The Ghost Army of World War II

by Rick Beyer

  Back in Germany, another one of the artists in the 603rd, Sergeant Stanley Wright, commandeered an attic that he and others used as a studio. On May 8, 1945, they were painting a girl named Janina “with a wonderful radiance in her eyes,” as Wright wrote home that night to his mother.

  The Studio by William Sayles, 1945

  We all sipped wine as we worked and we worked hard and fast as the beautiful ball of fire was quickly slipping behind the purple hills. Then on the outside voices, at first like a murmur and then in the form of shouts, told us that at long last it was over. The voices were muffled but we sensed the meaning — a rush to the windows, let out a burst — an inner prayer, a toast to freedom — then back to painting for another hour before dusk engulfed us all. Back home I can imagine the joy, the celebrating, the enthusiasm — but to most of the boys over here a moment to relax, an unbelievable calm with a chance to let the mind slip back a year or so and wonder if it was all a dream — [or] nightmare.

  Hitler was one week in the grave, and German generals had surrendered to General Dwight D. Eisenhower the previous day in Reims, France. The fighting in Europe was officially done. Everyone celebrated. “It’s a beautiful world tonight,” Bob Tompkins wrote in his diary. “It’s been a long hard road and we thank god it’s over.”

  Discharge papers for Ghost Army soldier Marion Pastorcich

  On the way home, the shipboard paper, the Ernst Enquirer, printed a vague history of the Twenty-Third designed to both impress and obfuscate.

  On June 23, 1945, the USS General O. H. Ernst transport ship lifted anchor from Le Havre, carrying home, among others, the men of the Ghost Army. “The voyage was smooth, the quarters clean, the prospect glorious,” noted the unit’s official history. The ship arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, on July 2, and the men were given thirty days’ leave. Bob Tompkins reunited with his wife three days later, on July 5. “Wellllllll—you know the rest!!!!!!!!!” he wrote in his diary, the final entry. “It was the most wonderful moment in my life.”

  The day I got out of the army, I think, was the happiest day of my life. It wasn’t the day that I got married, or when my first son was born, or anything else. It was when I got out of the army.

  — Corporal Arthur Shilstone

  After their leave, the men gathered again to prepare for the invasion of Japan. But the atomic bombs dropped on August 6 and 9, and the announcement on August 15 that Japan was surrendering eliminated the need for that assault. Suddenly men who thought they were headed for Japan were headed for civilian life. The soldiers were let out of the army in order, according to a military point system.

  As the war wound down, Fox, recently promoted to captain, was selected to write the official United States Army history of the unit. Fox joked that he got the job because he wrote such compelling citations for other people’s medals and spent so much time writing letters to his fiancée, Hannah Putnam, back home. Whatever the reason, it is safe to say that the resulting document is probably one of the most entertaining unit histories ever written. It ends with these words:

  Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops by Fred Fox

  On 30 August, Army Ground Forces wrote SECOND ARMY that the Twenty-third was to be deactivated by 15 September. Its ashes were to be placed in a small Ming urn and eventually tossed into the China Sea.

  On 10 September the Twenty-third Adjutant told your 87- pointed historian that the only thing that kept him from being released was the completion of this story. So now it’s done and tomorrow I will be a free man again.

  The End.

  Frederic E. Fox

  — Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops

  EPILOGUE

  LAUDABLE AND

  GLORIOUS

  There are German records that show that some of the deceptions were taken—hook, line and sinker. The Twenty-Third did not win the war single-handedly, but I think it would have cost a lot more American casualties had they not been there.

  — Jonathan Gawne, military historian

  Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.

  — Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy

  What should be the final verdict on the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops accomplishments? Shortly after V-E Day, Colonel Billy Harris and Major Ralph Ingersoll of the Twelfth Army Group’s Special Plans Branch (along with Captain Went Eldredge, who worked with them) issued a secret report that offered both pros and cons. They held up Operation Viersen as an exemplary success. “This action alone provides sufficient evidence on the practicability of tactical deception in battle.” But they suggested that overall, the Ghost Army failed to achieve all it could have. “Tactical deception, despite a record of successful minor manipulations of enemy intelligence, was characterized by a succession of wasted opportunities.” Some other experts have echoed this negative point of view, arguing that the unit’s accomplishments were minimal.

  But a chorus of voices offers substantial praise for the Twenty-Third. Thirty years after the war, a United States Army analyst named Mark Kronman wrote a classified report praising the unit. “Rarely, if ever, has there been a group of such a few men which had so great an influence on the outcome of a major military campaign.” Roy Eichhorn, former director of research and development at the United States Army Combined Arms Center, put it this way: “Did it baffle the Germans every time? Probably not. Did it cause the Germans to react in ways that we wanted them to react? Definitely.” Military historian Jonathan Gawne is convinced that the unit’s deceptions had a significant impact on the war. “There are German records that show that some of the deceptions were taken—hook, line and sinker. The Twenty-Third did not win the war single-handedly, but I think it would have cost a lot more American casualties had they not been there.”

