- At the height of World War II, American military commanders made a big bet on a unit dedicated to deception to give Allied forces an advantage on the battlefield.

The artists, sound technicians, and radio operators of the so-called "Ghost Army" remained hidden for decades.

But today's guest made sure their stories were told.

He's Rick Beyer, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Rick Beyer, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and bestselling author.

He has spent much of the last 20 years telling the story of a secret US military unit from World War II, culminating in that unit receiving a Congressional Gold Medal earlier this year.

Rick, thank you so much for being with us.

- Oh, it's my great pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

- You know, we wanna talk about the book, we wanna talk about the documentary, we wanna talk about the Congressional Gold Medal, but let's start with the Ghost Army itself.

Who were they, and what did they do?

- So this was an American military unit, an army unit in World War II, tasked with deception on the battlefields of Europe.

1,100 men.

And they used inflatable tanks, sound effects, and all sorts of illusion, radio trickery, and other forms of illusion, to fool the Germans about the location and size of American troops.

They did 22 deceptions in Northern Europe.

A sister company did two deceptions in Italy.

And they were fooling the Germans so that they thought the Americans were over here when they were really over here.

And this was tremendously successful and then hushed up and kept secret for more than 50 years after the war.

- So why was it kept a secret for so long?

- I think it was kept secret because it worked.

It worked, and they wanted to preserve that deception capability against the Russians, if the Cold War turned hot.

And then I think after a while, you know, basically, people decided that the technology had moved on, that there was no longer a need to keep it secret.

But that was 50 years later.

So it really was pretty darn secret that whole time.

- So Rick, it was a secret.

How did you learn about the secret?

How did you find out?

(Jim and Wayne laugh) - Tell us that story.

- You know, there's a lot of people who think that I discovered the Ghost Army story.

And the sad truth is, Wayne, that there were three books written about it before I ever heard about it, which was 20 years ago.

But none of these books had really made a big impression or had done very much to get people to know about it.

I met somebody whose uncle served in this unit.

A friend of mine introduced us.

He said, "Her uncle served in this crazy World War II unit.

Would you like to meet her and maybe make a film about this?"

And so her name was Martha Gavin.

I met her at a coffee shop in Lexington.

And, I'll never forget, she walked in with her arms filled up with red three-ring binders, and they were her uncle's wartime scrapbooks.

And so from the very first moment that I was experiencing this story, there was this crazy deception mission, which seemed bizarre.

Like, we're using inflatable tanks and the Germans are a quarter of a mile that way.

Combined with the fact that there were many artists in this unit who were capturing the details of their trek across Europe.

So I was hooked pretty quickly.

- So when you got those three-ring binders, did you know immediately that this is a film that I have to do?

And it's a great film.

We're just about to show a clip.

But did you know immediately?

What was it?

- Yeah, pretty quickly.

You know, I would say that during the many years when I was working on this film and trying to raise money and hearing a lot of nos, one of the things that sustained me was just knowing what a great story this was.

What a great piece of non-fiction material this was, and I just couldn't believe that we weren't gonna make it.

I just always felt that it was such a good story that we were gonna get there and be able to put it on film.

- So let's watch a bit from "The Ghost Army."

We'll give our audience a real sense of what they did.

- [Narrator] March 1945.

After nine months of bitter fighting, the Allies have driven the Germans across Europe to the Rhine River, the last natural barrier to the German heartland.

It is here that Allied generals expect the battered remnants of Hitler's once-proud army to mount their final defense of the Fatherland.

- Because the Germans had said the Rhine River is going to run red with American blood.

And they meant it.

(tense music) - [Narrator] German reconnaissance planes take to the sky to pinpoint where the Allies will attack.

(tense music) Across the river from Dusseldorf, the view from the air reveals hundreds of American vehicles.

(tense music) Intercepted Allied radio transmissions confirm the presence of two American divisions.

German observation posts hear them moving in across the river.

All signs suggest the attack will come here.

But the tanks spotted from the air are 93-pound inflatable dummies.

The sounds come from loudspeakers, the radio transmissions from a script.

- It's amazing the fakery that we were able to perpetrate upon the enemy.

- [Narrator] A group of handpicked soldiers waging a secret war of deception was now trying to pull off one last grand illusion, with thousands of American lives hanging in the balance, including their own.

- So Rick, this is the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

Could you tell us a little bit about the men who made up that unit?

You mentioned already that a lot of them were artists.

But this was one of the things that I found fascinating, was that there was a cast of characters in your documentary, the men who had been in this unit.

Can you tell us where they came from?

And how did they get into this unit in the first place?

- Well, so the Army put together the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops pretty late, okay?

