Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. The Ghost Army came up briefly in
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Joan Current, so it seemed like
Speaker 1: exactly the right time to put out that episode again.
Speaker 1: This one originally came out almost exactly five years ago
Speaker 1: on January, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie Frying and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy by Wilson. And today we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about military history, and it's World War two specifically,
Speaker 1: and even though this particular piece, uh that we're discussing
Speaker 1: is in fact military history, if there were a history
Speaker 1: of ingenuity or sleight of hand, I think this would
Speaker 1: probably be one of the big events on that timeline. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be talking about the US Ghost Army,
Speaker 1: which was a top secret group that was assembled to
Speaker 1: create confused and mislead access forces. And it's a really
Speaker 1: amazing story that stars Ingenuity and Bravado as sort of
Speaker 1: the the main elements of the piece. And the idea
Speaker 1: of military deception was of course not new to World
Speaker 1: War Two. Everyone has heard of like the Trojan Horse,
Speaker 1: for example, and deceit as a tactic as part of
Speaker 1: sun sus art of war. Almost any culture in history
Speaker 1: that found itself at war with another culture use some
Speaker 1: type of trickery to try to outsmart the enemy, because
Speaker 1: that's sort of a vital part of getting the upper
Speaker 1: hand in a conflict is misleading so that you can
Speaker 1: kind of swoop in with your forces. But this group
Speaker 1: really went to some pretty extraordinary measures to achieve their goals,
Speaker 1: and they did some really fascinating and cool things, uh
Speaker 1: and so, and it was classified for a long time
Speaker 1: and then kind of came to light. So we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about it today because it is really cool.
Speaker 1: So to start out at the beginning like we normally do.
Speaker 1: That's one third. Headquarters Special Troops was the one and
Speaker 1: only deception outfit that US Army had ever authorized. The
Speaker 1: goal was to corral a group of creative thinkers to
Speaker 1: approach warfare in new ways, and this sort of trickery
Speaker 1: focused effort was inspired by the success of Operation Bertram,
Speaker 1: in which Allied forces used dummy tanks and camouflage to
Speaker 1: trick Rommel's forces into an incorrect assessment of the Allies
Speaker 1: position and strength during the second Battle of l A
Speaker 1: l Amain in North Africa. And also bolstering this case
Speaker 1: for a deception unit was the u S success in
Speaker 1: misleading German intelligence leading up to the Battle of Tunisia.
Speaker 1: They realized deception was working and they thought, let's just
Speaker 1: have a unit that's focused on this. The idea of
Speaker 1: forming a unit dedicated just to this is attributed to
Speaker 1: Captain Ralph Ingersoll. Before the war, he had been a
Speaker 1: celebrity journalist and he had been working with Great Britain
Speaker 1: on deception techniques to mislead the Germans and the time
Speaker 1: leading up the D Day. On Christmas Eve of three,
Speaker 1: a memo to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations
Speaker 1: War Department in Washington, d C officially requested the creation
Speaker 1: of a unit with a mission quote to simulate a
Speaker 1: core of two infantry divisions and one armored divisions and
Speaker 1: core installations railhead dumps, etcetera. So, beginning in nine more
Speaker 1: than one thousand young men were recruited, and they were
Speaker 1: often recent art school graduates or ad agency creatives and
Speaker 1: they were handpicked for this assignment. Recruits were sent to
Speaker 1: Camp Forest in Tullahoma, Tennessee to train within there were
Speaker 1: several companies. For the two four Signal Company worked on
Speaker 1: radio counter intelligence. Second Signal Service Company, which was actually
Speaker 1: trained at Pine Camp, New York, worked to develop sonic
Speaker 1: deception techniques. The four oh six Engineer Combat Company worked
Speaker 1: on the big construction projects and was in charge of security.
