“There was nothing between [the Ghost Army and the Germans] but our hopes and prayers that separated us from the Panzer division,” Lt. Bob Conrad recalled.
Conrad’s unit—the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops—had no weaponry heavier than .50 caliber machine guns. Yet for eight days in September 1944, they held off an armored enemy unit, with its heavy tanks that could easily have smashed through the ranks. At stake was Gen. Patton’s assault on the French town of Metz. If the 23rd broke, the Germans could easily attack Patton in the rear, collapsing his attack and likely causing many casualties. But the 23rd, stationed along the Moselle River, held out long enough, despite their lack of firepower.
How did they do it? Deception.
In fact, deception was the 23rd’s entire “raison d'être.” The top secret unit, informally known as the “Ghost Army,” was designed to seamlessly impersonate much larger units, using an ingenious combination of visual, sonic, and radio deceptions, down to the proper division insignia on uniforms and equipment. Often, all that stood between them and the enemy was an array of rubber dummies, inflatable tanks and vehicles, and some imaginative ideas.
The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops inflated dummy Sherman tanks and camouflaged them badly in order to fool enemies about the location of their troops. (Public Domain)
As Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles write in “The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery,” “This cast of artists, designers, radio operators, and engineers was equipped ... with battalions of rubber dummies, a world-class collection of sound-effects records, and all the creativity the soldiers could muster.”
At crucial moments of battle, the Ghost Army could suddenly conjure up an armored division just where it was needed to deter a German advance. They could fool the enemy into thinking an Allied attack came from one place when, in fact, it was being prepared elsewhere. Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they would melt, dissolve, and waft away again into the forests and fields.
Cpl. Sebastian Messina described it this way to the Worcester Daily Telegram, shortly after the war: “It’s really simple. Suppose the Umpteenth Division is holding a certain sector. Well, we move in, secretly of course, and they move out. We then faithfully ape the Umpteenth in everything. ... Then the Umpteenth, which the [Germans] think is in front of them, is suddenly kicking them in the pants ten miles to the rear.”
The Wizardry of Maj. Ralph Ingersoll and Col. Billy Harris
The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was the brainchild of two American military planners working alongside the British in London during the later stages of World War II.
As Beyer and Sayles relate, Ingersoll was a towering figure, full of bravado, well-known before the war began as a celebrity journalist and editor. AYale graduate, he worked as managing editor of The New Yorker, publisher of Fortune, and general manager of Time, Inc. To top off his prestigious journalistic pedigree, he played a role in launching Life magazine and had personally met Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ingersoll probably didn’t expect to get drafted since he was in his 40s when the war began. He had complained when he was drafted, arguing that publishers ought to be a reserved occupation. In the end, he capitulated and threw the full force of his brash, confident, and manipulative personality into the cause.
Ingersoll served in the North African campaigns before being transferred to the Operations branch of army headquarters in London, where he worked on deception projects alongside British strategists. The Allied planners knew the ancient wisdom of “The Art of War“ by Sun Tzu: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
It was while working alongside the British in preparation for D-Day that Ingersoll saw firsthand how powerful the art of deception could be. He worked on a British operation called Operation Fortitude, in which the British deployed a smoke screen of false intel to trick the Germans about where D-Day landings would occur. They used inflatable landing craft, phony radio traffic, and turned spiesto convince German commanders that the amphibious assault would come at Pas-de-Calais, when, in reality, it occurred at Normandy.
Inspired by this success, Ingersoll formed a unit solely dedicated to this type of tactical illusion and showmanship. He recalled: “My prescription was for a battalion that could imitate a whole corps of either armor or infantry ... a super secret battalion of specialists in the art of manipulating our antagonists’ decisions.”
That’s how Ingersoll tells told it, but he had a reputation for a relaxed relationship to the facts and a pronounced tendency to sing his own praises. We know that at least one other man helped generate the idea for what would become the Ghost Army: Col. Billy Harris. Harris contrasted starkly with Ingersoll: He was a straight-laced, West Point military man from a military family. Though differing in character, the two men made a good team. Ingersoll’s bubbling creativity was balanced with Harris’s down-to-earth practicality.
This ghost patch wasn't the official patch of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, but it was adopted by later soldiers as an inspirational "morale patch." (Public Domain)
On the Front Lines
Eventually, the top American commander in Europe at the time, Gen. Jake Devers, gave his approval for Ingersoll and Harris’s project in late 1943. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops “Ghost Army” was officially activated on Jan. 20, 1944, according to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. It consisted of 82 officers and 1,023 men under Col. Harry L. Reeder. With a magician’s sleight-of-hand, the Ghost Army could simulate a force many times its size, up to two full divisions, which was about 30,000 men.
Soldiers in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops used earlier versions of this 1948 Webster-Chicago wire recorder to reproduce sounds of armies, camps, and fake broadcasts. (Public Domain)
Not just anyone could serve in the secret unit. It took a combination of brains and artistic flair, and men were assigned for their abilities as artists, designers, and dissimulators. Many of them, too, were West Point graduates or the products of the Army Specialized Training Program—the crème de la crème. The Ghost Army was said to have one of the highest overall IQs of any U.S. Army unit, with an average of 119. In the words of Sen. Edward Markey, the Ghost Army troops were “creative, original thinkers, who used engineering, art, architecture, and advertising to wage battle with the enemy.”
The 23rd carried out 20 missions of illusion in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany. A sister unit, the 3133rd Signal Company Special, conducted two operations in Italy.
Among key missions was their role in “bolstering” Patton’s line at Metz in September 1944, mentioned earlier. Then, in March 1945, they hoodwinked the Germans about where two American divisions would cross the Rhine—perhaps their most audacious deception of the war. It’s estimated that their work saved 15,000 to 30,000 lives.
Continuing Legacy
The work of the Ghost Army remained classified until 1996. Recently, three former unit members were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. During the proceedings, Secretary of the Army Christin Wormuth noted that the 23rd pioneered techniques of military subterfuge that formed the foundation for modern operations.
Escorted by U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) (L), veteran of the Ghost Army Bernie Bluestein (3rd L) arrives at a Congressional Gold Medal presentation ceremony at the Emancipation Hall of the Capitol Visitor Center on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 21. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“The actions of the Ghost Army helped change the course of the war for thousands of American and Allied troops and contributed to the liberation of a continent from a terrible evil. ... Even though technology has changed quite a bit since 1944, our modern techniques build on a lot of what the Ghost Army did and we are still learning from [their] legacy.”
The Congressional Medal given to the members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. (Bedelstein/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Bamboozlement and psychological warfare still form a core part of modern military operations. In fact, some argue that war today occurs more in people’s minds than on physical battlefields. Fifth-generation warfare is generally described as warfare that plays out through social engineering, cyberattacks, psyops, and misinformation.
The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops laid the groundwork, and perhaps the Ghost Army lives on in new and more hidden forms.
Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at [email protected]
Prior to becoming a freelance journalist and culture writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master's in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, "Hologram" and "Song of Spheres."