  Surviving veterans have drawn their own conclusions. “You know you saved lives. You don’t know how many you saved, but you know you saved them,” commented John Jarvie. “They say we saved fifteen or thirty thousand lives with our maneuvers,” noted Spike Berry, using a figure that was mentioned in army reports. “But even if we only saved fifteen or thirty, it was worth it.” Not everyone who served in the Ghost Army was sure that their efforts had been meaningful. Corporal Jack Masey, for example, long wondered if anyone had noticed or believed in their deceptions. But all found themselves in agreement with the sentiments put forth by Stanley Nance:

  Of all the radio messages that I sent, could there have been just one of those that changed the tide of battle for an American victory, where one mother or one new bride was spared the agony of putting a Gold Star [honoring a fallen family member] in their front window? That’s what the Twenty-Third Headquarters was all about.

  In the summer of 1945, Sebastian Messina, a twenty-eight-year-old corporal from the Signal Company Special went home to Worcester, Massachusetts, for a few weeks’ leave. While there, he talked to a newspaper reporter from the Worcester Daily Telegram about his unusual wartime experiences. The reporter wrote a story, which the paper duly submitted to War Department censors. The censors asked the Telegram to withhold it from publication. But two weeks after Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan, the paper felt free to go to press.

  The Worcester Daily Telegram got such a huge response to their August 1945 Ghost Army story that the newspaper reprinted it in October 1945.

  Messina’s revelations led to the first telling of the Ghost Army tale. The front-page story that appeared on August 29, 1944, was remarkably complete, full of drama and detail. “Ghost Army Fools Foe in Neatest Trick of War,” the headline read. Messina, quoted liberally in the story, came across as funny, articulate, and proud of what he and his fellow deceivers had done. “One slip might have meant our necks,” he told the reporter. “They never caught on to us, never found out we existed, because we were always somebody else.
” Spike Berry just happened to be in Worcester that day, on leave visiting a family friend. He couldn’t believe it when saw the headline. “All the secrecy we had, and they had us on the front page of the Worcester Daily Telegram!” Several news services picked it up. A spate of other stories followed from October 1945 to February 1946, including articles in the New York Times and Newsweek.

  Some veterans disparage Messina as the man who talked too soon and “blew the cover” on the unit because he “couldn’t wait to be a local hero.” But the issue of secrecy is a complicated one. Did the Army consider the numerous stories a security breach? No one in authority ever said it was. But of course saying so would have just drawn attention to the story.

  During the war, there is no question that secrecy was paramount. “There wasn’t a time I remember that they didn’t drill us on secrecy,” said Stanley Nance. “They kept hammering that at us all the time…that our life depended on how well we kept our secret.” But once the war was over, did the secret need to be kept? Some men—especially officers, as well as those in the sonic unit—were cautioned not to talk about it. “Basically, we were told we couldn’t tell our wives or anybody about what we did,” said Corporal Al Albrecht. “It was totally secret.” Some soldiers just assumed that secrecy was still in force. Others, such as Jack Masey, say no one ever told them to keep it secret. Interestingly, even some who didn’t believe they were constrained to keep quiet didn’t like to talk about it because they found it a bit embarrassing. “I was always concerned about talking about it,” Bernie Mason said, “because it sounds so comical.”

  From the files of the United States Army: the paper trail on Fred Fox’s 1949 and 1967 requests to declassify the story

  Whatever individual soldiers believed and whatever had been revealed to the newspapers, the Pentagon made significant efforts over the next four decades to keep the details of Ghost Army operations under wraps. Fred Fox was one of the first to encounter this. By 1949 Fox was an ordained minister for the First Congregational Church in Wauseon, Ohio. Itching to do some writing for a wider audience, he contacted the army to see if the top-secret story of the Ghost Army could now be told. He was informed that “much of the material is still confidential or secret.” Fox turned to other topics instead. He became a prolific contributor to the New York Times Magazine and other publications, a “reverend reporter” in the words of his son. To mark the tenth anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, he wrote an article that lightly touched on his unit’s deception exploits without divulging too many details. His writing led to a stint as a White House aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  Fox made another attempt to get the official history—which he himself had written—declassified in 1967. Now installed as Princeton University’s recording secretary and made wise by his White House years to the ways of politics, he enlisted the help of former Secretary of the Army Stephen Ailes, Princeton ’33, who had been elected to the university’s board the year before. But even Ailes couldn’t make much headway. The Army made it clear that the records, now at the National Archives, remained classified and were available only for “official research.” Fox never got to publish a Ghost Army book, and the full story didn’t come out until after his death.

  Military historian Jonathan Gawne believes the rising tensions of the Cold War led the Pentagon to clamp down on the Ghost Army story. “When you have operations that work well against the Germans, you don’t want to tell the Russians what you did, because then they’ll be prepared for them, and it will be useless against them.”

  The Cold War was just starting to wind down in late 1984, when Arthur Shilstone brought up the topic of World War II over lunch with an editor and art director from Smithsonian magazine. They were amazed by his Ghost Army stories, and the lunchtime talk led to a 1985 Smithsonian article by Edwards Park, which Shilstone illustrated.