Speaker 1: And often you'll hear this effortmen anctioned, like when people say, oh,
Speaker 1: the Ghost Army they used inflatable tanks to deceive the Germans,
Speaker 1: And that is partially true, but as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: breaking down these different companies within the twenty three, it
Speaker 1: was a whole lot more than that. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like the tanks get the big, like kind of bud
Speaker 1: speedy headlines all the time, which is understandable. There's really
Speaker 1: cool video that exists, like where you can see them
Speaker 1: rolling over these inflated tanks and there. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I have ever heard any of the audio recordings,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I've ever seen anyone reference them online.
Speaker 1: So you can see where the tanks get all the attention.
Speaker 1: But I was not all there was. For instance, audio
Speaker 1: work sometimes referred to as sonic deception, was a huge
Speaker 1: piece of the Ghost Army puzzle. Yeah, they would mount
Speaker 1: these huge speakers to project elaborate soundscapes and radio plays
Speaker 1: that were created by the Second Signal Service Company. And
Speaker 1: these men had recorded tanks and trucks and our tillery units,
Speaker 1: and they sound engineered them into a number of different soundtracks.
Speaker 1: And these recordings would include sounds of tanks on the
Speaker 1: move or military construction, and they would even have things
Speaker 1: like vehicle sputtering. And they basically amassed this really amazing
Speaker 1: sound catalog of basically every military vehicle that they had
Speaker 1: access to, doing everything those machines could do, so they
Speaker 1: could kind of piece them together and create unique and
Speaker 1: specific radio dramas. Basically, so if you wanted to broadcast
Speaker 1: a battalion of vehicles starting up in the distance and
Speaker 1: moving closer, they could create that with their vast library
Speaker 1: of recordings, complete with idiosyncratic engine noises for specific vehicles
Speaker 1: and kind of mimic that distance too slowly moving forward
Speaker 1: nearness that you would hear if you were in one
Speaker 1: position with an actual troop going by. I like to
Speaker 1: imagine this as an extremely high tech version of following
Speaker 1: King Arthur around banging coconuts together. But it was very
Speaker 1: high tech even for the time. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: really kind of on the advanced edge of technology and
Speaker 1: how they were using sound. Yeah. Well, and it's like
Speaker 1: these that kind of sound work happens in movies and
Speaker 1: TV and things like that all the time now, like
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's just sort of how it works. So
Speaker 1: this was a different use for that. In addition to
Speaker 1: the three companies created with new recruits, another company was
Speaker 1: looped into their headquarters Special Troops, and that was the
Speaker 1: sixth oh third Engineer Camouflage Battalion. The men of the
Speaker 1: six h third had been working on camouflage for a
Speaker 1: couple of years already, so they brought their expertise to
Speaker 1: a group already in a fairly polished state. They had
Speaker 1: already managed an impressive accomplishment that by disguising the plant
Speaker 1: in Baltimore where by six bombers were assembled, and the
Speaker 1: event that access forces wished to look for the plant,
Speaker 1: what they would see when they flew over was just
Speaker 1: a regular rural area. And before we get to how
Speaker 1: the twenty third trained and then made their way to Europe, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you want to pause for a moment for a
Speaker 1: word from a sponsor? Yes, I do so. During the
Speaker 1: spring of n The men of the twenty three were training,
Speaker 1: but they were training in skills that seemed in many
Speaker 1: ways more appropriate for a touring theater company than for
Speaker 1: a group of soldiers. So they built prototype prop vehicles
Speaker 1: burst out of wood and burlap and then out of rubber.
Speaker 1: The rubber versions looked incredibly realistic, but they weighed less
Speaker 1: than a hundred pounds apiece. The men would also train
Speaker 1: with dummy artillery and other prop equipment. They practice sending
Speaker 1: each other fake radio messages, and they learned just enough
Speaker 1: about other different outfits that they could impersonate them, either
Speaker 1: as individuals or as a group, and men who couldn't
Speaker 1: so had to learn because they were going to have
Speaker 1: to quickly alter their uniforms and switch out patches as
Speaker 1: they sort of performed these presto changeo masquerades. In May,
Speaker 1: the majority of the twenty three boarded the U S. S.
