The Ghost Army of World War II

by Rick Beyer

During one deception, Captain Rebh was impersonating a full colonel in a regimental command post. Two officers who had been a year ahead of him at West Point happened into his phony command post and were shocked to see that this underclassman now outranked him. “Here we are about two years later,” said Rebh, “and I’d gone from cadet to full colonel, which is quite unusual.” On the way out, the pair stopped and asked his first sergeant how Rebh had become a colonel so fast. The sergeant brushed them off with a remark about being in the right place at the right time, and the two officers left shaking their heads, mystified over Rebh’s meteoric rise.

  Lieutenant Dick Syracuse recalled an operation during which he ran into an old friend serving in another unit. The man noted the Eighty-Third Infantry Division patch Syracuse was wearing. He remembered that the last time he saw Syracuse he was wearing the insignia of the Fifth Armored Division, and before that, another unit. Syracuse was secretly amused that his friend had stumbled upon evidence of his deception work but needed to come up with an explanation. Lowering his voice, he confided that he was a bit of a screwup, so he kept getting transferred. “You better watch yourself,” warned his concerned friend. “They’re liable to bust you down and put a rifle in your hands.” Syracuse could only smile.

  Sentry in front of phony command post

  Sergeant Jack McGlynn found himself in a sticky situation during yet another deception. He was driving a jeep with Ninetieth Infantry Division markings when an MP from the real Ninetieth Division stopped him at a checkpoint. This was around the time of the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans had unleashed their own secret unit of soldiers dressed in American uniforms, so the MPs were on high alert. They asked McGlynn the password. “I don’t know,” he said. How about last month’s password? “I don’t know,” McGlynn repeated. “I’ve never had a password.”

  The MP was now convinced that he might be on the verge of capturing a spy and making a hero out of himself. Gripping his machine gun, he stared down McGlynn as he rapped out another question. “Where are you from?” “Boston,” replied McGlynn. “Boston’s a big place. Where?” asked the MP. “Medford,” said McGlynn.

  “Poop sheets” for the Ninetieth Infantry Division

  Then the MP shocked him. “What’s the name of the school on Harvard Street?” “The Lincoln School,” McGlynn told him, and the MP relaxed. Laughing about the story nearly seventy years later, McGlynn marveled at the lucky coincidence. “Twenty million men and women under arms, and he lived a fifth of a mile from me; I passed his house every day.”

  In order to prepare for future operations, Ghost Army officers visited the fighting divisions to study their practices. “By V-E Day the Twenty-Third probably contained the most widely traveled and best-informed officers in the ETO,” wrote Fox in the unit’s official history. Artists in the unit put together what they called “poop sheets” for every division in the Twelfth Army Group, detailing the markings and insignia unique to each. Gathering this information enabled them to carry out an impersonation on a moment’s notice. One day Corporal George Martin and another soldier were up on a ladder measuring a sign put up by another division. They were under orders not to reveal to anyone why they were doing so. According to the story Martin told his stepson, Roy Eichhorn, a colonel from that division happened to drive by in a jeep and demanded to know what they were doing.

  “Sir,” said Martin, in the classic manner of an enlisted man patiently explaining something to a particularly dimwitted superior, “we’re measuring this sign.”

  The colonel, not satisfied with the answer, asked why.

  “Well,” said Martin, “we’ve been ordered to measure the signs and make sure they all conform to Army standards.”

  The colonel exploded. He threw his helmet down on the ground and launched into an epic rant. “Goddamn army! Don’t they know there’s a war on! Bureaucracy! Idiots! They’ve got soldiers out measuring signs—don’t they know we need soldiers at the front?” The two soldiers ignored him as best they could and went on with their business.

  The ultimate purpose of the special effects was to back up the other means of deception and perhaps provide the final confirmation a German intelligence officer might need to believe the phony story put forth by the Ghost Army. “It was almost kind of silly, really,” said Private Joe Spence, recalling some of their escapades. “But I think what confirmed the effectiveness was sitting in a cafe and seeing a door open up gradually and somebody taking pictures.”

  Writing years later, Ralph Ingersoll, the staff officer who helped dream up the unit and oversee its operations, summed up the special- effects tactic this way: “I have no positive evidence that the trick ever worked. But it certainly was worth the playing, and I suspect its cast had the only really enviable job in the whole of World War II.”

  Laundry by Victor Dowd, 1944

  “ADOLPH, YOU

  SON OF A BITCH”

  Would give my right arm to sit in front of a cozy fire with my little darling in my arms.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  In mid-August 1944 Allied armies broke out of Normandy and began to sweep across France. The Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops were on the move as well. Their destination was the port city of Brest, on the tip of the Brittany peninsula. Brest was under siege by the Allies but still tenaciously held by German paratroopers. The Ghost Army was dispatched to see how they could help in the taking of the city. The trip took two days, and the weather was miserable.

  Bob Tompkins drew this self-portrait in his jeep’s rearview mirror on the way to Brest. “I guess I look pretty miserable, because I was.”

