Ghost Army of World War II [Hardcover]

Jack M. Kneece (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2001

The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was a force of only 1,000 men who, with skilled deceptions, often masqueraded as 34,000.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While the broader activities of the U.S. Army 23rd Headquarters Special Troops are somewhat known deployment of inflatable tanks and tents, electronic sound simulations of troop contingents and radio traffic, fake paratroopers (or "Ruperts") the details remained classified until 1996. Freed from their code of silence, many of the remaining members of the 23rd (which included designer Bill Blass) contributed testimony to Ghost Army Of World War II by veteran reporter Jack Kneece, who fills in their testimony with a careful weighing of the documentary evidence

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Career journalist and newspaperman Kneece chronicles the story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. With only 1100 men, the 23rd was repeatedly able to disguise itself as a much larger force, masking the Allies' real operations and saving thousands of lives. The Germans called them the "Phantom Army," while the 23rd preferred the nickname "Ghost Army." Using elaborate ruses of false radio traffic, sound effects, inflatable vehicles, and other techniques, these "ghosts" were so successful in over 20 operations that the Germans believed that they were facing a 30,000-man force. The unit's soldiers were actually artists, set designers, sound technicians, and other specialists (including Bill Blass, Elsworth Kelly, Art Kane, and George Stulten). Kneece uses numerous declassified documents and personal interviews with veterans to create a readable narrative of the unit's operations in France, Luxembourg, and Germany. This unit was classified top secret during World War II and remained so until 1996, and the author describes the "silent suffering" of the 23rd's men, who did not get due recognition because of this top-secret classification. While not scholarly, this book is a capable study of an elite military unit for public and academic libraries. David M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing; First edition (May 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565548760
• ISBN-13: 978-1565548763
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Repetition is Rampant!, September 25, 2001

By 

R. Dahl (Lambertville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Ghost Army of World War II (Hardcover)

I have been researching this Army unit for a couple of years, since my father (Harold J. Dahl) served in the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, which was one of four units that made up the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops - also known as the Ghost or Phantom Army. I was very excited to find this book, purchased it immediately, and began reading the day it arrived. Within minutes doubts were growing in my mind, and by the end of the second chapter I could see it was going nowhere fast.

This book obviously had no editor. There is repetition of facts and names at a rate that no editor could stand. I found one sentence repeated almost verbatim three times in four pages!

It seems the author talked with a handful of surviving members of the 23rd (there are many more he never tracked down) and wrote down their ramblings verbatim. It looks to me like he found out that Bill Blass was in the 23rd, talked to him, then contacted the people he still kept in touch with and left it at that. There are many more (my father not among them, alas) still living who could have contributed material to help beef up the content of this book.

There is just about no effort made to pull together facts from disparate sources, to bring in information from Army files, or do any real analysis or interpretation of the formation, training, mission, or experience of the unit. I also found passages that are nearly identical to articles written 20 years ago - most readers will not detect this, of course, but it jumped out at me because I have read so much on this group.

The only (and I mean only) piece of new factual information I got from this book was that the 23rd had a role in the Battle of the Bulge. They were impersonating an entire division when the Nazis began that attack. Since their artillery and tanks were rubber decoys (all they had were rifles and sidearms), they had to break camp and leave immediately. And so the Nazis got far less resistance in the early days of the attack than they expected. The 23rd's deception was so good that the divisions on either side thought the real soldiers were there and had turned and run. Typically, there is little in the way of analysis or interpretation on why this happened, how it effected the battle, or any of a dozen interesting and illuminating questions that could have been explored. It is just stated in a page or so, and then the author returns to the pandering and fluff that fills the remainder of the book.

You should only purchase this book if you are a collector of information on the Ghost Army, or know someone personally who is mentioned in the book (and there are not that many). Another author is working on a book about this unit, and it has to be better than this work.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The ghosts of editors past..., July 1, 2003

By 

B.W. Behling (Fredericksburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghost Army of World War II (Hardcover)

...are probably turning over in their graves about this one.

While the book promises some fascinating reading, it quickly becomes tedious and a chore to read. There seems to be almost no structure to it, as if a collection of repetitive anecdotes were simply slapped between two covers. There is also no mention made of who edited this work, and I'm not surprised, since errors abound within its pages. Not simply typos, but entire paragraphs repeated, misspellings, missing and incorrect punctuation, the list is seemingly endless. If you're looking for a historical reference to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, this isn't it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great story in an ok book, August 24, 2003

By 

Dale Lane (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghost Army of World War II (Hardcover)

This is the second book I've come across about the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a unit of the US Army, active in Europe during WWII but unheard of by very few due to it's being kept secret until unclassified in 1996.
The first book, Secret Soldiers by Philip Gerard, was a well-written book and I encourage readers to check it out as well as this book by Jack Kneece.
"Ghost Army" gives a little more personal view of the this unit that used deception as it's weapon. It has many more personal accounts, photo's from personal collections and even a couple of chapters based on diaries written by soldiers in this outfit.
What I got from this book that I didn't get from the other was that these guys, with their use of camouflage and sonic deception may have indeed drawn artillery fire upon themselves that may have otherwise been directed toward my father's field artillery battalion (see my book "ALL MY LOVE, FOREVER:Letters Home From A WWII Citizen Soldier")as they fought to capture the heavily defended port city of Brest in Brittany, France during the late summer of 1944.
I thought one poignant item in the book is an illustration of their ghost embellished unit shoulder patch, which due to the secret nature of their activities, they were never permitted to wear. The only identifying patches they could use were of those divisions that they were portraying to in order to deceive the enemy. -Dale Lane