Speaker 1: Henry Gibbons in New York, bound for Great Britain. They
Speaker 1: spent about a month near Stratford on Avon while they trained,
Speaker 1: although by all accounts there was also quite a bit
Speaker 1: of partying. Yeah, this sounds like really a lovely time
Speaker 1: that they had while they were in Britain. UH. But
Speaker 1: the first wave of men from the twenty third shipped
Speaker 1: out to France just following D Day, and this was
Speaker 1: a small platoon. It was just fifteen men and they
Speaker 1: landed at oma Omaha Beach on June fourteenth, so just
Speaker 1: out a week a little more UH and nurses actually
Speaker 1: flew with them so that they could tend to the
Speaker 1: wounded that we're waiting there on the beach. Going from
Speaker 1: a month in the idyllic British countryside having what was
Speaker 1: kind of a party esque atmosphere into the reality of
Speaker 1: war in France was of course something of a shock.
Speaker 1: Knowing that they were there to draw fires. Some of
Speaker 1: the men thought that there was really a suicide outfit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they had been trained in different sort of arts
Speaker 1: and UH deceptions, but not so much in actual combat,
Speaker 1: so they really did. Some of them really did think
Speaker 1: at that point like, oh, they're just sending us there
Speaker 1: to die and take the heat off the real soldiers.
Speaker 1: But over the course of the next two months, the
Speaker 1: rest of the twenty three joined their fellows in France.
Speaker 1: Leading up to their first big mission, which was Operation Elephant.
Speaker 1: About half of the men in the unit were involved
Speaker 1: in Operation Elephant, during which they pretended to be the
Speaker 1: Army's Second Armored Division. The real Second Armored Division was
Speaker 1: on the move while the twenty three kept up the appearances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of a theme of their their missions throughout.
Speaker 1: And while this sham did indeed work, nearby German troops
Speaker 1: held their position rather than following the real Second Armored
Speaker 1: Division because they did believe they were still there. This
Speaker 1: was also a pretty big learning experience. During this particular operation,
Speaker 1: it was revealed that if the inflatable tanks that they
Speaker 1: used lost even a small amount of air, the cannons
Speaker 1: would droop and give the whole thing away. They really
Speaker 1: there are some paintings that you can find online and
Speaker 1: in documentaries where you see sort of this droopy cannon barrel,
Speaker 1: and it really does look comical. It's an inherently comical image. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Their tanks are not made to fire into the ground,
Speaker 1: and so it looked very, very silly. And while they
Speaker 1: were not discovering their theatrics during Operation Elephant, it also
Speaker 1: became apparent that setting up an entire false division was
Speaker 1: going to be better executed in the dark of night.
Speaker 1: They had not waited until really late. They used some
Speaker 1: daylight hours to do it, and they also realized that
Speaker 1: they really needed to like tighten up their disguise and
Speaker 1: camouflage game if they wanted to ensure future success. The
Speaker 1: entire twenty three was then tasked with Operation Breast, which
Speaker 1: was named for the nearby French ports city that was
Speaker 1: an odd ues. The Sonic unit was the last to
Speaker 1: arrive in France, so Breast was the first time that
Speaker 1: they three had their full arsenal of tricks at their disposal,
Speaker 1: and the goal was to create the impression of an
Speaker 1: existing tank unit having far greater power than it actually did,
Speaker 1: with the hopes that they would trick the Germans into
Speaker 1: a surrender, and so they used a mix of actual
Speaker 1: tanks and dummies, flash canisters too, sort of fake tanks firing,
Speaker 1: and sound mixing to create this really convincing illusion of
Speaker 1: a huge tank division. And the main bravado move of
Speaker 1: this mission came in the delivery of some of these
Speaker 1: soundscapes that they had mixed. So late at night, members
Speaker 1: of the three would actually sort of creep forward with
Speaker 1: their sound equipment. They would get within about five hundred
Speaker 1: yards on the enemy line and they would play sounds
Speaker 1: of what sounded like officers issuing orders and people yelling
Speaker 1: counter order, and even like fake situations of arguments where
Speaker 1: there would be accidents that were staged and there would
Speaker 1: be cursing at these imaginary errors. They were all doing
Speaker 1: this really pretty close to enemy lines. It was pretty
Speaker 1: to think about what that must have been like, sitting
Speaker 1: there in the dark with your speaker playing these things,
Speaker 1: knowing how very close you were. It's so bring to
Speaker 1: think about. It was effective, so effective that it confused
Speaker 1: friendly units positioned about a mile away, and while it
Speaker 1: didn't get the Germans under General Herman B. Von Ramkat
Speaker 1: to turn tail, it did keep them from going anywhere.