So it actually forms in January 1944, and four or five months later, it's headed to Europe where it's gonna be carrying out its deceptions.

So they took pre-existing units and mashed them together to make up the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

One of those units was a camouflage unit.

About half of the guys in that camouflage unit were artists who'd been recruited because of their art skills to work on camouflage.

Funny story.

You know, one of the veterans told me, he said, "I saw notice at art school about this, and I thought, 'Oh, this is a chance to be in the Army, and I won't be near the front lines, right?

I can avoid being near the front lines.'"

And then, of course, he ends up in the deception unit that's operating near the front lines.

So it didn't quite work out the way he expected it.

So there were a lot of artists in the unit.

They also had technical guys, people who'd worked for the phone company, people who had worked for radio stations.

There were a smattering of people from Hollywood.

And, you know, they weren't recruited individually to be in the deception unit.

I mean, very few people kind of got the call, "Hey, we want you to be in the deception unit."

But the Army had recruited them to be in these other units that they put together for the deception unit.

And so it really is quite an extraordinary variety of people.

A lot of skill sets.

And what I found when I interviewed these guys, I think there's 20 of them who appear in the documentary film, that they were all incredibly humble about what they did.

And they all said, "Oh, no, the real heroes are the people who are, you know, driving the tanks or firing the M1 rifles from the front lines.

You know, we just went and did a job that was given to us."

And, you know, I think that that really undersells what they did, but it's the way that they felt about it.

- So needless to say, this was a very unusual tactic, a very unusual unit.

Was there one person in the Army or somewhere in the United States whose genius this was?

Like, let's do a deception unit.

Retired General Wesley Clark talks about the role of deception.

But first, was there one person who just, you know, had an epiphany, woke up one day, and said, "We have to have a deception unit"?

Was that it?

- It's really two guys.

And I think I talk about one of them in the film, but I learned more later.

But it's two officers who are American Army officers serving in London: Ralph Ingersoll and Billy Harris.

And they are two total opposites.

Ralph Ingersoll is a former journalist.

A left-wing, flamboyant, egotistical, well-known guy.

He's an author.

He's kind of a celebrity author.

And he is working alongside Billy Harris, who is buttoned down, West Point.

Father was a general, brother was a general.

Billy became a general.

And they're two really different people.

You know, Billy Harris is kind of a straight arrow.

Ralph Ingersoll is a guy who, you know, his friend said, "You know, I never met such a brilliant guy who was such a liar."

(Jim and Wayne laugh) Which is, by the way, a great deception to create, right, if you're a smart and you're a good liar.

And so the two of them together in London in 1943 dreamed up the idea of this unit.

And Ingersoll was kind of the wild idea, pie in the sky, hey, we could do this guy.

And Billy Harris is the guy who said, "Well, yeah, but let's make it work, you know, and integrate well with the military."

And they were inspired by the British.

The British had done some tactical deceptions in North Africa.

My British friends don't like it when I leave that out, so I always like to mention that.

But I think they really took it one step farther with this mobile, multimedia, tactical deception unit.

Really the first one in history.

- So talk about the role of deception historically.

Were there any precedents to this?

I mean, obviously, in the 1940s, this unit used very advanced technology for the time.

But going back further in time, was there any other use of deception in any other way with, you know, different technologies or no technology?

- We can take the rest of the show to talk about all the forms of deception in history.

I always say, look, it goes back to the Trojan Horse, which worked great that first time, but you never hear about the second time.

Wouldn't have worked so well.

You know, George Washington used deception to fool the British when he marched on Princeton.

General Johnston, the Confederate general, had a log cannon aimed at, you know, firing points along his line to make it seem like they were a real cannon there.

There's been all sorts of examples of deception.

And even in World War II, the Germans carried out some deception.

Some very, you know, well-done deceptions against the Allies.

But really what makes this different is that this was a dedicated unit.

It was dedicated to deception.

It was multimedia with sound and radio and inflatables and what they called special effects, which is physical impersonation.

And that they were able to like, pretend to be the 6th Armored Division here, fold that up, and three days later pretend to be the 75th Infantry Division over here.

And that was really something brand new.

And the last thing I'll say about that is people might still be like, "Well, why do you do deception on the battlefield?"

You do deception because if you're attacking, or if you're expecting an attack, and you think it's gonna come over here, and you move all your forces over here, when the real attack comes over here, you won't be prepared for it.

And that attack will succeed with a greater chance of success and a less chance of losing lives.

And so that's why you do deception on the battlefield, because it can save lives, and it can make your forces more effective.

- You know, Rick, one of the things that struck me both in the documentary and in the book is that you were able to reproduce and share some of the sketches that the men in this unit made as they sort of documented their own participation in the war.

