Poetry, too, is a form of art that reaches the innermost human domain. Beginning with Homer, the greatest war poet of Western tradition, verse has been used to memorialize war. The endeavor was quite unorganized with most of the notable bards working independently of government. Finally, in the Great War (WWI), Europe first, and later the United States, formalized the function of poets in war. Just as artists were initially used expressly for postwar purposes, so were Great War poets expected to provide verse that would later salute the glorious war efforts of their homelands. Some poets, however, did write directly for the troops, and their special efforts were recognized by field commanders, and sometimes even honored by their governments. All told, the Great War inspired a vast amount of poetry, some of the best by women.

By the time of the first great war of this century, commanders not only had artists doing posters for history and morale, but also to the enemy. The lines were so close in the Great War that it was almost as easy to propagandize enemy troops as one's own. Until this point in history, propaganda had been a private matter, primarily the concern of political parties, industry, churches, the press, etc. The Great War converted it to government enterprise, where it remains to this day.

European nations were very history-conscious at this time. They made extensive use of artists and historians to record events. The artists' role was primarily to provide "pictures that reached the heart and. soul." These would go into the historians' postwar accounts. Posters were used both for morale and deception, to enlist troops and to sell war bonds. The moving picture as an art form joined the action for the first time as the two sides dug in for over three years of trench warfare. The British and French were quite effective with all these approaches, so Americans tried to follow their examples when they entered the war nearly three years after its outbreak. President Woodrow Wilson urged them on when be asked for "oil paintings, portraits, sketches, etchings, etc. within the war zone for historical purposes." Even though America had rich traditions of war art, its soldiers saw only about eight months of fierce action; so there was precious little time to adjust and perfect the ways art could contribute to the war effort.

Barely two decades later WWII erupted. Most nations simply picked up where they had left of f in WWT. But the British were quick to adapt to new technologies and opportunities, and offered guidance to Americans even before Pearl Harbor. Once involved, the United States moved quickly into deception training. President Franklin Roosevelt talked about art and books as "weapons." Posters on the home front warned that walls have ears, enticed the hardy and affluent to enlist and buy bonds, and reminded all that Hitler was the devil incarnate.

Movies had enlisted for brief duty in WWI, but Hollywood entered the fray with great enthusiasm early in WWIIo Even before the United States became involved as a belligerent, isolationists accused movie moguls of preparing the way to lead America into war. The charge was not entirely without merit. Movies were an extraordinary and peculiar American art form. They were dynamic, and very capable of influencing viewers in the very manner that the isolationists feared. When war did come, Hollywood served primarily, under close government supervision, to elevate and reinforce civilian morale, but appropriate films were also widely distributed by military commanders to troops in all theaters of the war. By and large, Hollywood had tremendous impact during the war. It truly could, as Washington, D.C. had expected, "mobilize public opinion."
Historians and artists also went to war again in 1941. They were assigned to major units in all services, especially the army. The approach, though, was still traditional: historians and artists were expected to record events so that richly illustrated histories could be written later. And there exist today histories of all American armies and divisions and many regiments and battalions. The Fifth Army that fought its way up Italy has the grandest; nine volumes, most of which are illustrated with splendid artwork. But before that history was written, army policy had taken a gigantic, mutant leap with the creation of the Ghost Army, "hidden" amongst engineers. Unlike war artists through the centuries, these men used their special talents not to observe and record war, but to participate directly in combat. They used their particular skills specifically to deceive the enemy during the preparation for and the heat of battle. This was an entirely new dimension, and it is where the three strands of historical background, war, artists and deception, come together. Recall that deception has always been en aspect of warfare, and also that artists have long been involved in warfare, but never before were there artists in the front lines using their skills directly to defeat the enemy; before they had been at the front primarily to record events for the later use of officials, historians, museums and private collectors. Now they were there to fight the enemy.

Deception took place on a grand scale in WWII. Most of the techniques that were used so successfully in Europe were pioneered or foreshadowed by General Bernard Montgomery in his North African battles against German General Erwin Rommel. But, since final triumph came upon the continent, this essay will henceforth treat exclusively with that venue, focusing upon the large picture before getting into the small-unit, nitty-gritty of the Ghost Army.

