The Ghost Army of World War II

by Rick Beyer

  Paris!

  Robert A. George by Jack Masey, 1944

  Ghost Army GIs in liberated Paris, 1944

  A GREAT TOWN

  On every block you can see at least one soldier surrounded by girls, leafing frantically through French-English dictionaries.

  — Lieutenant Fred Fox in a letter home

  On August 25, 1944, the city of Paris was liberated from more than four years of German occupation. Parisians were still celebrating two weeks later when the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops pulled in to the nearby suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, home of the great château that had been the residence of many French kings. The troops lived in an old school that boasted showers and tennis courts, considering themselves to be in the lap of luxury. Better yet, for a few wonderful days they would have a chance to savor the pleasures of a Paris still giddy with euphoria.

  Hey-- by Cleo Hovel, 1944

  Paris was put OFF LIMITS and ON LIMITS so often that everyone in confusion visited it whenever possible. It was a great town. Architecturally it had not changed at all. The girls looked like delightful dolls especially when they whizzed past on bicycles with billowing skirts. They were in considerable contrast to the red-faced Norman farmer[s’] daughters. The Parisians were very happy to see us.

  — Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops

  Everyone wanted to make the trip into the City of Light. “There were still snipers and things going on in Paris, but we were sneaking in,” recalled Lieutenant Dick Syracuse. For Private William Sayles it was “the high point” of his time in Europe. Private Harold Dahl made good use of the one day he made it to town. He rode the Métro and walked under the Eiffel Tower, through the Place Vendôme, along the Rue de la Paix, past the Opéra, and along the Seine. Sergeant Bob Tompkins and his buddies parked a truck in front of Notre Dame cathedral and then walked to the Arc de Triomphe, where two Frenchmen offered to give them a tour of the city. “Little sixteen-year-old girl presented me with her own key to the city,” he noted in his secret diary. Private Ellsworth Kelly wandered the streets of Paris alone, numbed by the experience. His friend Bill Griswold somehow finagled an invitation to Picasso’s studio, but he didn’t offer to bring Kelly along. Kelly was so shy that Griswold thought he would be awkward in the presence of the great artist. Kelly would return to Paris after the war courtesy of the GI Bill. It was there that he developed the minimalist style for which he became famous.

  Parisians cheering Allied troops marching through the newly liberated city, August 1944

  Detail of the operations map of the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, 1945

  Ghost Army GIs discovering Paris, 1944

  Creative Cycling sketches by Victor Dowd, 1944

  Paris, ’44 by Cleo Hovel, 1944

  Huguette by Richard Morton, 1945. Morton painted nineteen-year-old Huguette Guérende while on a three-day leave in Paris in February 1945. He had met her sister, Nicole, during the liberation of Paris in 1944, and had corresponded with Nicole throughout the war.

  “Paris has an altogether different aura about it,” wrote Private Harold Laynor to his wife. “The girls of Paris are different than [in] any other part of France. As a group they are the most beautiful and cute I have ever seen—bar one—you.” Lieutenant Fred Fox noted the “fantastic hairdos” and “rainbow blouses” that had a tendency to bewitch Americans. “On every block you can see at least one soldier surrounded by girls, leafing frantically through French-English dictionaries.” In the coming months Parisians would grow indifferent and even hostile toward American soldiers, but in these first weeks after liberation, they welcomed the GIs with open arms. “The people are at once more friendly and more deeply grateful to the Yanks than in any other part of France,” marveled Laynor. Harold Dahl penned similar sentiments to his mother. “The American soldier is something fabulous to them.”

  Brothel in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The photo was taken by a Ghost Army officer, but the men in the photo are wearing patches identifying them as “Official U.S. News Photographers.”

