The Ghost Army

March, 1945.

After nine months of bitter fighting,

the Allies have driven the Germans across Europe

to the Rhine River,

the last natural barrier to the German heartland.

It is here that Allied generals expect the battered remnants

of Hitler's once-proud army to mount their final defense

of the fatherland.

Because the Germans had said,

"The Rhine River is going to run red with American blood."

And they meant it.

German reconnaissance planes take to the sky

to pinpoint where the Allies will attack.

Across the river from Dusseldorf,

the view from the air reveals hundreds of American vehicles.

Intercepted Allied radio transmissions confirm

the presence of two American divisions.

German observation posts hear them moving in across the river.

All signs suggest the attack will come here.

But the tanks spotted from the air

are 93-pound inflatable dummies.

The sounds come from loudspeakers,

the radio transmissions from a script.

It's amazing, the fakery that we were able to perpetrate

upon the enemy.

A group of handpicked soldiers

waging a secret war of deception was now trying to pull off

one last grand illusion,

with thousands of American lives hanging in the balance...

including their own.

Infantrymen would see us

and realize what we were doing with these dummy tanks,

setting ourselves up as targets.

They'd say things like, "You guys are crazy."

Many of the men were artists,

who used paintbrush and pencil to chronicle their trek

across war-torn Europe.

We were sleeping in hedgerows and foxholes,

but nothing kept us away

from going someplace to do a watercolor.

Their wartime exploits remained classified for decades.

I used to refer to us

as the Cecil B. DeMille Warriors.

These artists of deception were also known as the Ghost Army.

In the fall of 1943,

American GIs were pouring into Great Britain

for the upcoming invasion of France,

and a handful of U.S. Army planners in London

was exploring how to use deception to give those soldiers

an extra edge when they came face to face

with the full fury of Hitler's Wehrmacht.

To win on the battlefield,

you would like every advantage.

One of the key advantages in warfare is surprise.

Deception is intended to create surprise in the enemy.

One of the deception planners was Captain Ralph Ingersoll.

Before the war,

he was a controversial celebrity journalist.

The New York Times once called him

"a prodigiously energetic egotist."

In 1943, he was helping British Intelligence mislead

German generals planning the defense of Europe

as to when and where the D-Day landings would take place.

Inspired by British deception efforts,

Ingersoll suggested that the U.S. Army create a phantom unit

designed to fool the enemy right on the front lines.

On Christmas Eve, 1943, a memo was sent from London

to Washington, requesting the creation

of a top-secret "field deception unit"

in time for the upcoming invasion.

"I considered it one of my more improbable dreams,"

Ingersoll said later.

"But damned if the Pentagon planners didn't buy it whole."

The mission was to try to be able to take a thousand men

and put 'em in so that 15,000 men could move somewhere else

and not be detected.

We were going to be in show business,

where we set up one-night stands and, like ghosts, disappear.

Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower ordered

that the new unit,

officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops,

be given the highest possible priority.

Eisenhower believed that deception could prove to be

one of his most potent weapons.

When people think of war,

they think of the infantryman with the bayonet.

They think of the tank,

the artilleryman pulling the lanyard

and the flash and roar of the cannon.

But the essence of winning is the defeat of the enemy's plan

and the imposition of your will upon the enemy.

And to do that requires creativity and deception.

The 23rd would employ three types of deception

to con the Germans: visual, sonic, and radio.

So it all added up.

"By God, there they are, the 35th and the 79th," or whatever.

"They're up there, and that's where it's going to be.

Right on, bing, on the map."

Well, really they were not there.

They were down here.

To carry out visual deception,

the Army selected a 350-man camouflage battalion

heavily loaded with artists.

We want somebody to tell us what something is going to look like

from up in the air,

and we're down here,

we need artists who are pretty good at concept.

They can imagine it.

And they imagine it pretty well.

Before the war even began,

the Army was on the lookout for artists.

Army regulations emphasized the importance

of enlisting the art world to create camouflage.

It actually says in that regulation,

"You will need to go out and get set designers, theater people,

movie people, artists."

The Army drew heavily

from New York and Philadelphia art schools

to create the 603rd Camouflage Engineers.

And I had to write to this unit because I knew they were open,

but you had to write to them and they had to accept you.

It had nothing to do with the Army draft at all.

In early 1942,

they began exploring the ins and outs of tricking the eye.

One of their most ambitious projects

was to camouflage the plant in Baltimore

where B-26 bombers were made,

to protect against the possibility of German air raids.

Our outfit was responsible for disguising that and covering it,

so from the air it looked like it was the countryside.

In stolen moments and off hours,

the artists in the unit painted and sketched.

The 603rd became an incubator for young artists.

I did hundreds of drawings.

It isn't as though we weren't busy.

But you have to realize,

no matter how busy a soldier is, there's always down time.

Soldiers are playing cards, they're shooting craps.

And I drew.

I just developed the habit, and I don't think it's ever left me.

I learned more about who I was as an artist

and learning my craft

by being there rather than even at school.

Fewer than half the soldiers in the 603rd were artists.

The rest came from all walks of life.

One art student from Brooklyn, Jack Masey,

was so dazzled by the diversity of the men in his company,

he set out to caricature every one of them.

They were either cops, they were shoe salesmen.

There were bartenders, there were students.

It was a wild array of all kinds of people.

I'd only known Brooklynites or Manhattanites.

Now, suddenly, I was thrown into another world.

I was intrigued by this world.

And we were looked on as kind of nutcases

by the hardworking, no-nonsense, backbone of America,

the people that worked for a living and didn't sketch.

We were looked upon as slightly freakish, I think.

And I think we probably were.

In early 1944, these camouflage artists were selected

to be part of the Ghost Army.

Instead of trying to hide things,

they were now going to be in the risky business

of drawing attention to themselves.

At which point somebody said,

"You mean we're asking for the enemy to fire on us?"

The answer was yes.

At that point we all came to the conclusion

that this was a suicide outfit.

Their new assignment was to use decoy tanks and artillery

to conjure up make-believe battalions.

The concept was so out-of-the- box that the Army had no "book"

for them to go by, and, at first, no decoys to work with.

They improvised, fabricating dummy tanks out of wood

and canvas, and teaching themselves to be deceivers.

Meantime, in the California desert,

the Army was testing different kinds of decoys

for possible Ghost Army use.

One type consisted of a collapsible metal frame

covered in fabric.

When mounted on a jeep, it could become a mobile decoy.

Despite this advantage, the frames proved heavy,

difficult to set up, and prone to breakage.

The Army decided instead to go with inflatable dummies

made out of rubber.

It was a little bundle of stuff... which a tank was in...

all compressed before you opened the bundle,

spread the nozzles around, and inflated it.

Pulling this amorphic shape out of it,

and then watching it being filled with air

and taking form, you know, like a monster.

If things went very well, there were air compressors.

If things went not so well, there were bicycle pumps.

And, if things went terribly badly, there were our lungs.

In most cases, like a Sherman tank,

we could have it inflated and moved within 15 or 20 minutes.

The artillery piece was good,

the jeep was good.

But that M4 tank, that was a beauty.

That was a piece of work, really was.