And it's everything from the women at the local brothel to some haunting images of a particular night at Verdun, the World War I battle site.

Talk to me about receiving those kind of artifacts from these veterans and the story that they tell in and of themselves.

- Well, I think from the very first, you know, seeing the artwork that John Jarvie had created led me to think that this was an important part of the story.

So anytime I talked to a veteran from that visual deception unit, the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, if they were an artist, I'd ask what they had.

And people would go up into their attics.

They would dig into their drawers.

They would find things that they hadn't looked at in 50 years.

You know, it is a great variety of stuff, from the humorous to the absolutely tragic.

And, you know, to me, it opened up a window on the war that is very different from photographs, because the artwork is the way it's being interpreted by this young artist.

And these guys were young.

They were 18, 19, 20 years old.

But they've got a sketch pad, and they're out there on the, you know, in towns in France, which, by the way, was the art center of the world.

And now they're suddenly there and engaged in battle and, in their spare time, doing all these sketches.

And, you know, for many of the veterans, when we interviewed them in the film, I remember when I interviewed John Jarvie, I would put the scrapbook on his lap.

And I would turn the page, and I'd say, "Oh, here's a drawing.

Here's a church in Trevieres, and you've got a bunch of sketches of this church.

What happened there?"

And it would take him back.

It would take him back.

And suddenly he's talking about it like it's happening, you know, right now, because in his mind, this visual has taken him back there.

So they're very, very powerful.

And not only are they in the film and the book, but we've got some that are in the Ghost Army Museum Exhibit as well that's touring the country.

And they really are, I think, a kind of a very eye-opening way to look at the war.

- Yeah, without a doubt.

Has there been any effort to quantify the lives saved by the Ghost Army?

- The figure that's been brooded about is 15 to 30,000 lives saved.

I've never been able to quite nail down the exact origin of that, although people who know a lot about this say that that number, A, feels right to them.

And many of them have said, "Oh yeah, and I think I saw some document that has that in it," although I've never been able to find that precise document.

I think a lot of the, you know, a lot of that tally probably connects to their last operation, Operation Viersen, where they're impersonating two American divisions and making it seem like they're gonna cross the Rhine River in one spot, whereas they actually cross it 15 miles to the north.

And I think that operation alone is believed to have saved thousands of lives.

One of the guys said in the film, he said, "You know, they said we saved 15 to 30,000 lives, but if we only saved 15 to 30 lives, you know, it still would've been worth doing."

And I think that that is a great way to look at it.

- So amazingly, miraculously, you could almost say, the Ghost Army was not caught up in the Battle of the Bulge, which was the bloodiest battle that US forces fought in the war.

They moved on to Viersen.

Talk about that.

That was the final stand, as it were, of the Ghost Army.

Maybe, not maybe, I would not argue, it was the most important thing they did.

Give us more detail about that.

- And I do wanna mention that there was an operation in the Battle of the Bulge.

It's not in the documentary.

So it was a radio only-operation in which they're actually trying to make it seem like Patton is not moving towards Bastogne.

He's moving towards the east.

So they are still there.

They're still involved in the Battle of the Bulge.

And then they're very involved in the second part of the Battle of the Bulge, which is reclaiming all that territory, the big bulge that the Germans made in the American lines.

But when they get to March of 1945, they've just done an operation where they took casualties.

They had a soldier killed, George Peddle.

They had a bunch of guys wounded.

They were pretty shaken up.

And then they go into this amazing operation in which they're impersonating two full divisions.

I mean, a division is like 15,000 men.

So you're impersonating 30,000 people.

You've got hundreds of inflatable tanks.

You've got phony headquarters that they set up staffed by phony colonels and generals.

They've got radio transmission, sonic transmission.

And this was on a very large scale.

They had real units attached to them to help enhance the illusion.

And when they pulled this off, I think it was March 25th of 1945, the real units crossed the Rhine River to almost no casualties.

And, you know, they were kind of expecting a bloodbath, and they got basically a very easy crossing of the river.

And I think that was an indication.

I think that's the most powerful indication there is of the great power of deception and its ability to save lives and help win the war.

- That's remarkable.

And so- - And they got a commendation.

They got a commendation from the 9th Army commander, William Simpson, which is a great letter of commendation.

It's in the book.

And he's saying, "Really, you guys did a really good job on this thing that we asked you to do, and that thing was really well performed."

And you don't say what the thing is, but gives them a letter of commendation for it anyway.

- Well, and more recently, earlier this year, in fact, the unit received a Congressional Gold Medal, largely thanks to the attention that you have drawn to this and the lobbying that you've done really over the last decade.