  Sergeant Victor Dowd’s experiences with the girls of Paris began in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he and some other GIs went to a brothel. “It was a great opportunity for me to draw,” he recalled with a straight face. “I’m not Toulouse-Lautrec, but here were these women in their underwear. A woman named Doris sat on my table. She had a glass of wine in her hand and a cigarette in the other hand, high heels, and practically no clothes on. And she was trying to entice me to go upstairs. And I wouldn’t have had to pay anything if I gave her the drawing. But I wasn’t particularly anxious to go upstairs with Doris, and I decided to keep the drawing.”

  An eccentric British veteran from World War I living in Saint-Germain-en-Laye brought out a motorcycle with a sidecar and offered to bring Dowd into Paris. “I’ll never forget driving along the ChampsÉlysées and seeing the Arc de Triomphe coming closer and closer.” Dowd filled his sketchbook with the girls of Paris. He sketched one girl in a cafe; later they found themselves walking down the street arm in arm. (Dowd’s stories frequently involved a girl on his arm. “It sounds like I’m Casanova—maybe it was the sketchbooks!”) He heard someone yell, “Hey, Vic,” and looked up. It was a kid he used to play stickball with in Brooklyn, now serving in the Air Force. He was hoping Dowd’s female companion could provide a girl for him. “That was not in the cards,” commented Dowd, and so they soon parted ways, Dowd holding tight to his new friend and letting his old buddy fend for himself.

  Victor Dowd’s sketches from a brothel in Saint-Germaineen-Laye

  A card for the famous Paris brothel Aux Belles Poules (The Beautiful Chicks), picked up by a Ghost Army soldier who visited there

  Unlike Dowd, Corporal Arthur Shilstone made very few drawings in Paris because, he said, he was “busy.” Doing what, he was asked years later? “We all have our military secrets,” he replied, before unbuttoning just a bit. “We got in every night and then came back pretty drunk and then started in the next day and the next night in Paris and so forth.”

  Lieutenant Bob Conrad and four other officers commandeered a jeep and headed into town the day after they arrived. “This was the day we were going to imbibe the vibes of Paris.” Looking for Notre Dame cathedral, they were hailed by an American woman whom they asked for directions. She told them that General Eisenhower was taking part in a great celebration that day at the Arc de Triomphe and suggested they go there instead. “You can see that old church any time.” They followed her advice. All were wearing Signal Corps uniforms, and since they were now practiced in the art of deception, they pretended to be Signal Corps photographers in order to get close. They watched as General Eisenhower laid a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. When the band struck up “La Marseillaise,” Conrad was “close to tears. It was really very moving. Eventually we over liberated the French, but at that point they loved us.”

  Perfume and fineries were fairly easy to buy and the prices did not become terrible until later. Cigarettes, D-ration chocolate and K-ration cheese made welcome gifts. Many friends were made. While driving down the Champs Élysées with a jeep-load of fashionable civilians, one had a tendency to think that the war was over.

  — Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops

  That thought was at the back of everyone’s mind. With Paris liberated and the Germans on the run, surely the war couldn’t last much longer. Then, all too soon, reality intruded, and the idyllic interlude in Paris came to an abrupt halt. The war was anything but over. The Ghost Army was ordered to make a mad dash halfway across France, to the very border with Germany, in order to once more lend a hand to General George Patton’s Third Army. It was to be one of their most desperate gambles of the war.

  Notre Dame by Arthur Singer, 1945

  Dummy tank in position at Bettembourg

  ONE BAD SPOT

  IN MY LINE

  [I heard] enormous sounds of tracks racing through the forest, sounded like a
whole division was amassing. Loudspeakers blaring, sergeants’ voices yelling, “Put out that goddamned cigarette now.” It was all fakery—it was all a big act.

  — Sergeant Victor Dowd

  General George Patton was famous for his gruff tone, salty language, pearl-handled revolvers, and unwavering commitment to the offensive. “In case of doubt, attack!” was one of his favorite dictums. After sweeping out of Brittany in mid-August, Patton’s Third Army raced across France, all the way to the Moselle River and the border with Germany, stopping only when fuel ran low and German resistance stiffened.

