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Good evening and welcome to Prime Time.

I'm Bruce Haines today we discover how war, deception and art came together for eleven hundred men who comprised the twenty third headquarters special troops during World War Two .

>> The Creative and craft of these American GIs tricked the enemy with rubber tanks, sound effects, carefully crafted illusions.

This top secret mission was carried out by sound technicians radio operators, artists and illustrators including Fort Wayne Swan, Bill Blass, the level of fakery being perpetrated on the enemy was at the same time absurd, deadly and amazingly effective.

>> This incredible true story kept secret for more than 40 years after World War Two is told in the Ghost Army, a PBS documentary by filmmaker Rick Beyer.

>> The Ghost Army can be seen on PBS Fort Wayne this Sunday afternoon at two .

Meanwhile, you can see filmmaker and documentarian Rick Beyer right here and now in our studio.

>> And Rick, good evening.

Thanks for great to be here.

Thank you so much.

This is so cool and I say that because it is a piece of history for which there the curtain was pulled back so much time after the end of the war before we get to the army itself though, let's talk about the inspiration for which seems to belong to General Dwight Eisenhower.

>> Well, you know, there's a lot of inspirations for the Ghost Army.

You could go back to the Trojan horse deceptions been around a long, long time.

>> But in early 1940 for the Army made the decision to create this deception unit, this battlefield deception unit .

And when Eisenhower became commander supreme allied commander, he gave it the highest priority so that he wanted to make sure he had this as a tool in his arsenal so that once the invasion took place and American troops were on the ground in France that this deception unit would be ready to go to be able to operate right on the battlefields of France.

And then of course as the war goes further on Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, et cetera, the importance of deception usually one would default to thinking I need a show of force.

But for Eisenhower he had literally said I think deception is one of the strongest tools I have going for me in addition to the power of force, you know, deception is what the army calls a force multiplier so it can make you seem like you have force where you don't and this can be really valuable because you know, we think of World War two as they had so many people they had, you know, millions of men.

>> Eisenhower always felt like he was short of personnel in key situations and this gives you a chance to to kind of throw some force into the line to hold a weak spot your line or or confuse the Germans but where your real troops are and to be able to do that really easily with this relatively small number of men.

So it works out that that sometimes the show of force can be just as important as force itself.

>> Even the names given to this division and the the entities within it the twenty third headquarters special truth is that the most boring name you've ever heard?

>> I think that's like deception all by itself because no no enemy understanding this is the twenty third headquarters special troops is going to think of anything about that unit.

>> You know it's it's this kind of a bureaucratic must be some guys guys doing logistics or something.

>> Yeah.

And so let's put ourselves in the boots of those who are being recruited for for these forces.

>> What kind of folks were being sought?

Well the army tried to put use talents of people where they could and so you have a lot of artists like Bill Blass who's a young art student in New York at that point and other artists who are recruited into a unit called the Six or Third Camouflage Engineers.

>> And this is the unit, Bruce , that ends up being the pick to do the visual deception right to fool enemy aerial reconnaissance with inflatable tanks or trucks or things like that because it turns out if you're trying to create a visual tableau on the battlefield that it's really helpful to have artists working on that because they're going to be able to imagine kind of what it looks like from the sky and here you can see what it looks like on your TV.

>> Tell us what you're standing in front of .

>> Well, that is a replica of one of the inflatable tanks that they used.

They had hundreds of inflatable tanks, trucks, artillery.

>> This is a replica dummy M4 Sherman tank and this is part of the exhibit that's going to be going on here in in Fort Wayne .

So they're saying this tank is here in Fort Wayne right now and so that's kind of exciting on display at the History Center and more on that in a moment.

But the important thing do you see it in color?

Wait till you see how it played out in black and white.

>> Here is an excerpt from the Ghost Army.

>> It was a little bundle of stuff which are Tanguis it all compressed before you opened the bundle spread to the nozzles around and inflated it, pulling this amorphous shape out of it and then watching being filled with air and taking form you know, like a monster.

If things went very well there were air compressors, if things went not so well, there were bicycle pumps and if things went terribly badly there are our lungs in most cases like a Sherman tank we could have it inflated and moved within 15 20 minutes.

The artillery piece was good, the chip was good but that M4 tank that was the beauty that was that was a piece of work really was and a way can you imagine can you imagine I mean first of all, the guys who are doing this you get this mission and you be like are you kidding me?

>> Are you serious?

>> And they said, you know, we thought we couldn't really take it terribly seriously until they found themselves on the battlefield until they found themselves being shelled and realizing that yeah, this is for real.

