The ceremony was held at the U.S. Capitol on March 21, 2024. Christine Wormuth, the Secretary of the Army, spoke at the ceremony. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and House Speaker Mike Johnson both participated. Rick Beyer addressed those gathered, representing the Ghost Army Legacy Project that had spent years working toward this recognition.
By the time of the ceremony, most of the men who had served in the unit were gone. Seven surviving members were known to still be alive. Three of them were able to attend and receive their medals in person: Bernard Bluestein, 100 years old, of Hoffman Estates, Illinois; John Christman, 99, of Leesburg, New Jersey; and Seymour Nussenbaum, 100, of Monroe Township, New Jersey.
The gap between the authorization and the presentation — 2022 for the law, 2024 for the ceremony — is a specific factual distinction that the prompt for this article flags as requiring clarity. The congressional authorization created the medal; the ceremony presented it to those who could be there to receive it.
## Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, and the Artists at War
The concentration of artistic talent in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops produced an unusual wartime experience that the surviving members described as, in some ways, unlike any other military service.
Bill Blass, who would later build one of the most successful fashion design businesses in America, served in the visual deception element. The skills that would eventually make him famous — a precise visual sense, an understanding of how appearance communicates identity and status, an ability to construct convincing surfaces — were directly relevant to the work of making rubber tanks look like real ones and fake headquarters look like genuine command posts.