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Three survivors of a secret Army group that tricked Nazi Germany into calamitous mistakes through a series of audacious battlefield stunts will finally be honored at a ceremony in DC on Thursday.
Bernie Bluestein, 100, John Christman, 99, and Seymour Nussenbaum, 100, were members of a tactical deception unit called the ‘Ghost Army’ whose exploits were so secret they were not allowed to mention them for more than 50 years.
Just seven members are still alive out of the 1,100 artists, designers and technicians who would sometimes masquerade as a force 40 times larger within 100 yards of the front line.
They used inflatable equipment, sound effects, and radio trickery to dupe the enemy, and their efforts will be recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor.
‘I didn’t even tell my wife until the 1990s, when the secrecy came off,’ said Nussenbaum of Monroe Township in New Jersey.
Seymour Nussenbaum, Stanley Nance (now deceased) and Bernie Bluestein at the National World War Two Museum. Both Nussenbaum and Bluestein will be at the DC ceremony
Hundreds of inflatable tanks were mocked up and painted during the course of the war
And dummy aircraft on bogus airfields became another of the group’s specialties
‘I couldn’t potentially risk the lives of any soldiers who might be involved because of what I said.’
Army brass began trawling theaters, advertising agencies, and art schools in 1944 for men who could fool the Nazis as D-Day approached in 1944.
They were initially drafted into two units the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and the 3133rd Signal Company Special before coming together at Stratford-Upon-Avon in England in the spring of 1944.
Once in Europe they duped Nazi surveillance by deploying fleets of inflatable rubber tanks, trucks and airplanes, sometimes even building entire bogus airfields to leave the Germans mystified as to the Allies’ true positions.
‘It was the first mobile, multimedia, tactical deception unit in the history of warfare,’ said Rick Beyer of the Ghost Army Legacy Project.
‘They were capable of projecting their deception — visual, sound, radio, special effects — through all these different means, and they are essentially another arrow in the quiver of a battlefield commander to maneuver the enemy.’
Five-hundred pound speakers would blast recordings of non-existent troop exercises up to 15 miles away while they filled the airwaves with phony radio reports.
They helped keep the Germans in the dark about the true location General George Patton’s Third Army as it ploughed through France in the weeks after D-Day.
More than 1,100 men eventually served in the unit that would be dubbed the Ghost Army
Some of their work, such as this bogus artillery piece, remains on display in Army museums
John Christman, 99, will make up the trio of survivors journeying to the Capitol on Thursday
Seymour Nussenbaum, 100, told his family that his job had been to ‘blow up tanks’
‘I’m just sorry that there are not more of my fellow soldiers still alive that can be enjoying this as much as I do’ said Bernie Bluestein, 100 ahead of the ceremony
And they spent a week masquerading as the 6th Armored Division to save Patton when his position was dangerously exposed along the Moselle River in September 1944.
The little band of brothers helped bring the war to its conclusion by inflating 200 bogus trucks and tanks in March 1945 to pose as the 40,000 men of two 9th Army divisions, diverting German efforts while the main Allied force finally crossed the Rhine.
Nussenbaum, who went on to work as a package designer, said he was being absolutely honest with his family after the war when they asked him about his experiences and he told them ‘I blew up tanks!’
The Ghost Army badge adopted by the group
‘Most of our operations were done within 100 to 300 yards of the front line,’ said Anderson Wilson, who passed away in 2020.
‘We didn’t have any kind of artillery — only trucks to move the unit out in a hurry. But we didn’t have as many casualties as you’d think for that kind of outfit.’
Just seven members are still alive but among those being honored is the late Mickey McKane, of Keene, New Hampshire, who was also recruited out of art school in 1944.
‘Being artistically minded, he went to the Pratt Institute, which is sort of a famous art school in New York, and at some point, the US Army was beginning a recruitment process through the art schools,’ his son Keith McKane said in June 2021.
‘And they came and said they were looking for soldiers that were artistically inclined, and I think that was something that caught my dad’s attention.
‘The entire McKane family is delighted that this story is now a part of American history.’
US Representative Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, a Democrat who sponsored the bill to award the medal in the House, said: ‘What made the Ghost Army special was not just their extraordinary courage, but their creativity.
‘Their story reminds us that listening to unconventional ideas, like using visual and sound deception, can help us solve existential challenges like defeating tyranny.’
It is thought the unit’s work saved around 30,000 Allied lives but records, as well as their stories, were sealed away until the 1996 – 51 years after their service, according to the Ghost Army Legacy Project.
‘It was classified, we couldn’t talk about it. People would ask, ‘What did you do?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I’m with special troops,’ Wilson told the Record Courier in 2013.
‘They’d say, ‘Oh, you played in a band?’ ‘Yeah, I played in a band’.
‘I didn’t have to go through a lot of explanation. It didn’t bother me,’ Wilson, who did know how to play the drums and played in one of the bands on the boat ride to England, said at the time.
The group were assembled at Stratford-Upon-Avon in England to develop their techniques
Planks of wood would serve to fool the enemy if inflatable tanks were not available
Members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and the 3133rd Signal Company Special – known as the Ghost Army – will be honored with the highest medal Congress can present: The Congressional Gold Medal
Nine of the 1,100 soldiers lined up enjoying a well-deserved drink
‘On the boat going from the US to England they had a band I played in. I was so damn seasick, I was playing and getting sick at the same time.’
Bluestein, 100, said he was happy the group was finally getting ‘a little recognition’ with the highest honor Congress can bestow.
‘I never in my lifetime expected anything like this, it completely blasts me,’ he said.
‘I’m just sorry that there are not more of my fellow soldiers still alive that can be enjoying this as much as I do.’