Speaker 1: This was a good thing, since that was an estimated
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand troops, and that was almost double what
Speaker 1: the Allies had initially estimated. If they had not been
Speaker 1: tricked into holding their line against this perceived threat from
Speaker 1: this puffed up, half fake tank battalion, they might have
Speaker 1: gone on the offensive and then really damaged the Allied forces.
Speaker 1: And throughout the rest of ninety four and on into nine,
Speaker 1: the twenty three continued to run these military masquerade games,
Speaker 1: and with every mission they would kind of regroup and
Speaker 1: refine their playbook and see what had worked and what
Speaker 1: had and they just got better and better and better.
Speaker 1: They learned how to stage and set dress their fake
Speaker 1: camps more and more authentically, and they started hand painting
Speaker 1: patches to mimic those of existing units, so they if
Speaker 1: they couldn't get ahold of real ones, then they would
Speaker 1: stage fake headquarters to give out fake promotions so low
Speaker 1: ranking men would look like generals and other officers, creating
Speaker 1: the full illusion of real operations. And then late at
Speaker 1: night they would you know, go where they were called
Speaker 1: and inflate their fox vehicles and artillery undercover of darkness,
Speaker 1: so that when dawn came, it would appear as though
Speaker 1: a huge surge of troops had arrived in the area.
Speaker 1: And in addition to providing this false image of battle
Speaker 1: ready army troops where there was really only a line
Speaker 1: of fake vehicles and prerecorded noise, the twenty Third's ability
Speaker 1: to seem to appear out of thin air and vanish
Speaker 1: just as quickly actually had a really unnerving effect on
Speaker 1: the enemy, so the German Army started calling them the
Speaker 1: phantom Army. Other tricks included the ongoing burning of fires
Speaker 1: at camps that were deserted, and different ways to create
Speaker 1: fake tank tracks. In addition to the inflatable tanks and trucks,
Speaker 1: they also used dummy planes and buildings. They could mix
Speaker 1: fake radio transmissions within with the real ones to confuse
Speaker 1: the enemy, and they mounted fake parachute drops and put
Speaker 1: up signs directing Allied vehicles that were never actually coming.
