Three survivors of a secret army unit that tricked Nazi Germany into making disastrous mistakes through a series of daring 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 that they were not allowed to talk about them for more than fifty years.
There are only seven members left alive of the 1,100 artists, designers and technicians who sometimes appear as a fighting force forty times their size within 100 meters of the front line.
They used inflatable equipment, sound effects and radio trickery to deceive the enemy, and their efforts will be recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“I didn’t tell my wife until the 1990s, when the secrecy became known,” said Nussenbaum of Monroe Township, 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 recreated and painted over the course of the war
And dummy planes at mock airfields became another specialty of the group
“I couldn’t possibly risk the lives of soldiers who might be involved because of what I said.”
Army brass began scouring theaters, advertising agencies, and art schools in 1944 for men who could fool the Nazis as D-Day approached in 1944.
They were initially organized into two units, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and the 3133rd Signal Company Special, before assembling at Stratford-Upon-Avon, England in the spring of 1944.
Once in Europe, they fooled Nazi surveillance by deploying fleets of inflatable rubber tanks, trucks and planes, sometimes even constructing entire fake airfields to confuse the Germans about 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 able to project their deception – visual, sound, radio, special effects – through all these different means, and they are essentially another arrow in a battlefield commander’s quiver to maneuver the enemy.”
Five-hundred-pound loudspeakers played recordings of non-existent troop exercises from 15 miles away, filling the airwaves with fake radio messages.
They helped keep the Germans in the dark about the true location of General George Patton’s Third Army as it plowed through France in the weeks after D-Day.
Ultimately, more than 1,100 men served in the unit that would be called the Ghost Army
Some of their work, such as this mock artillery piece, remains on display in army museums
John Christ, 99, will make up the trio of survivors traveling to the Capitol on Thursday
Seymour Nussenbaum, 100, told his family his job was to ‘blow up tanks’
“I’m just sorry that there aren’t more of my fellow soldiers alive to enjoy this as much as I do,” said Bernie Bluestein, 100 before the ceremony
And they spent a week disguised as the 6th Armored Division rescuing Patton when his position along the Moselle became dangerously exposed in September 1944.
The small group of brothers helped bring the war to an end by blowing up 200 fake trucks and tanks in March 1945 to pose as the 40,000 men of two divisions of the 9th Army, diverting German efforts while the main Allied forces finally crossed the Rhine.
Nussenbaum, who later worked as a packaging designer, said that after the war he was completely honest with his family when they asked him about his experiences and he said, “I blew up tanks!”
The Ghost Army emblem adopted by the group
“Most of our operations took place within 100 to 300 meters of the front line,” said Anderson Wilson, who died in 2020.
‘We had no artillery of any kind, only trucks to move the unit quickly. But we didn’t have as many casualties as you’d think for an outfit like that.’
Only seven members are still living, but among those honored is the late Mickey McKane of Keene, New Hampshire, who was also recruited out of art school in 1944.
“Being artistically inclined, he went to the Pratt Institute, which was kind of a famous art school in New York, and at some point the U.S. Army started 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 with artistic talents, and I think that was something that caught my father’s attention.
“The entire McKane family is thrilled that this story is now part of American history.”
U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, a Democrat who sponsored the medal bill in the House of Representatives, said, “What made the Ghost Army special was not only their extraordinary courage, but also their creativity.
“Their story reminds us that listening to unconventional ideas, such as using visual and audio trickery, can help us solve existential challenges, such as defeating tyranny.”
The unit’s work is believed to have saved approximately 30,000 Allied lives, but according to the Ghost Army Legacy Project, the documents and their stories were kept hidden until 1996 – 51 years after their service.
‘It was secret, we couldn’t talk about it. People asked, ‘What have you done?’ and I would say, ‘Well, I’m in special forces,'” Wilson told the Record Courier in 2013.
“They’d say, ‘Oh, you were in a band?’ “Yes, I played in a band.”
‘I didn’t have to explain much. It didn’t bother me,” said Wilson, who could play drums and played in one of the bands on the boat trip to England.
The group gathered in Stratford-Upon-Avon in England to develop their techniques
Wooden planks 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 bestow: the Congressional Gold Medal
Nine of the 1,100 soldiers stood in line enjoying a well-deserved drink
‘On the boat going from the US to England they had a band in which I played. I was so damn seasick, I was playing and getting sick at the same time.”
Bluestein, 100, said he was glad the group was finally getting “some recognition,” with the highest honor Congress can bestow.
“I never expected anything like this in my life, I’m absolutely devastated,” he said.
“I’m just sorry that there aren’t more of my fellow soldiers alive to enjoy this as much as I do.”