>> Yeah.

One of the the men in the in the unit describes his colleagues as the Cecil B. DeMille warriors.

Later on something more appropriate the ghost army comes to be the main descriptor.

>> Why ghost army?

>> I think that that comes about really right at the end of the war and I think the idea is that it's like a ghost.

>> It can flit here and there.

You know, is it real?

Is it not?

>> That's a name that none of the soldiers used during the war.

But if you look at the cover of their official history, there's a ghost right on it.

I mean so that is a symbol that from that time from 1945 described what this unit did.

>> We are speaking with filmmaker and documentarian Fire and by the way, the Ghost Army Sunday afternoon at two in its entirety here on PBS Fort Wayne.

>> It's fascinating to see what is done and I say this with the greatest respect it feels like a mix of Hogan's Heroes in Mission Impossible.

>> Do you know it's funny to throw some Aagot in there and and I think you've got it.

I have long said that I'm convinced that somebody who was involved with Hogan's Heroes must have known something about this story.

To me that's like the elusive link that I'd love to find because as silly as Hogan's Heroes is, there's a ton of stuff in that that seems to be very similar to what these guys did very much for real.

>> For example, Bruce , soldiers in this unit would impersonate generals, right?

>> So you would have a fake headquarters set up and you would have some general drive up in a Jeep to this fake headquarters and get out?

>> Well, this is all in case there's any enemy spies left behind so that this is in fact we're looking at right now a fake regimental headquarters for the 19th Regiment and one of the ghost army soldiers, George Rabb.

>> He was a he was a captain.

He was playing a colonel in this headquarters and we're you know, he's impersonating a colonel.

>> I mean this is against Army regulations but it's what they did to make their deceptions as realistic as possible in case the enemy's got spies left behind who are looking around a couple of extra photos that are set to show how this deception plays out and that it is more than just site.

>> It's sound and it's radio right.

It's multimedia deception.

>> Right.

And that is really what makes this unit so innovative.

They are using soundtrack's equipped with 500 pound speakers and these speakers can throw the sound as far as 15 miles, although often they're pushed right up front sometimes to within a quarter of a mile of the front lines.

They also used radio deception.

>> Every division is going to have radios from the division level all the way down if you just impersonate those radios right.

And the guy is sending the radio signals the enemy's listening in.

>> They're going to feel like a real division is there.

And this gentleman here, Stanley Nance was one of the radio operators he nicknamed his radio truck Kilowatt Command.

>> But it's kind of like it's kind of like doing magic in the sense that you you don't you kind of put some clues out there but you let people you let people draw their own inferences from it.

>> And so like the magician doesn't want to tell you everything.

He wants you to kind of convince yourself in the same way with the ghost army they're sending the radio signals.

They've got the fake tanks, they've got the fake headquarters.

>> They're depending on that German intelligence officer to put together all these little clues and say aha, that's where the division is and I am glad that you're coming.

>> It takes us to this picture.

This is at an important moment in World War Two .

This is versión and it from the skies it looks like the real deal is setting up setting up camp.

>> Right.

This particular picture is from a real deception that they did along the Rhine River in March 1945 as you say, Operation Verson and every vehicle in this picture is inflated and you know what I do talks about the ghost army.

>> I say I say and you know what I said if you want a clue as to what makes deception work, for example, if you need to put some deception into your career planning what what makes it work in that picture?

>> It's the tank tracks.

Right?

Because if you think about it, a 40 90 pound dummy tank that does not leave any tracks but a 40 ton Sherman tank does.

>> So if you don't have bulldozers which they had they had three bulldozers to make those tank tracks, it's not going to look real.

>> The whole thing's going to fall apart.

I was fascinated to in that carrying over the communication from actual divisions along the battlefront that they coordinate the time as to know when that unit should go silent so that the Ghost Army's radio would would start and that was absolutely seamless.

And then the other part of that is that a lot of these radio transmissions are in Morse code and the Germans had the ability to to identify individual American operators by their sending style what's called their fist you know, sending the the Morse code and so the ghost army guys had to learn how to imitate the the other American operators essentially imitate their sending style in order to fool the Germans.

>> So there's a lot of detail to make deception work.

The other aspect there are so many aspects will be lots of others.

But talk with us about the technology that was not available even before the start of the war now moving in on the the Sonic are radio sites, right?

>> Well, especially with sonic deception.

They used a technology called a wire recorder which is the predecessor of the tape recorder which was the predecessor of the cassette recorder.

>> But a wire recorder the wire is about the consistency of fishing line.