Speaker 1: But this elaborate spectacle also included a whole lot of
Speaker 1: acting on the part of the troops. So knowing that
Speaker 1: any US troops were always being watched by German soldiers
Speaker 1: or spies, or sometimes there were French people working for
Speaker 1: the Germans as informants, the boys of the would really
Speaker 1: employ all manner of ruses. They would change out their
Speaker 1: unit insignias as we mentioned, on uniforms as well as
Speaker 1: on vehicles. They would do quick stencil work to change
Speaker 1: everything up, and they would make sure that they were
Speaker 1: seen about town wherever they were kind of drinking and
Speaker 1: hanging out. And if they were asked what unit they
Speaker 1: were a part of, they would just make up names
Speaker 1: or reference a unit that they were covering for. And
Speaker 1: some of them even would uh sort of mount these
Speaker 1: these fake little tableau where they would feign drunkenness and
Speaker 1: blab false information in public places. So this sort of
Speaker 1: became this ongoing game of misinformation and subterfuge where they
Speaker 1: were just sort of always acting. This wasn't completely flawless,
Speaker 1: though sometimes there were mistakes and problems. On occasion, a
Speaker 1: dummy tank would be inflated facing the wrong direction. Because
Speaker 1: all of these set up parts are being done at night,
Speaker 1: it was easy enough to lift one and turn it around,
Speaker 1: but if it was already daylight when they realized the problem,
Speaker 1: they were going to have to do it with really
Speaker 1: careful timings so as not to be noticed. That one point,
Speaker 1: several vehicles that had been inflated in the night were
Speaker 1: warmed so much the sun came up that the air
Speaker 1: expanding inside them caused them to pop loudly as they
Speaker 1: sprang leaks. And while while this sort of sounds hilarious,
Speaker 1: it was happening during a war. So all of these
Speaker 1: accidents put the men involved at serious risk. And all
Speaker 1: in all, there were twenty one missions mounted by the
Speaker 1: twenty three And before we get to sort of the
Speaker 1: biggest one that they undertook, uh, do you want to
Speaker 1: do a quick word from a sponsor, let's do so.
Speaker 1: The biggest in what is arguably the most successful of
Speaker 1: the twenty third missions was Operation Veerson, and this took
Speaker 1: place near the war's end, relatively speaking, it wasn't right
Speaker 1: at the end, but it was in March, and this
Speaker 1: basically launched a big visible decoy mission to once again
Speaker 1: cover the movements of other troops. While parts of the
Speaker 1: Ninth Army were moving north to quietly cross the Rhine,
Speaker 1: the twenty three was making a big show of pretending
Speaker 1: to be those troops farther south. They masqueraded as the
Speaker 1: ninth and ran practice and training maneuvers for a crossing
Speaker 1: at person and just publicly enough to draw lots of attention.
Speaker 1: And this was really a massive effort. So they set
Speaker 1: up fake medical and engineering facilities. They had trucks and
Speaker 1: sonic crews creating the illusion of convoys moving supplies. At
Speaker 1: one point they were just having trucks loaded up where
Speaker 1: they would be driving them back and forth, and they
Speaker 1: would put two guys at the very back, so it
Speaker 1: looked like it was full of troops, but in fact
Speaker 1: there are only two guys at the back. They arranged
Speaker 1: everything perfectly so that an aerial reconnaissance taking pictures would
Speaker 1: have no idea that the entire thing was a hoax.
Speaker 1: They one of the reasons that they used artists was
Speaker 1: so they could conceptually visualize, like how things would look
Speaker 1: from multiple angles, even when they didn't have those angles
Speaker 1: available to them, So they really made this whole thing
Speaker 1: beautifully realistic, even though it was in fact all a hoax.
Speaker 1: When the real Ninth crossed the rhyme, the Germans were
Speaker 1: taken totally by surprise. Those German troops that could resist
Speaker 1: them were disorganized and unprepared, so US casualties were very few.