  Sergeant Bob Tompkins was a jeep driver in the 603rd and close friends with Private First Class Bill Blass. Tompkins was the younger of the two, but Blass felt that “with his confident manner and dashing good looks, set off by a thin Errol Flynn moustache, he seemed somehow more worldly.” Against all security regulations, Tompkins kept a secret diary in a tiny address book. He believed that if he was caught with it, he’d “be shot on the spot.” He wrote as small as he could because he was afraid he would run out of space before the fighting was over. After the war Blass’s mother typed it up to preserve it for posterity.

  August 21, 1944

  Pulled out at 8:10 AM. 158 miles. Drove most of the way with top and windshield down in driving rain. Would give my right arm to sit in front of a cozy fire with my little darling in my arms. Oh Adolph [sic], you son of a Bitch. I feel like a frozen drowned rat.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  Wartime diary of Bob Tompkins, approximately twice the actual size

  Raising the speakers on one of the sonic half-tracks

  Three divisions in the American VIII Corps, the Second, Eighth, and Twenty-Ninth, had been assigned the job of taking the city. The mission of the Twenty-Third was to inflate the apparent size of the American forces attacking the city by impersonating the Sixth Armored Division, in the hopes that it would help convince German General Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke to surrender. They were also trying to attract German antitank weapons and reserves to the flanks, to help clear the way for a possible American attack in the center. The sonic unit had just arrived in France, so Operation Brest became the Ghost Army’s first chance to use all its means of deception simultaneously.

  The unit divided into three notional task forces. Two of them simulated tank battalions. Radio trucks set up along the road to Brest mimicked a convoy pulling in. Sound trucks making their debut underwent a baptism by fire, pulling up to within five hundred yards of German lines to make it seem as if armored units were arriving and making camp. The half-tracks were fitted with explosive charges; the men were under orders to destroy them if it looked as though they were going to be overrun. “There was a glass underneath the dashboard,” recalled Private Harold Flinn. “And if you broke that you had so many seconds to get out” before the half-track blew up. Under no circumstances were the sonic vehicles to fall into the hands of the enemy.

>   Map created in 1945 depicting Operation Brest

  A repair shop set up under camouflage netting to patch damaged dummies

  More than fifty dummy tanks were set up in the night, along with dummy jeeps and trucks. There was heavy rain, which made the rubber dummies difficult to work with. Camouflage nets were strung up, and the dummy tanks were supplemented with a handful of actual light tanks placed in the most visible positions. The men lit fires, pitched tents, and when they skies cleared they even hung laundry in the area where the fake tanks were set up—all part of the illusion.

  August 24, 1944

  Maintained items — tore them down at 9 PM. Moved up 500 yards to new area and set up new tanks. Willy [Blass] and I set up our tent with our feet sticking out in the pouring down rain and passed out around 3 AM.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  Tompkins could see German observers keeping watch from a distant church tower. He and the other men of the 603rd had to keep careful watch on the dummies, especially in the hours before dawn. “During the night, the gun turrets would sag, and that’s a bad visual effect the next morning.” The men dug in to protect themselves against German shelling, which was commonplace though rarely heavy during the first few days they were there.

  Special effects were in full swing as well. The men wore the patches of the Sixth Armored Division and put Sixth Armored markings on their trucks, which they drove back and forth between town and their phony tank battalion. GIs from other units who heard the sounds of tanks moving in during the night were delighted the next morning to see soldiers apparently from the Sixth Armored. “We pulled into that area,” said John Jarvie, “and the guys said, ‘They’re bringing heavy tanks in here, just what we need.’ And they came running and said, ‘Boy, are we happy to see you guys.’”

  The third notional task force set up a phantom artillery unit. Dummy artillery pieces were set up six hundred to eight hundred yards in front of the Thirty-Seventh Field Artillery Battalion. Flash canisters were used to simulate firing at night. The canisters consisted of artillery shell casings filled with a half pint of black powder and set off with an electrical igniter. Telephone lines were run between the real artillery and the Ghost Army’s phony batteries to synchronize the real firing with the phony flashes. The fake artillery operated for three nights and received twenty to twenty-five rounds of enemy fire, whereas the real artillery received none.

  In many ways the deception was a success. “Visual effects were thorough and complete for both enemy air observations and/or enemy agents or patrols,” reported Colonel Cyrus Searcy, VIII Corps chief of staff. As for the sonic deception, Searcy noted that an American engineering unit more than a mile away heard enough to convince them that tanks were assembling. The enemy seemed to be getting the message as well. Intelligence officers reported that the Germans shifted from twenty to fifty 88mm antitank guns to meet what they evidently believed to be a major armored threat. After the fall of Brest, General Ramcke told interrogators that he was convinced there really was an armored division facing him. In fact, it was just the illusionists of the Ghost Army.

  But the deception did not achieve the goal of bluffing Ramcke into an early surrender. He had about twice as many troops as the Americans thought he did, and they fought on for four more weeks. Furthermore, in the minds of most Ghost Army veterans any success they could claim was overshadowed by the deadly consequences of an American attack mistakenly launched right where the Ghost Army was attracting German attention.

