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| -Land of the Free |
| America's secret WWII Ghost Army who diverted Adolf Hitler and German troops away from attacking US units will receive congressional gold medal for saving 30,000 lives |
| 2024-03-19 |
| 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. 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. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |