The unit’s size also mattered. At roughly 1,100 men, the 23rd was small enough to move quickly and to operate without drawing the kind of attention that a larger force would attract. But it was large enough to have all of the specialized capabilities that effective deception required, organized and trained for rapid deployment.
## Casualties and the Reality of Danger
The Ghost Army was not a safe posting. The deception missions required operating close to the front — in some cases within a quarter mile of German positions — with forces that were specifically designed to look like a larger target while actually being a small and lightly armed unit.
Three members of the 23rd were killed during its deployment in Europe. Approximately thirty were wounded. These casualties were incurred in a unit whose primary weapon was illusion, not firepower — a unit that was specifically equipped to avoid combat rather than engage in it. The 406th Engineer Combat Company provided security and could fight if necessary, but the unit’s fundamental premise was that it would accomplish its objectives through deception rather than force.
The danger was real, particularly during the passive phases of an operation when the unit was holding its fake position and waiting for German response. If German commanders had identified the deception and decided to attack the exposed fake formation, the 23rd would have had limited ability to defend itself. The operations required a specific kind of nerve: maintaining the performance while knowing that a miscalculation in the enemy’s intelligence assessment could bring actual combat to a unit equipped mainly with inflatable tanks.