OK, it's that thin and it takes about six feet of wire, makes one second of sound so you'd have two miles of wire on a real and that's what they played back.

>> If you didn't have that technology you couldn't do sonic deception.

So it really was a brand new thing in World War Two and they also they mixed the sounds together.

This is kind of like a predecessor of multi-track recording is what the ghost army guys are doing and putting together these deceptions.

>> Yeah, and among these guys were gentlemen who at the close of the war would move on to amazing careers within their fields photographers and artists and we can name some of those names.

But we did tease the name Bill Blass and so there is as most genealogy comes, it brings it close to home Bill Glass is 21 years old.

>> I think it is at the time.

Yeah.

And Bill Blass is is the kid from Fort Wayne and he has been sort of scrabbling about in the fashion business in New York and he is drafted and ends up in this unit and I think a lot of the people who knew blacks I talked to a bunch of people who knew Bill Blass new knew that he was from Fort Wayne and they said that he had he had and you see it in pictures.

He's got a kind of a big smile this idea that smile on almost the entire war because you know, he just really appreciated being kind of in this unit with other artists who are there and all these brand new experiences for a young guy.

>> And of course, you know, they were in danger some but it wasn't like the infantry.

It wasn't like the guys who were really on the front who really bore the brunt of that.

So you know, he he was a presence at everybody who met him in that unit remembered.

>> Here's another excerpt from the Gold Star me with a feature of Bill Blass.

>> Take a look.

Another artist constantly sketching was a 21 year old from Indiana named Bill Blass.

>> Bill last great guy wonderful knew what he wanted to read Vogue in his FoxxHole.

>> The rest of us were a bunch of slobs but not glass.

He was always dressed to the nines.

>> We all had the same uniforms but leave us to blast to have his press.

There's something blast filled his notebooks with ideas for women's clothing, even sketching a logo he wanted to use for his fashion designs after the war.

>> Those of us from New York and I thought we were very sophisticated but but Bill of course came from Fort Wayne , Indiana and was far more sophisticated than most of us.

>> And you know, there's a there's a story that one of the soldiers told about Bill Blass.

He said that that you know, he because he got the same uniform everybody else did they said he took that uniform apart and then sewed it back together so that that's why his enlisted man's uniform looks so good because he'd retailer his own uniform, you know so well so much about that postwar career for Bill Blass and so much more is something you can see right now as the exhibit has just opened downtown a dual part exhibit between the History Fort Wayne History Center and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

All this in celebration of what would have been Bill's one hundredth birthday this year born in nineteen twenty two South Side high school grad best known as being one of the premier American fashion designers of the twentieth century, this whole exhibition is being put together guest curated by Joanna Gilli who is Fort Wayne Museum of Art Associate Curator of exhibitions complete with inflatable tank.

>> You can see both parts at the History Center and at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, both of those going on now through September 30th and he joined quite a fraternity Arthur Schill Stone illustrator Jack may see an exhibit designer a couple other names also a very famous minimalist painter and sculptor Arthur Singer who became an internationally known wildlife artist.

He did the birds and flowers of the 50 states postage stamps.

>> But you know, the great thing about the ghost army story is I cannot think of another history story that would allow me to speak at the National World War Two Museum and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and I have presented a story at both those places not to mention numerous art museums.

>> So it's a story that just has this tremendous range and involves all these different things and I think that's why it's so interesting to people.

And so when did the Ghost Army appear to you, if you will, in a dream?

>> Apparently I learned about this story seventeen years ago when I was a much younger and darker haired man and I met a woman whose uncle was in this unit and somebody introduced us and she was very excited about the idea that somebody should make a documentary film about this.

>> And like a lot of people at that time I knew about Operation Fortitude, the famous D-Day deception to fool the Germans about where the D-Day landings would take place.

>> I knew that story but this is a completely different story.

This is an all-American unit, 1100 guys doing this traveling roadshow of deception up and down the front lines.

>> I had never heard of this story so I was excited about it.

I went to work and eventually took eight years but eventually created the documentary that originally premiered on PBS in in 2013 and that's led to a book and Ghost Army nonprofit End and Ghost Army takeover of my life which is just fine because it is really an honor and a marvel to be able to tell this story and all the way up to and including still hanging on to those storytellers.

There was recently a medal ceremony well in fact the announcement of a medal ceremony and then needing to hurry up and do something while these gentlemen are still right.

>> So so we worked for the last seven years we've worked to get Congress to award a Congressional Gold medal to this unit because they were never really honored appropriately at the time because of secrecy.