  Sniper Lookout by Arthur Shilstone, 1944

  Sagging Gun at Sunrise by Arthur Shilstone, 1944

  Normandy, June 1944 by Ellsworth Kelly, 1944

  © ELLSWORTH KELLY, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

  The Commander of the VIII Corps, General Troy Middleton, ordered a general attack on the Germans to take place on August 25 at 1:00 p.m. Bob Tompkins had a front-row seat for the action.

  August 25, 1944

  Fireworks start. Artillery raising hell — stood on a hedgerow and watched the whole show. Saw shells landing about 400 yards in front of us, could hear machine guns, rifles, mortars, etc.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  Due to a lack of communication, or perhaps a failure to appreciate the impact of the deception, one company of light tanks moved in on the Germans from precisely the area where the Ghost Army had been simulating a tank battalion. German 88mm antitank weapons drawn by the deception opened fire on the real American tanks. “Those guys never reached the line of departure,” recalled Corporal John Jarvie. “They just got decimated.”

  Jarvie had a close call of his own during the same attack. He was watching from a jeep on a nearby hill when he heard a couple of shells headed his way. “I thought, ‘Holy shit, I got to get out of here.’ And I tried to get out of the jeep, and my gun belt caught on the wheel. I couldn’t get out.” The two shells slammed into the ground a few feet from his jeep. Luckily for Jarvie, they turned out to be duds. “Plunk, plunk. Dirt went up in the air and no explosion. That was one of my nine lives.”

  The incident of the light tanks being devastated weighed heavily on the men in the unit long after they pulled out on August 27. Jarvie was especially haunted by the fact that the GIs manning those tanks undoubtedly thought they would be supported by the heavier tanks of the Sixth Armored Division. “We had no way of knowing they were going to kick off an attack,” said Jarvie, “and they had no way of knowing that we weren’t going to help them. And it makes you feel lousy.” It was a lesson to Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Simenson, the Twenty-Third’s operations officer, on the crucial importance of careful coordination and communication. Without them, the results could be catastrophic. The tanks “should not have attacked in that place,” he later wrote in an analysis of the operation, “or otherwise the 23rd should have employed deception in another area.” They would take what they learned at Brest and put it into practice in future operations.

  Only half the unit was involved in the deceptions at Brest. The rest set up camp on the grounds of an old château near the Brittany town of Torcé. While their compatriots were setting up tanks in the rain or being peppered with German shells, the men in Torcé enjoyed the opportunity to sample French cuisine and eat in restaurants for the first time since they had arrived in France.

  Torcé was the only town in all Europe that was formally “liberated” by the Twenty-third. It was an impressive ceremony. There was a crack American color guard from the Sig Co Sp, a band of French firemen, a pretty white column of schoolchildren with flowers and leading citizens. Col. Reeder delivered a gallant speech, which ended with a rousing VIVE LA FRANCE! Torceans were visibly moved and their rendition of “La Marseillaise” was all the more thrilling from four years of silence.

  — Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops

  Somewhere in France by Cleo Hovel, 1944

  Reuniting after Operation Brest, the Ghost Army geared up for another deception to aid General George Patton’s Third Army, but Patton’s forces were pressing ahead so fast that it was called off before it even began. Optimism ran high that they might be headed home soon. “Speculation has it that the war will be over in a month or so,” wrote Private Harold Laynor to his wife. “Pray to God there is…some foundation in this.” Around September 1 they bivouacked in Mauny near the city of Sens. Low on gas, the 406th Combat Engineers sent out a reconnaissance team to find a fuel depot. But the fuel they discovered was of a different nature. The patrol stumbled across a Wehrmacht warehouse filled with wine and liquor.

  The military significance of this was lost on no one. Several “deuce and a half” cargo trucks (each capable of carrying two and a half tons) were duly dispatched, without the inconvenience of explaining to senior officers what was going on. The warehouse was under the watchful eye of a French guard, but he was persuaded by a few cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes to look the other way. The liberated booze was brought back to the unit and distributed to all hands.

/>   By clever manipulation, the Twenty-third was able to garner 520 cases (6240 bottles) of Cognac. This was enough liquid to drive one jeep 22,000 miles if Cognac would explode. And don’t think it wouldn’t. So this bivouac area is referred to as “Cognac Hill.”

  — Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops

  The trucks brought back more than cognac, according to Lieutenant Dick Syracuse. “They were loaded to the gunnels with Cointreau, calvados, brandy, you name it.… We had a five-hundred-gallon wooden cask of Moselle wine that we used to use instead of water.”

  The men saw it as their patriotic duty to drink up. “We saved the Germans a lot of work by taking care of it,” laughed Sergeant Spike Berry. Private Harold Dahl sent a label from one of the bottles home to his family. “While it was not the best of cognac, it still was a pleasure to have it,” he wrote.

  Due to their lack of fuel (at least for the engines), the unit remained in their bivouac for four more days, most of which were spent in various states of lubrication. According to Lieutenant Fred Fox, the drinking went all the way to the top. “The colonel lost control completely. For three days he had a drunken mutiny on his hands, but he did not care, either.”

  Then came gas to fill their tanks and orders to clear their heads. The news was exciting for everyone, especially for the young artists in the 603rd. They were moving out. Their destination: the glittering art and culture capital of the world, just liberated from the Germans.