The inflatable tanks have become the symbol of the Ghost Army in popular memory — the image that captures the essential strangeness and creativity of what the unit did. But the rubber Sherman was only one part of a system that included fake radio traffic, recorded sounds played through halftrack speakers, men in bars dropping false information, bulldozers making tracks in mud, and operators imitating each other’s Morse code. The whole system, working together, created the illusion that fooled two German divisions into holding the wrong sector of the Rhine while the real troops crossed somewhere else.
That crossing, on March 24, 1945, cost approximately 30 American casualties at the initial bridgehead. The same crossing against a prepared and alerted German defense could have cost many hundreds or thousands more. The difference was an inflatable army deployed by a unit of artists, and the story of that difference is worth knowing.
## Camp Forrest and the First Training
The activation of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, in January 1944 put together a mix of men who had almost nothing in common except the Army judgment that they were useful. Camp Forrest was a large training installation in central Tennessee. The men who arrived found themselves in an organization unlike any other in the Army: a unit with a classified mission, specialized equipment most of them had never seen, and training requirements that bore little resemblance to the standard infantry curriculum.
## Crossing to England
The 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion had roughly two years of camouflage training behind it when the 23rd activated. The 3132nd Signal Service Company trained specifically at the Army Experimental Station at Pine Camp, New York — the facility now known as Fort Drum — on equipment developed specifically for this mission. The radio operators faced a particular challenge: learning to imitate another operator Morse code style required months of practice with recordings of the actual operators who would be impersonated. Colonel Harry Reeder commanded the entire organization, responsible for integrating four very different kinds of units into a coherent capability.