  Patton massed his troops for an attack on the French fortified city of Metz, leaving a dangerous seventy-mile gap to the north. The area was very thinly held by Colonel James Polk’s Third Cavalry Group (Mechanized). The Germans were starting to pull together after their disorganized flight through France. “If the Germans realized that there were effectively no troops in the seventy-mile-wide stretch, they could have broken through easily,” says military historian Jonathan Gawne. “If they could have gotten some of their mechanized units there, they could have surrounded Patton at Metz to the south. This was a very severe risk.” The Twenty-Third was called on to ride to the rescue. Its ambitious mission: plug the hole in the line by once again pretending to be the Sixth Armored Division, which was still working its way east. It would prove to be one of the unit’s most risky operations.

  They drove 250 miles from Paris to get there. They passed through the great World War I battlefield of Verdun and crossed from France into Luxembourg. In the city of Esch-sur-Alzette, crowds of people lined the streets, cheering this American unit headed toward the front, having no idea what was hidden in their canvas-covered half-tracks and closed-up trucks. On the night of September 15 they pulled in near the Luxembourg town of Bettembourg, just south of Luxembourg City. Sergeant Bob Tompkins was apprehensive about being so close to the front, with very few fighting troops around—not to mention that no one seemed to know exactly where the front line was. Two miles east was the best they could determine. After a few hours of fitful sleep, they leaped into their newest role the next morning.

  Metz by Alvin Shaw, 1944

  September 16, 1944

  Pulled into the woods at 3 o’clock. Tanks moving all around us. Woke early. Put on patches. Set up tanks. Built fires simulating armored infantry battalion. Truck goes out every hour to village for atmosphere. Drank a quart of beer with a family in Bettembourg.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  Only twenty-three dummy tanks were set up for Operation Bettembourg. Allied air superiority was reducing German aerial observation, so visual deception was becoming less important. Radio, sonic, and special effects were the key means of carrying out the deception. With the Germans so close, just across the Moselle River, sonic deception was particularly crucial. Sonic trucks operated for four straight nights.

  Map created in 1945 depicting Operation Bettembourg

  Lieutenant Dick Syracuse

  Special Effects by Arthur Shilstone, 1985. Two men would ride in back of the canvas-covered truck to make it appear as if it were full.

  Listening at night, Sergeant Victor Dowd heard “enormous sounds of tracks racing through the forest, sounded like a whole division was amassing. Loudspeakers blaring, sergeants’ voices yelling, ‘Put out that goddamned cigarette now.’ It was all fakery—it was all a big act.”

  Lieutenant Dick Syracuse’s platoon was manning a security perimeter around the sound trucks as they played their concert of tanks moving in. All of a sudden a colonel from the cavalry unit came “storming up the road,” Syracuse recalled. “This guy looked like a monster because he had a flak jacket on, and there were hand grenades hanging, and [he was] carrying a Thompson submachine gun.”

  “What the hell is going on here, son?”

  “What do you mean, Colonel?” replied Syracuse.

  “What are those tanks doing there?”

  Syracuse tried to explain that there were no tanks actually there. The response was a string of expletives.

  “Don’t tell me that! I know what I hear! There are tanks out there, and nobody told me there was going to be tanks here!”

  Things were eventually straightened out. It developed that the colonel had missed the briefing where the deception was explained, and his aide had not had time to tell him about it yet. His parting words to Syracuse were: “Well, son, you certainly could have fooled me.”

  Spending long nights doing security for the sonic unit, often stationed between the sonic trucks and the enemy, Syracuse sometimes found himself being fooled. “My eyes were beginning to tell me what my ears were hearing,” he recalled. “Psychologically it was the most unnerving thing; I would actually begin to see tanks in the dark.”

