![]() ![]() During their downtime, they painted to escape the horrors of war. They were artists and designers who got their start in The Ghost Army. "The people who came out of this unit is, in itself, a fascinating story," said Beyer. They masqueraded as generals and set up phony command posts to deceive enemy spies. Wherever they were stationed, The Ghost Army impersonated real units. "You can't skip the other parts, because if you hear a radio that says an armored division is moving in, and then you never see any tanks or you never hear them at night moving in, you're not going to believe the radio." So you have to get the radio right," Beyer asserted. ![]() Because they're going to hear the radio broadcast long before the troops arrive. It's always the first information you're gonna get to the enemy. Getting the radio transmissions right was crucial. "I told my children it was the biggest boom box you ever saw, but it played sounds of tanks and activity," said one. ![]() In the documentary, some Ghost Army veterans talk about how they used sounds and special effects to give the operation a realistic feel. The operation on the Rhine was deemed a great success. "The 1,000 men in this unit were basically pretending to be two divisions of 30,000 men and trying to convince the Germans that they were attacking across the Rhine in one place where the real attack was going to take place 10 miles away," said filmmaker Rick Beyer. Hundreds of inflatable tanks and other military vehicles were props in an elaborate ruse, one of many that a small group of American soldiers staged to distract the enemy. Only nothing the Germans heard or saw was real. Members of the Ghost Army work with an inflatable tank, one of hundreds of props used to deceive the enemy during World War ll. ![]()
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