The idea was approved. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was activated on January 20, 1944, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, under the command of Colonel Harry Reeder.
## Building an Army of Artists
Recruiting for the 23rd was unusual from the start. The Army was looking for men who could paint, design, and think creatively about visual space — people who understood how objects looked from a distance and from the air, who could construct convincing illusions under time pressure and in difficult field conditions. The 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, the visual deception element of the unit, would need soldiers who understood the relationship between appearance and reality in ways that most soldiers did not need to.
The Army drew heavily from American art schools and advertising agencies. Many of the recruits came through connections to the Pratt Institute’s Industrial Camouflage Program, one of the leading training programs for camouflage specialists in the country. The unit assembled a remarkable concentration of creative talent: painters, illustrators, designers, photographers, actors, radio producers, architects, and set designers.
Among the men who served in the 23rd was Ellsworth Kelly, who would become one of the most significant American abstract painters of the twentieth century. Bill Blass, later one of the most prominent names in American fashion design, served in the unit as well. Art Kane, who would become famous as a photographer of jazz musicians and rock performers, was there. The unit was described by those who knew its makeup as having one of the highest average IQs in the Army — some accounts place the figure at around 119.