Tag Archives: the 3132d Signal Service Company

‘Ghost Army’ Gets its Due

Posted on by One comment

The Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony, Via the U.S. House of Representatives:

Three surviving members of the Ghost Army, the top-secret WWII units that used creative deception to fool the enemy, will join House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other Congressional leaders at a special ceremony on March 21 at the Capitol to honor the Ghost Army with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Speaker Johnson and Senate Republican Leader McConnell will be joined at the ceremony by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with the original sponsors of the legislation that passed in 2022 authorizing the award, Congress’s highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements by individuals or institutions. They are Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH), and former Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT).

There are just seven surviving members of the Ghost Army, three of whom will attend the ceremony: ·

Bernard Bluestein, Hoffman Estates, IL. Bernie is a 100-year-old veteran of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. He served in the visual deception unit, the 603rd Camouflage Engineers. He joined the unit from the Cleveland Institute of Art and returned after the war for a long and successful career in industrial design. He has been a sculptor for the last 30 years.

John Christman, Leesburg, NJ. John served as a demolition specialist for the 406th. After the war, he worked in a lumber mill and the NJ Department of Corrections. He is an active baker who, at age 99, still bakes bread for his family holiday and birthday celebrations.

Seymour Nussenbaum, Monroe Township, NJ. Also 100, Seymore came to the Ghost Army from Pratt Institute and served in the 603rd, where he was friends with Bernie. Seymour helped to make the counterfeit patches used by the unit in Special Effects. He graduated from Pratt and went on to a long career in package design. He has been an avid stamp collector his entire life.

Other surviving members include James “Tom” Anderson (Dover, DE); George Dramis (Raleigh, NC); William Nall (Dunnellon, FL); and John Smith (Woodland, MI).

Many family members and relatives of the Ghost Army veterans, living and deceased, will also attend the ceremony, along with officers from the U.S. Army PSYOP forces. It will culminate a nearly 10-year effort by members and volunteers of the Ghost Army Legacy Project to win recognition for the little-known Army units that played a unique but unheralded part in the Allied victory of WWII and included such notable members as Bill Blass, Art Kane, and Ellsworth Kelly.

The ceremony will also be the first time the Gold Medal, designed and produced by the U.S. Treasury Department, will be unveiled. The ceremony is part of a two-day celebration for the veterans and their families that includes an awards dinner with featured speaker Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, Commanding General, U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Eisenhower, and a screening of a 2013 documentary that recounts the daring exploits of the units during World War II.

Ghost Army Insignia circa 1944.

The existence of the Ghost Army was top secret for more than 50 years until it was declassified in 1996. That’s when the public first learned of the creative, daring techniques the Ghost Army employed to fool and distract the enemy about the strength and location of American troops, including the use of inflatable tanks, sound effects, radio trickery, and impersonation. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops staged more than 20 deception operations, often dangerously close to the front, in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.

This “traveling road show of deception,” of only 1,100 troops appearing to be more than 20,000, is credited with saving an estimated 30,000 American lives.

U.S. Army analyst Mark Kronman stated, “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.”​

A sister unit, the 3133rd Signal Company Special, carried out two deceptions along the Gothic Line in Italy in April 1945. The unit was joined by a platoon from the 101st Royal Engineers, a British unit equipped with dummy rubber tanks.

“What made the Ghost Army special was not just their extraordinary courage, but their creativity,” said Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH), the House sponsor of the bill authorizing the Gold Medal. “Their story reminds us that listening to unconventional ideas, like using visual and sound deception, can help us solve existential challenges like defeating tyranny.”

 

Ghost Army Halfway to Congressional Gold Medal

Posted on by One comment

“Ghost Army” Insignia circa 1944.

The U.S. House passed H.R.707, Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act, on the 19th, sending it to the Senate.

The bipartisan (173 Dems, 126 Republicans as co-sponsors) resolution finds the following:

(1) The 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, comprised of the 23d Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Special Troops, the 603d Engineer Camouflage Battalion, the 406th Combat Engineer Company, the 3132d Signal Service Company and the Signal Company, Special, 23d Headquarters, Special Troops and the 3133d Signal Service Company were top-secret units of the United States Army that served in Europe during World War II.

(2) The 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, was actively engaged in battlefield operations from June of 1944 through March of 1945. The 3133d Signal Service Company was engaged in operations in Italy in 1945.

(3) The deceptive activities of these units were integral to several Allied victories across Europe and reduced American casualties.

(4) In evaluating the performance of these units after the War, a U.S. Army analysis found that “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.”.

(5) Many Ghost Army soldiers were citizen-soldiers recruited from art schools, advertising agencies, communications companies, and other creative and technical professions.

(6) The first four members of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, landed on D-Day and two became casualties while creating false beach landing sites.

(7) The 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, secret deception operations commenced in France on June 14, 1944, when Task Force Mason, a 17-man detachment of the 23d led by First Lieutenant Bernard Mason, landed at Omaha Beach. Task Force Mason conducted Operation ELEPHANT between 1 and 4 July, 1944, to draw enemy fire and protect the 980th Field Artillery Battalion (VIII Corps) as part of the Normandy Campaign.

(8) Operation ELEPHANT was a prelude to 21 full-scale tactical deceptions completed by the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops.

(9) Often operating on or near the front lines, the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, used inflatable tanks, artillery, airplanes and other vehicles, advanced engineered soundtracks, and skillfully crafted radio trickery to create the illusion of sizable American forces where there were none and to draw the enemy away from Allied troops.

(10) The 3132d and the 3133d Signal Service Companies, activated in Pine Camp (now Fort Drum), New York, at the Army Experimental Station in March 1944, were the only two active duty “sonic deception” ground combat units in World War II.

(11) Soldiers of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, impersonated other, larger Army units by sewing counterfeit patches onto their uniforms, painting false markings on their vehicles, and creating phony headquarters staffed by fake generals, all in an effort to feed false information to Axis spies.

(12) During the Battle of the Bulge, the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, created counterfeit radio traffic to mask the efforts of General George Patton’s Third Army as it mobilized to break through to the 101st Airborne and elements of 10th Armored Division in the besieged Belgian town of Bastogne.

(13) In its final mission, Operation VIERSEN, in March 1945, the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, conducted a tactical deception that drew German units down the Rhine River and away from the Ninth Army, allowing the Ninth Army to cross the Rhine into Germany. On this mission, the 1,100 men of the Ghost Army, with the assistance of other units, impersonated forty thousand men, or two complete divisions of American forces, by using fabricated radio networks, soundtracks of construction work and artillery fire, and more than 600 inflatable vehicles. According to a military intelligence officer of the 79th Infantry, “There is no doubt that Operation VIERSEN materially assisted in deceiving the enemy with regard to the real dispositions and intentions of this Army.”.

(14) Three soldiers of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops, gave their lives and dozens were injured in carrying out their mission.

(15) In April 1945, the 3133d Signal Service Company conducted Operation CRAFTSMAN in support of Operation SECOND WIND, the successful allied effort to break through the German defensive position to the north of Florence, Italy, known as the Gothic Line. Along with an attached platoon of British engineers, who were inflatable decoy specialists, the 3133d Signal Service Company used sonic deception to misrepresent troop locations along this defensive line.

(16) The activities of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops and the 3133d Signal Service Company remained highly classified for more than forty years after the war and were never formally recognized. The extraordinary accomplishments of this unit are deserving of belated official recognition.

(17) The United States is eternally grateful to the soldiers of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops and the 3133d Signal Service Company for their proficient use of innovative tactics throughout World War II, which saved lives and made significant contributions to the defeat of the Axis powers.