Astonish, Bewilder and Stupefy

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February 08, 2006

Washington Week

The last few weeks have been so busy that haven’t had a chance to write an update. So I have some catching up to do. Let me start with the week I spent in Washington .

Monday of last week I visited the National Archives and looked through the official records of 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. Four slim boxes, with a copy of the unit’s official history, reports on each of their operations, and a few other tidbits here and there. The contents more than made up in value what it lacked in volume. Among other things, I found a great many photos, some of which I had seen before, and some of which I haven't seen anywhere. Tucked in the file on Operation Viersen, the last deception the Ghost Army staged, were aerial photos showing some of their dummy installations.Here's detail from one. All the thanks and truck trailers you see are dummies. Note the tracks that have been carefully made tomake the rubber dummies seem real. They are set up in the area of Anrath, Germany, about 10 miles from the Rhine river, as part of a massive deception to deceive the Germans about where the 9th Army would cross the Rhine. There is also the original commendation letter received from 9th Army Commander William Simpson for that operation…you can read it here. Everything was covered with stamps saying it had been secret, then regarded as declassified. A study of the stamps suggested that at least some material was declassified in 1979.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was attending the Real Screen Summit, a convention of documentary makers and distributors in Washington. I had some very encouraging exploratory meetings with Steven Schupak from Maryland Public Television and Karen Miles from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is heartening to see how genuinely interested and engaged people are about this story.

Thursday I met with Professor Roy Eichorn, who teaches critical thinking at the Army Management Staff College. His father was in the Ghost Army (George Martin, photographer in the 603rd Engineers). The college is at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Roy has done a great deal of Ghost Army research and collected an amazing array of material on both the Ghost Army and deception in war. The hours ticked by as we shared materials with each other, and he talked about how he uses the Ghost Army as an example of creative “out of the box thinking.” He left me with a lot of research material and a lot to think about. I asked him to think about being on our advisory board…I was very impressed with his knowledge and insight, and I know it will prove really valuable.

Friday I met with Marta Contreras, whose late husband Belisario Contreras was one of the artist/engineers of the 603rd. She was lovely, warm and welcoming as she showed me a collection of more than 40 World War II paintings—not to mention some of the amazing work he did after the war.

People keep contacting us. We got an email from Bernie Mason, who was a lietuentant in the Ghost Army, who has an interesting story to tell:

I was the platoon leader of the 4th platoon, Co.D,603rd Engineer Battalion that was the 1st unit of the 23rd to land on Normandy's Omaha Beach on June 14th, 1944. My platoon preceded the arrival of the bulk of the 23rd by several weeks. We arrived in a twin engine cargo plane on an improvised metal grid landing strip right on the beach. Our mission was to divert attention from the 980th Field Artillery Battalion emplacements and to try to draw fire to our dummy artillery units that were in place about a mile ahead.

He is going to share his photo album and his memories with us—thank you so much!

Good progress being made on fundraising, more on that in the next update

Posted by rickbeyer at February 8, 2006 10:07 PM

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