  According to Roy Eichhorn, the army declassified the official history at one point, and then quickly reclassified it again. By the 1990s, however, it was completely out of the shadows.

  Today, the men of the Ghost Army at long last are getting considerable public attention and recognition for their accomplishments. Articles about the unit have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world. The United States Army has taken a renewed interest in its World War II deceivers and has started using the story to introduce a new generation of army officers to deception techniques. Best of all, this is happening while many of the veterans are still around to receive the plaudits they so richly deserve.

  In recognition of the Ghost Army’s contribution to France during World War II, Ghost Army veteran A. B. Wilson of Slidell, Louisiana, was awarded France’s highest decoration, a Legion of Honor, at the National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, in September 2013.

  The Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops remains the only example of a mobile, multimedia, tactical deception unit in the history of the United States Army and perhaps in the history of war. The men in the unit demonstrated a special kind of bravery, frequently operating in the face of a heavily armed enemy, with almost no means of defending themselves against a determined attack. They roamed across the battlefield, playing a secret role they couldn’t tell anyone about, employing creativity, imagination, and unorthodox thinking to save American lives. It seems right to call their efforts “laudable and glorious” and to preserve the memory of the part they played in achieving victory during World War II.

  For more on continuing efforts to preserve and tell the Ghost Army story, go to www.ghostarmy.org.

  Selected Postwar Biographies

  In June 1946 veterans of the 603rd attended a New York fund-raiser for Luxembourg’s “Wards of the Nation” campaign. Veterans John J. Reilly (right) and Tony Cipriano (center) presented a poster they created to Andre Wolff (left), Luxembourg’s Commissioner of Information. Later that year, works by Ghost Army artists went on display in Luxembourg in support of the war orphans campaign.

  Al Albrecht settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked as a salesman for a variety of businesses, selling everything from motor homes to industrial roofing. He died in 2010 at age eighty-six.

  William Anderson earned a degree as an electrical engineer and worked for a variety of companies, spending much of his time designing secret pieces of military hardware. He is retired and lives outside of Cleveland, Ohio.

  Walter Arnett went to work as a staff artist for the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1945, and stayed there until his retirement in 1977. He died in 1998 at age eighty-six.

  Spike Berry worked in radio in North Dakota, South Dakota, California, and Hawaii. He eventually started a travel business and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. He died in 2014 at age eighty-eight.

  Ed Biow had a successful career in advertising. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

  American Pavilion guides at Expo 67 in Montreal, wearing uniforms designed by Bill Blass

  Bill Blass

  Bill Blass became a fashion superstar. In 1970 he purchased the company where he worked as a designer and changed the name to Bill Blass Ltd., taking as a logo the mirror-image Bs that he had once sketched on his wartime notebook. His clothes were known for their casual elegance and were worn by luminaries such as First Lady Nancy Reagan and New York socialite Brooke Astor. Blass’s name became a household word, eventually appearing on everything from cars to boxes of chocolate. He was also a major fixture in New York society and known for his witty repartee and impeccable attire.

  In 1945 he helped his fellow Ghost Army veteran Jack Masey get his first job. In 1967 Masey prevailed upon him to design uniforms for the United States Pavilion guides at the Expo 67 World’s Fair in Montreal. Blass attended a White House dinner for Queen Elizabeth II of England in 1976, where President Gerald Ford introduced him to the queen as our “King of Fashion.”

  Bill Blass died in 2002 at age seventy-nine.

  Edward Boccia became an expressionist painter, poet, and professor of art at Washington University in St. Louis,
Missouri. He died in 2012 at age ninety-one.

  Bob Boyajian worked as a staff artist for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, then later as an ad agency creative director and photographer. He died in 2012 at age eighty-nine.

  Bob Conrad practiced law for more than sixty years in New York City. He died in 2010 at age ninety.

  Belisario Contreras spent twenty years working as an artist for the State Department. He received a PhD in history from American University in 1967 and wrote the book Tradition and Innovation in New Deal Art (1983). He died in 1990 at age seventy-three.

  Harold Dahl studied sculpture under Ulric Ellerhusen. He became a fine arts appraiser and eventually owner of the Equitable Appraisal Company in New York City. He died in 1972 at age fifty-eight.

  Captain Midnight, one of the comic book heroes illustrated by Victor Dowd

  Victor Dowd had a wide and varied career as an artist after the war. He drew advertisements, illustrated twenty books, and spent fifteen years as a fashion illustrator. He died in 2010 at age eighty-nine.

  After working for Bell Telephone Company, Harold Flinn took over the family farm of his wife, Ruthann, in Maquon, Illinois, where they raised a family and live to this day.

  Ordained as a minister, Fred Fox moonlighted as a journalist, writing dozens of articles for the New York Times. One caught the attention of the White House, and he was brought on as an aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later Fox became the recording secretary and “Keeper of Princetonia” at his beloved alma mater, Princeton University. He died in 1981 at age sixty-three.