  Radio was also a big part of the deception. Ghost Army operators created three phony networks and interacted with two real ones. Numerous special-effects ploys were staged. Bumper markings and patches were changed. All of the men were given a short history of the Sixth Armored Division and were sent into nearby towns, supposedly on recreation leave, where they could be overheard talking about their division in cafes and bars. Soldiers from the 406th guarded intersections dressed as MPs from the Sixth Armored. “Civilians were observed photographing bumpers, taking notes, and asking ‘friendly’ questions,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Simenson. The men were under orders not to drink alcohol on these missions, but that particular injunction was more honored in the breach than the observance. “I was never able, while in town, to catch anyone in my command drinking,” wrote Captain Oscar Seale in his official report, “but I am sure some drinking was done.”

  Put the Top Down! by Walter Arnett, 1945

  France ’44 by James Steg, 1944

  Operation Bettembourg was originally only supposed to last for two days, until the Eighty-Third Infantry Division could arrive to fill the hole. But the Eighty-Third was delayed, so the deception stretched out for day after perilous day. Every passing hour increased the odds that the Germans might see through the deception. German infantry divisions were moving in across the river, presumably to defend against the Sixth Armored Division. The mood grew tense. As Lieutenant Bob Conrad put it, there was nothing between the Ghost Army and the Germans “but our hopes and prayers.” Ralph Ingersoll of the Special Plans branch, now a major, visited to warn that the enemy was regrouping and becoming more aggressive. Civilians reported seeing Germans in nearby woods. Shots were heard. Telephone wires laid by the Signal Company were found cut.

  A diagram showing how real and Ghost Army units (called “Blarney” units in this drawing) were connected by telephone wire to the Twentieth Corps headquarters. The Signal Company Special often had to lay down hundreds of miles of wire for every operation. These were used for secure communications, while the radio was used to deceive the enemy.

  Near Metz by George Vander Sluis, 1944

  Poor Little Farmhouse by Ned Harris, 1944

  Home Near Metz by Arthur Shilstone, 1944. The German line is by the last line of trees.

  Bill Blass (left) and Bob Tompkins in a dugout left by the Germans

  September 21, 1944

  Heinie [German] patrol reported about three or four miles away. Platoon of 406 went out to look for them. Civilians seem to be getting too anxious about our set-up. We should have moved out a couple of days ago, but attack seems imminent, so I guess we have orders to remain until it begins.

  — Diary of Sergeant Bob Tompkins

  Even General Patton was feeling the pressure. He commented on the situation (without mentioning the Ghost Army) in a letter to his wife the same day Bob Tompkins was writing in his diary: “There is one rather bad spot in my line, but I don’t think the Huns know it. By tomorrow night I will have it plugged. Jimmy Polk is holding it now by the grace of God and a lot of guts.” The very next day the Eighty-Third Division arrived on the scene, and the men of the Ghost Army gladly relinquished that part of the line.

  Operat
ion Bettembourg was the Ghost Army’s longest deception of the war and their most successful one to date. Colonel Simenson considered it a turning point for the unit. “It was our first operation that was executed fully professionally and correctly.” The Ghost Army was now practiced in the art of deception. The question remained: How long could they continue their front-line theatrics and remain untouched by the carnage of war?

  Luxembourg, 1944

  THEY EVEN HAD

  ART SUPPLIES

  Man, we used a lot of fuel. We traveled more across Europe than any other army unit.

  — Corporal Al Albrecht

  In late September 1944, the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops relocated to Luxembourg City shortly after it was liberated. The streets were lined with cheering crowds and United States flags as they drove in. For the next three months the city served as their base for deception missions up and down the front. Most of the unit was housed in a seminary building that is now part of the University of Luxembourg’s Limpertsberg campus. The Germans who previously had occupied the building had absconded with the furniture but left the walls covered with what Lieutenant Fred Fox called “atrocious Nazi murals.” The headquarters company (consisting of the Twenty-Third’s high-ranking officers and their support staff) and the sonic company bivouacked at a school across town.