Can you talk to us about what inspired you to go to Congress and to do that lobbying?

And who helped you along the way?

- Well, I think I was very struck by the fact that this unit had never received a unit honor.

It had never gotten a presidential unit citation, although there had been talk of that.

That what they had done was so extraordinary and should be honored.

And this is about nine years ago.

And I looked around, and at that time, the Monuments Men were getting a Congressional Gold Medal.

And I thought, "Well, if the Monuments Men deserve this, I'm pretty sure the Ghost Army deserves it."

And I had no idea what it took to get a Congressional Gold Medal.

But I had a friend of mine from college who was a congresswoman, Annie Kuster from New Hampshire.

So I approached Annie Kuster and said, "Hey, would you be willing to sponsor this bill to get these guys a Congressional Gold Medal?"

And Annie's father was a World War II veteran, so she said, "Sure."

But she also had no idea what it takes to do a Congressional Gold Medal.

And it turned out to be this seven-year slog, because it turns out that to pass a Congressional Gold Medal, you have to get 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to co-sponsor.

And it turns out that's really hard to do.

But eventually we got a whole corps of lobbyists working on this.

Volunteer lobbyists.

We had high school students.

We had middle school students.

We had children of veterans.

We had people who were just moved by the story.

And we kind of gave them the tools using the website.

And people visited Washington.

We had groups of people go to Washington.

And then when COVID started, people were using Zoom, doing all sorts of stuff.

And slowly, slowly, slowly we got to the numbers we needed to do.

I have to say that was a very emotional moment when we passed 270 co-sponsors in the House.

And that was kind of the turning point of knowing.

Knowing that if we got it in the House, that we were gonna get it in the Senate, and we're gonna make it happen.

But, you know, it's perseverance, my perseverance and the perseverance of all the lobbyists who worked with us to make this happen.

- And it was a beautiful moment of relatively rare bipartisan comity in Washington these days.

You know, when you think back to that generation that fought the war and the world that they came back to, are there lessons that we as citizens ought to be drawing from their service and their sacrifice, as we think about the upcoming 80th anniversary of D-Day and, of course, Memorial Day at the start of the summer, that we ought to be thinking about?

- Well, I think the biggest lesson is the value of creativity.

I mean, we think of creativity as something, oh, this is for artists, or this is for, you know, in the theater or in movies or something like that.

But here is creativity being put to work on a battlefield, in a war, to save lives and help win that war.

And it's a reminder that you don't always have to, you know, have the bloodiest battle or be the biggest gung-ho attacker to have a success.

That if you can use creativity and finesse, you may be able to find another route.

And in that other route, by the way, have less people die.

And by the way, not only less Americans die, but perhaps maybe less of your enemy die as well, because you're going around them instead of trying to go through them.

And so I think that that's a great lesson from the unit, although, you know, I think there are many.

I think these guys, what they did was really quite extraordinary and worth studying for so many reasons.

- So Jim mentioned Memorial Day and the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

A lot of PBS stations are going to be showing "The Ghost Army" around this period of time.

Tell our audience how they might be able to find where and when their local station will be broadcasting it, if they do.

- Yeah, the film has been off PBS for a few years, but we've brought it back.

And it's gonna be offered to stations, you know, to put on kind of when they want.

So it's gonna be on in different times in different places.

It's gonna be on the World Channel.

So that's one place I would check.

If people ever look at the World, I think it's gonna be on the 25th or the 27th of May on the World.

But basically, if you Google "Ghost Army" and the call letters of your PBS station, you know, hundreds of them are running it in some way or another so that you'll probably be able to find it and see it.

You know, it's been 10 years since that film, I guess 11 years now.

I'm losing track of my dates here.

It's been 11 years since that film came out, and I really still think it holds up.

I mean, I think that everybody who's in it has passed away.

I mean, all of the veterans have passed away.

But when I look at it there, and we've learned a lot since then, but I still think what's in there holds up as a great telling of that story.

- And Rick, I wanna mention ghostarmy.org has a lot of resources.

The film was done a number of years ago, but your work has not stopped.

There is a growing body of biographies of members, other resources.

You know, you've hardly stood still.

Just wanted to mention that if viewers wanna learn more about this.

You know, this is an incredible amount of information and history that you are continuing to compile.

- Yeah, we absolutely are.

ghostarmy.org has built up, I think we have 500 bios of veterans there, which have largely been created by Catherine Hurst.

And many original documents, many photos, many maps.

And we're still adding stuff to it.

So you can look for more stuff going on there this year.

It's a great Ghost Army resource.

- Hey, Rick Beyer, thank you so much for being with us.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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