made it happen.”

 

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Seymour Nussenbaum, 100.Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times

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John Christman, 99.Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times

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In a small theater off Emancipation Hall, where military and congressional leaders greeted the veterans before the ceremony, Mr. Beyer reflected on the enormous effort coming to fruition.

 

“These men, these three guys and the four who are watching at home, and the thousand or so who are no longer with us, are finally being honored the way they should be for what they did in World War II.”

Mr. Beyer, who co-wrote a book about the Ghost Army and produced a documentary about it, said it had been difficult to see so many survivors pass away.

“I always say that the Ghost Army is turning into an army of ghosts, but at least we have done this,” he said. “We’ve stuck this flag in the hill while some of them are still alive. And I think that’s important.”

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

That article came from NYTimes and requires a subscription which I do not have but one of my iPads was somehow able to read it all.   Shhhhh.

 

(Yeah I know it’s not a secret if I said it on the internet. )

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

[Cowtown Scout, SASS #53540 L]

        

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[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Like when SEAL Team 6 was created. It made the Russians wonder where 3, 4, and 5 were.

[watab kid]

this was a pretty interesting aspect of WWII info , i think they prevented the invasion of the british isles as much as the battle of britain in many ways as well as the distraction of the D-day invasion feint 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

I found a documentary DVD at the public library about the Ghost Army a few years back.  It was good enough that I bought a copy of my own.