Speaker 1: The twenty three received a commendation from the Ninth Army
Speaker 1: Commander William Simpson for their effort. A later estimate by
Speaker 1: Simpson placed the number of troops that were saved by
Speaker 1: this deception at ten thousand UH and it ended up
Speaker 1: being the last mission of the war, and in September
Speaker 1: there was completely shut down. So one of the inherent
Speaker 1: dangers of being in a ghost army designed to draw
Speaker 1: attention is that it also draws fire. So it's easy
Speaker 1: to think of all this pageantry and strategic slide of
Speaker 1: hand is really fun and fascinating, but it really put
Speaker 1: the men involved at great risk. At one point they
Speaker 1: were actually set up in beastone and they actually missed
Speaker 1: the start of the Battle of the Bulge by about
Speaker 1: four hours. They had been pulled out around midnight of
Speaker 1: December six, and this is as P and the fighting
Speaker 1: started around four am. So had those men been trapped
Speaker 1: there with their phony equipment, they would have been in
Speaker 1: incredibly dire straits and unable to defend themselves. During the
Speaker 1: Battle of the Bulge. The three returned to Luxembourg City,
Speaker 1: where they had already spent a lot of time, and
Speaker 1: fired from the rooftops at the incoming Liftwoffe aircraft. This
Speaker 1: is the only time they ever really four real fired
Speaker 1: at the enemy. Yeah, it was there one there one
Speaker 1: time that they actually got to perform actual combat activities. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the twenty three after that was very quickly moved
Speaker 1: to Verdunn. So, in part, the Allies wanted to maintain
Speaker 1: the secrecy of the Ghost Army, and in another part
Speaker 1: they realized that this blow up dummy artillery was not
Speaker 1: going to be you good in a fight, so they
Speaker 1: just wanted to clear them out. And the men ended
Speaker 1: up spending Christmas in Verdune. While the group had been
Speaker 1: extraordinarily lucky throughout their time, their luck finally ran out
Speaker 1: in the spring of nine. On March twelfth, while impersonating
Speaker 1: the eightieth Infantry, the twenty three drew German artillery fire.
Speaker 1: Two of their men were killed in fifteen others were wounded.
Speaker 1: This was really their worst day, in spite of having
Speaker 1: been an incredibly dangerous areas many times as they kept
Speaker 1: up false appearances all through the war. And one of
Speaker 1: the problems that comes up when discussing the twenty three
Speaker 1: and their effectiveness and sort of assessing what they were
Speaker 1: able to achieve lies in the fact that so much
Speaker 1: of their work was secret, and often it fooled Allied
Speaker 1: forces as well as the enemy. Like the Allied forces
Speaker 1: didn't even really know what was going on with them
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, they thought they were just
Speaker 1: another unit. After the war, most of the men stayed
Speaker 1: quiet about the amaze sing works of deceptive are that
Speaker 1: they had been part of. The work was classified, so
Speaker 1: in the event that the US found itself at war again,
Speaker 1: having a ghost army would be a really valuable asset,
Speaker 1: So the military didn't want to tip its hand and
Speaker 1: reveal this resource. But finally, in x SO, almost nineteen
Speaker 1: years ago from when we're recording this, the work of
Speaker 1: the twenty three was declassified, and the men who had
Speaker 1: only been able to give KG answers to their families
Speaker 1: about what they had done in the war were now
Speaker 1: free to speak of their incredible efforts. One of the
Speaker 1: truly significant aspects of the twenty three and the work
Speaker 1: that they did is the fact that an entire division
Speaker 1: of creative people was successfully managed within the structure of
Speaker 1: the military. Yeah. This is one of those things that
Speaker 1: people often go like, look, these were all artists and
Speaker 1: they totally were able to work together in this this effort.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that speaks to like their
Speaker 1: level of commitment or independence. You know, It's one of
Speaker 1: those things that often likes to get bandied about, particularly
Speaker 1: when you're talking about modern business, like, oh, it's hard
Speaker 1: to manage creative people. It's like these guys managed and
Speaker 1: they were doing some scary stuff. Yeah. I think it
Speaker 1: also speaks to the like perpetual mythologizing of creative work
Speaker 1: as some kind of extraordinary thing when in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases it is work. Yeah, which isn't to say that, like,
Speaker 1: creative inspiration isn't really fabulous and cool and unique in
Speaker 1: many ways. But I just I find that to be
Speaker 1: a really interesting one that we do mythologize working with
Speaker 1: creative types. And I say this as a creative person
Speaker 1: married to an artist as well, Like, but then it
Speaker 1: can be anybody can be managed, any sort of effort
Speaker 1: that can be put together. It's it's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: using people's assets. And another really incredible legacy is the
Speaker 1: artwork that a lot of these men were doing while
Speaker 1: they were deployed. I'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that in a minute. Yeah, it's really no surprise that
Speaker 1: a lot of the men who were involved in effectively
Speaker 1: doing art for the army went on to careers the arts.
