Customer Reviews

Ghost Army of World War II

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

...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.

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

For more than 50 years the exploits of the "Ghost Army" - actually the Twenty-third Headquarters Special Troops - were a closely guarded military secret. These 1,100 men had a special talent to decieve, mislead and confuse the enemy (traits I am sure ex-president Bill Clinton would have admired and issued them medals for if he had ever been told about them. Kneece, a veteran reporter and excellent story-teller, recreates the thrills and dangers these men encountered in a humorous and revealing account that fascinates and makes you chest-thumping proud of men who could perform so intelligently and innovatively in life and death situations. Unlike many writers of history, Kneece's account reflects the accuracy of what actually happened through hundreds of interviews with the survivors - many of whom never told their wives what they did in World War II until the records concerning the Ghost Army were declassified in 1996. Kneece is to be commended for writing a compelling, funny and historically important book. This is a work that cries out for recognition, both for the veterans who saved tens of thousands of lives as World War II soldiers and for Kneece, who has given them the recognition they so deserve. Ghost Army is a movie waiting to happen. Casting should begin immediately for who will play Bill Blass (who became a world-famous fashion designer); Lt. Dick Syracuse, the poker-playing, fun-loving, well-liked leader; Pvt. Bob Tompkins, whose real-life love story is better than Ben Afleck's in the movie "Pearl Harbor", or Cpl. Bill Enderlein, who has begun to recognize how over-looked for their war contributions the 23rd has been. It's rare that a history book comes along that tells the story in a way that you can feel compassion for the soldiers, understand the officers, laugh at the enemy and verify it all after the fact. A must-read for any history buff and a fun-read for everyone.

I wanted to read this book. I really did. It sounds fascinating.

I got about one-quarter of the way thru before I gave up. The writing style is difficult to read. The author jumps from incident to incident with no discernable pattern. It feels like a bunch of collected stories lumped together. It was hard to maintain a sense of progress.

Reading the first chapter felt like an intro to the rest of the book. I expected some more detail, chronology, etc. While the author did present those, he presents the material in a way that made chapter two feel like an intro; chapter three felt like an intro... when is the story going to begin!?

I wouldn't quite term this 'military history', but more in line of 'military non-fiction'. I'd also skip this particular version.

I have never written an Amazon review before, but this book is so terrible that I am compelled to post something.

I simply want to add my voice to the other negative reviews of this book because the positive reviews are bogus. As the others have said, this is a rambling collection of half thought through points with much repetition and out of context quotes.

I write this as I'm half way through the book (will I even finish?!) and Kneece has yet to clearly document an entire action the 23rd served in. Instead, the reader is left to piece together the larger picture from almost no hard facts except supposedly entertaining anecdotes from the very few participants Kneece interviewed. Someone has mentioned that there is no index... there is also no bibliography.

Save your money - a search on the WWW would probably yield better fruit.

The story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops could be one of the most fascinating tales to come out of the European Theater. Unfortunately, anyone wishing a well-written, coherent history of this unit's exploits will have to wait until someone else writes one.

Aside from the author's apparent lack of familiarity with World War II unit organizations and military terminilogy, especially German ("Battlegroupen"?), there are whole sections of this book that seem to be just collections of random paragraphs. There is little overall structure and a great deal of redundant text. In fact, were this not a published work, I would have assumed that what I was reading was a first draft.

I find it hard to believe that a journalist of Mr. Kneece's experience could not do better than this and even harder to believe that Pelican Press was unable to provide an editor capable of working with him to produce the book that this should have been.

I'm already on my third copy -- it's impossible to get away from house guests after they've begun reading it. A dear friend and veteran of WWII came to visit and was captivated by it. It left on the plane with him.

I dearly love the retelling of stories of WWII, as has been done so well recently by Brokaw in The Greatest Generation, but there is something special about an important, completely original story. Discovering formerly classified documents, the author has told a previously little known story. The anecdotes are fascinating, and the historical context is interesting without being intruding.

The story is almost too unlikely to be believed, something like a "Kelly's Heroes" or "Dirty Dozen" war movie. Future fashion icon Bill Blass joins with other highly talented people to trick the enemy repeatedly into misplacing resources to counter a ghost army. (The scene in Kelly's Heroes where Donald Sutherland uses loudspeakers to blast music at the Germans and adds a steel tube to the tank to make them think he has a bigger cannon is eerily reminiscent of what really happened in the "Ghost Army".)

The book is a good read and a welcome addition to the library of any WWII buff.

Author and journalist Jack Kneece tells the story of the heretofore secret exploits of the 23rd HQ (Special Troops}under Bradley's 15th Corps to deceive German Army deployment by deception, stealth, and phoney troop movements. Landing shortly after DDay at Normandy this 1100 man unit could and did imitate an Armored Division...Via personal interviews with surviving members (from PFCs, corporals, and junior officers)ala Pyle.. the writer depicts numerous events both humorous and serious. Their presence on the flanks of friendly US Army units is believed to have saved untold thousands of lives, both Allied & German. According to Kneece The Ghost Army survivors are still striving to gain recognition of their Unit, let alone appropriate awards.

This story is fascinating and reads like a mystery thriller. I could not put the book down.