In the words of Charles Cruickshank, who wrote the scholarly, Deception in World War II,

"Deception in war is the art of misleading the enemy into doing something, or not doing something, so that his strategic or tactical position will be weakened. A plan may involve months of careful preparation, the movement of thousands of troops, hundreds of aircraft, and scores of warships, all in order to convince the enemy that (something will or will not occur). A cover plan may be on the same scale. The perfect deception plan is like a jigsaw puzzle. Pieces of information are allowed to reach the enemy (disinformation again) in such a way as to convince him that be has discovered them by accident. If he puts them together himself he is far more likely to believe that the intended picture is the true one. An almost endless variety of such pieces can be offered to the enemy."

The Allies wanted the Germans to experience and re experience a common occurrence; namely, to discover that things are not always what they seem to be. So, deception became a major feature of Allied planning, and, as the Axis was to discover over and over again every Allied move had a phony component.

The big flimflam that the Ally had to pull off was to keep the Germans guessing about where the inevitable invasion would strike. The vast plans of D Day itself were covered by the code name, Overlord (Neptune was the code for just the actual landing itself), but that operation was preceded by over two years of careful planning to mislead the Axis. The Americans and British cooperated so closely in this endeavor that neither could keep a secret from the other after WW II because they had totally shared ciphering and deciphering information!

The Germans had to assume that the invasion would come somewhere between Dunkirk and Cherbourg, probably between Calais and Normandy. Overlord not only misled the Germans on where the strike would come, but also made them prepare for a threatened but wholly fictional second landing. For three days after D Day, the Germans held back troops that might have blown the Allies off Normandy's beaches if they had not been kept at the ready nearly two hundred miles away, waiting for that bigger invasion! Fortunately, Hitler himself was convinced that the follow up would hit at Calais.

To cover the Normandy invasion, the Allies had scores, maybe hundreds, of code named smaller operations, most of which were subsumed under three grand master deceptions code named, Bodyguard, Fortitude North and Fortitude South. Bodyguard was a worldwide sham, but it focused upon suggesting that a major invasion would come out of the Mediterranean, probably through Greece, maybe France. Fortitude North led Germans to expect two invasions in Norway, anytime after April, 1944. Fortitude South, the major deception in all the history of warfare, convinced the Germans that the first attack in July or August would hit in the vicinity of le Havre, and the main assault would follow a few days later near Calais over one hundred miles to the northeast.

German intelligence told the general staff that the Allies had fifty or more divisions ready to invade. They expected twenty divisions to make the initial landing. When only five hit Normandy, German intelligence took that as confirmation that the main invasion would strike elsewhere. Germany kept twenty divisions in Norway and its best western troops near Calais. The Allies' grand schemes succeeded far beyond the cautious but hopeful expectations of the Allies' Supreme Commander, General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower. In fact, their success turned around many military skeptics, who thereafter had higher hopes for deception in general and the Ghost Army in particular than could possibly be realized.

The Ghost Army was indeed an unusual outfit. When he enlisted, Laynor was put into the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion. At the time of its formation in mid 1942, its function was seen solely in terms of mastering camouflage techniques, and then passing those skills on to troops in regular infantry, tank and artillery units. In 1943 the 603rd was merged with three other unordinary groups, also composed largely of people from the arts and humanities. The new unit was named The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, about eleven hundred strong. This merger signaled that the high command had a new role in mind for the Ghost Army. No longer was mere camouflage to be its mission. Henceforth, it would be charged with impersonating all manner of other units. The Axis was never to be certain of its identification of opposing Allied units. If the Ghost Army carried out its assignments with precision, the Axis would find itself engaging a phantom, while the "real" outfit was somewhere else.

So, the troops of the Ghost Army began training for their new mission. Following the lead of General Montgomery, they worked with phony equipment and operations such as inflatable rubber tanks, dummy artillery, fraudulent radio messages, empty bivouacs, etc. They impersonated parts of so many different outfits that by accident they became proficient tailors just for the redesign of uniforms and attaching and removing shoulder patches. Once in England they took part in the masterful deceit of Fortitude South, and on D Day plus five the first detachment from the 23rd arrived at Omaha Beach. It took almost two months to get the rest of the special troops located in the lines radiating out from the beachheads.