>> President Biden signed that legislation into law on February 1st and we've been doing a series of ceremonies for the nine surviving veterans actually serving its eight surviving veterans.

Now that's Tom Anderson in Delaware being congratulated by the commander of the Delaware National Guard.

So we're doing a ceremony for each of these veterans in order to be able to kind of bring home to them what an honor this is.

>> I mean and what a big deal this is.

I mean this is the Congressional Gold Medal.

>> It's been given out to units like the Navajo Code Talkers and the Doolittle Raiders and the OSL and these guys belong in that category.

>> And I want I mean there's only nine eight left out of 1100 but I want them to know how important it is.

>> This is a picture from a couple of years ago at the National World War to Museum and that's Stanley Nance on the left and Bernie Bloustein and Seymour Nissenbaum on the right and they are still alive.

We did a ceremony for Seymour.

We're going to get to Burnie's shortly and of course Stanley Natsu who you also see here has passed away.

Stanley Nance had had this is this is apropos of nothing but Stanley Nance had 14 children and 53 grandchildren and their great grandchild Count is currently around one hundred and ten or so.

>> So he has a big family and I feel like I know most of you do feel I'm sure that you and I want to get to that and then share one one more piece of video.

But in the putting together this documentary these look like gentlemen who are tremendously serious about their craft but when they're done crafting they look like they could be great colleagues .

>> They're really I've been amazed.

I mean just meeting these guys has been an amazing experience .

>> It's really hard for me to put into words.

You know the yes, there were two veterans there there many of them are artists.

Some of them have done other things.

They are funny.

They are charming.

They are thoughtful.

They're very humble because they would say hey, the real heroes are the front line troops.

>> I cannot think of anything else in my life that I've done that has been such a great honor and I consider every one of the soldiers I interviewed for the film and every one of the soldiers I've met as a friend.

And so when I lost we lost Nick a month ago that was really hard because it was three months shy of his 100th birthday and Nick was a good friend and so it's been an honor to know them.

>> It's hard to see them go.

>> It does feel like part of my family at this point.

Yeah, they are described in the documentary as soldiers with sketchbooks always creating and they were doing that even in Normandy.

>> Take a look.

A few miles from the ghost Army's first bivouac was the Normandy Village of trivia.

>> The artists were drawn to a bombed out church off a town square.

These were some of the first sketches I did.

>> They were not too long after the invasion in the remains of this church we went out three or four guys in there sketching.

We were sleeping in hedgerows and foxholes but nothing kept us away from going someplace to do a watercolor .

>> I was not the only soldier with a sketchbook I'd have sketched whether I was the only soldier or not.

>> To be quite honest with you, I think helped keep me in balance.

>> I think it kept my sanity.

>> It's interesting that it said that deception requires an artist's eye for detail and they certainly brought that to their jobs.

>> Yes and especially I mean I mean all the forms of deception and the artists were mostly only involved in the visible deception but all of them involved this amazing eye for detail and it's life or death because if you get that detail wrong, you're putting on a show for an audience that basically wants to kill you and so don't get it wrong because the reviews are going to be very negative.

>> Yeah.

And the body of work that this group produced in order to further the cause during World War Two , that body of work itself is now and has continued to be something assembling at the national level.

>> Well, I am trying I've been working for a number of years to preserve the material related to deception so that it's available to future historians because we don't know you know what somebody might be able to write about 25 or 50 years from now.

So we've saved some of the art that they've created , although a lot of that is spread out in individual collections, letters that they wrote, other materials that we've been able to get together and our my nonprofit the Ghost Army Legacy Project has been able to assemble a lot of that material and then donated it to the National World War Museum and we keep trying to find other material.

>> We want to make sure it's not lost.

The guys are gone almost all gone.

>> You know, you want to make sure stuff doesn't get thrown away and it gets preserved and that's a that's a hard thing to do.

You know, you're plowing the sea trying to preserve history but it's still something that we're working really hard at doing and you know, they just flashed up our website up there which is can I can I please?

>> Absolutely.

Which is Gustaaf for me that dog and we have a lot of letters and documents and primary source material on there which is great for historians, great for students doing history projects, national history day projects.

You know, we're trying to make that material available so that other people can explore the ghost army story on their own as deeply as they want.

>> You can see it online.

You can see it Sunday afternoon at two on PBS Fort Wayne.

You can see a lot about Bill Blass and his connection to the Ghost Army at the History Center and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art through September 30th.

He is writer and filmmaker Ric Byers.

>> Sir, thank you so much for being with us.

Oh, thank you so much, Bruce .

It's been a great pleasure and for everyone with prime time,