Speaker 1: So for example, Bill Blast of course went on spuilt
Speaker 1: a fashion empire. He had actually been sketching women's clothing
Speaker 1: during the war. Yeah, there was one interview that I
Speaker 1: saw with one of the other members of the twenty
Speaker 1: third and he was saying, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was serious or not, that Bill Blast would read
Speaker 1: Vote magazine in foxholes, but I have no idea, but
Speaker 1: I loved it. Art Kane, of course became a very
Speaker 1: well known photographer. His photo entitled A Great Day in Harlem,
Speaker 1: which was taken in Night, featured fifty seven prominent jazz
Speaker 1: musicians and it's still considered one of the most important
Speaker 1: images of jazz history. And he also took a lot
Speaker 1: of incredible celebrity portraits, and he was the photographer for
Speaker 1: the one and only DeLorean magazine ad to ever run.
Speaker 1: Ellsworth Kelly made a career as a painter and a
Speaker 1: sculptor and became known for use of really bright color
Speaker 1: and very hard edges. Arthur Singer became an illustrator and
Speaker 1: he really became known for his incredibly detailed bird illustrations.
Speaker 1: So if you have ever looked at an illustrated birding
Speaker 1: field guide, uh, odds are really good that you've seen
Speaker 1: as work, because it's been in everything. Jack Macy went
Speaker 1: on to design backdrops for the State Department. Eventually he
Speaker 1: designed the kitchen set that was used for the Nixon
Speaker 1: Cruise Chef debate of nineteen fifty nine. And there's a
Speaker 1: really wonderful documentary called The Ghost Army that I highly
Speaker 1: recommend for people that UH want to hear accounts from
Speaker 1: some of the surviving members of the twenty three. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I really loved it too is that,
Speaker 1: uh it being a visual medium, they're able to show
Speaker 1: a lot of the artwork that these men were doing
Speaker 1: while they were in France and in performing all these
Speaker 1: amazing maneuvers. And one of the men says something like,
Speaker 1: you know, we were in all these crazy circumstances, but
Speaker 1: we could always find time or a place to duck
Speaker 1: away and do a quick watercolor, which I think it's
Speaker 1: just super termining, like they just were all artists at heart,
Speaker 1: even though they were part of this amazing war effort.
Speaker 1: And that documentary is as of this recording in early
Speaker 1: is available on Netflix, and it's a little longer than
Speaker 1: an hour, uh and you get to see a lot
Speaker 1: of this really amazing art and just interviews with these guys,
Speaker 1: and it deals a little bit more with with them
Speaker 1: as individuals rather than like what we've covered is so
Speaker 1: much of sort of the bigger, kind of broad strokes
Speaker 1: of the whole unit, but this really focuses on some
Speaker 1: of the different men and has interviews with them that
Speaker 1: are really quite charming and touching and really really entertaining.
Speaker 1: Uh So I highly recommend that and that is the
Speaker 1: Ghost Army, which is just such a The whole thing
Speaker 1: is so cool, and I'm surprised even though it does
Speaker 1: pop up sometimes in like uh, you know, listic goals online, Uh,
Speaker 1: people don't really know about it. Like it's another one
Speaker 1: of those things where I thought, Oh, everyone's heard about this,
Speaker 1: We've had a few requests for it. But then when
Speaker 1: I mentioned it to people, they look at me like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. And then when
Speaker 1: I say a few things, they get sort of this,
Speaker 1: like agog really what. So clearly this is there's there's
Speaker 1: some gap in their uh, in the knowledge about these guys,
Speaker 1: and it's they did such amazing things that I think
Speaker 1: everybody should know what their work was like. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today for this Saturday classic.
Speaker 1: If you have heard any kind of email address or
Speaker 1: maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of
Speaker 1: the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly
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