The 23rd's first combat duty came with Operation Elephant, whereby a little under half of the unit pretended to be the Second Armored Division while that outfit secretly took up a new position. They were minimally successful, learning among other things that when just a bit of air went out of a rubber tank that its cannon drooped in a tell tale manner.

The first action that involved all units of the 23rd was called Operation Brest, and it took place just outside that French port city. The accompanying inserts, reveal how Task Force Z of the 23rd was used in this engagement. As the "General Plan" shows, the major objective was to make a tank unit appear much stronger than it really was. The drawing below reveals the deployment of real and phony equipment. The plan failed to make the Germans evacuate, but it did pin down real German troops to hold the line against phony artillery and tank battalions.

Click Images to Enlarge

For the next seven months, they were in frequent combat under many code names, among others, Casanova, Elsenborn, Koblenz, Knifedge, and Accordion. Always, they pretended to be other outfits. The term "notional," from the base word "notion," meaning "to exist in the mind only," came to be applied officially to these fake troops. In fact, "notional" troops were crucial in mid-June, 1944, when Ike had to use all of his real soldiers to break out of Normandy. Might the forces that were distracted by the 23rd have allowed the Germans to take back the beaches?

The catalog of ruses employed by the 23rd's troops is almost endless. They used "flash" canisters to mimic artillery. They kept evening fires burning where there were no troops. Half-tracks left "tank" tracks. Inflatable artillery, trucks, planes, tanks, called big boys, and even buildings were all over the place, often covered by poor camouflaging! Dummy parachute drops diverted attention from real ones. False radio messages were mingled with true ones. Signs directing fictional traffic were put up. Some all-star performances were put on in rural bars with German ears by artistic "drunks" who carelessly let vital military information slip out with their alcoholic boasts. Phony bridge parts were stacked along streams, sometimes a counterfeit bridge was actually built. It was going so well once, that an alert American general ordered the last minute substitution of real bridge parts.

Perhaps the most effective artifice they developed were "sound" trucks, which broadcast the complex sounds of military units. Laynor and his comrades carefully recorded the noises of typical tank and infantry and artillery units under varying weather conditions and from a range of distances. Before 1944 was out, they had a "sound" recording, of quite remarkable fidelity, of almost every type of military unit on the continent. They could and did bamboozle the Germans into believing they were hearing a tank battalion crank up a mile away, or an infantry regiment on the move just beyond that rise up ahead; or, whatever, they had a sound for it. A mere company of "sound" trucks could imitate a tank or infantry division!

One of the adverse effects of being good at what they did, that is, having the Germans believe they were the real McCoys, in that they called fire in upon themselves frequently. It might have been from just such a bizarre twist of fate that Joseph Heller got his inspiration for Catch 22? There is no doubt that it was the direct cause of the shrapnel that Laynor caught near Bastogne.

Whenever opportunity allowed, Laynor made sketches. He tried to capture the "human" side of war. Look into the faces of his figures and there one can see the whole gamut of emotions that soldiers feel when death is near, when the shelling stops, when rest is at hand, when food is scarce, when victory beckons. When he returned to the United States and civilian life, he turned those sketches into the works in this display. We do not know yet whether Laynor will belong to the ages as many artists, not widely recognized in their own time, came to be. But we do know that he was a gifted painter who executed a variety of styles with masterful strokes. And we know also that he created an important collection of WW II art, much of which you see in this gallery. It displays in powerful manner what life was bike for the common soldier.

Unfortunately, records are not locally available that reveal where all the 23rd's gimmicks of deceit came from. Did they come out of the fertile imaginations of the men of the Ghost Army, or did the Brits devise them? Probably no one would accuse army regulars of having original thoughts; but then again, it was army regulars who thought up the 23rd in the first place. It was army regulars who brought these dreamers, these artists, these men like Harold Laynor together.

What is known for certain is that the 23rd was unique. There was no other unit like it in military history to that time. It was a vital part of the grandly successful joint British and American endeavor to deceive and defeat the Axis.