Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis

by Paul B. Janeczko

Overview

What do set design, sound effects, and showmanship have to do with winning World War II? Meet the Ghost Army that played a surprising role in helping to deceive — and defeat — the Nazis.

In his third book about deception during war, Paul B. Janeczko focuses his lens on World War II and the operations carried out by the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army. This remarkable unit included actors, camouflage experts, sound engineers, painters, and set designers who used their skills to secretly and systematically replace fighting units — fooling the Nazi army into believing what their eyes and ears told them, even though the sights and sounds of tanks and war machines and troops were entirely fabricated. Follow the Twenty-Third into Europe as they play a dangerous game of enticing the German army into making battlefield mistakes by using sonic deceptions, inflatable tanks, pyrotechnics, and camouflage in more than twenty operations. From the Normandy invasion to the crossing of the Rhine River, the men of the Ghost Army — several of whom went on to become famous artists and designers after the war — played an improbable role in the Allied victory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763681531
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	810,791
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	1270L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Ghost Army Is Born 5

Germans in South America 10

Beach Jumpers 18

Chapter 2 Recruitment and Training 25

Combat Engineers 42

The Army Half-Tracks 52

Chapter 3 Shipping Out … and More Waiting 57

Convoys 59

Liberty Ships 65

Chapter 4 The Twenty-Third Gets into Action 87

From Hollywood to the Battlefield: Frederic Fox 92

Artists of the 603rd; Ellsworth Kelly 108

Chapter 5 The First Big Test 121

The Red Ball Express 125

Artists of the 603rd: Victor Dowd 140

Chapter 6 A Trio of Deceptions 153

Artists of the 603rd: Arthur Singer 160

Bailey Bridges 170

Chapter 7 A Deadly Winter 175

Panzer Brigade 150 185

Artists of the 603rd: Bill Blass 196

Chapter 8 After the Battle of the Bulge 205

Trench Art 213

Artists of the 603rd: Harold Laynor 219

Chapter 9 The Final Deception 223

Artists of the 603rd: Arthur Shilstone 226

Commendation for the VIERSEN Deception 244

Epilogue 247

Source Notes 253

Bibliography 278

Image Credits 284

Index 287

Acknowledgments 295

Editorial Reviews

For those with a mental map of the war, this book will provide delightful details of a very specialized and secret group. Biographical sketches of many of the members of the Twenty-Third Special Troops are included as well as brief sidebars detailing related topics. Plentiful photographs and maps are included throughout...military history lovers will find much to appreciate in this extensive retelling of a skillful deception that helped end World War II.
—School Library Journal

In profiling the 23rd, Janeczko has clearly done prodigious research, and the result is an extraordinarily detailed history that sometimes offers a dramatic account of field operations...for teens who enjoy reading about war, this will be a bountiful gift.
—Booklist Online

Secret Soldiers by Paul B. Janeczko (Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War) brings to light a little-known element of the Allied war effort...Janeczko intersperses his narrative with photographs and mini biographies of the men in the unit. Secret Soldiers is enlightening and intriguing, a must-read for young military buffs.
—Shelf Awareness for Readers

From the Publisher

04/01/2019

Gr 9 Up—The use of spies and intercepting information regarding enemies' movements are key to winning any military campaign. But what if the enemy was actually sending false signals, setting up fake encampments and using sophisticated recording equipment to simulate movement that never really happened? Such was the task of the Twenty-Third Special Troops in the European Theater of World War II. Their actions and techniques were so secret they remained classified for 50 years after the war ended. This title follows their story from the conception and recruitment of the units to their final mission and return home. While the beginning is a bit confusing with lots of detail and a rapidly introduced large cast of characters, a rhythm develops taking readers on a journey of intrigue across Europe. This title is not a good choice for a first-time military history reader, as the military jargon begins on page one and little background of the overall conflict is provided throughout. However, for those with a mental map of the war, this book will provide delightful details of a very specialized and secret group. Biographical sketches of many of the members of the Twenty-Third Special Troops are included as well as brief sidebars detailing related topics. Plentiful photographs and maps are included throughout. VERDICT While some might grow weary of reading details of each specific mission, military history lovers will find much to appreciate in this extensive retelling of a skillful deception that helped end World War II.—Emily Beasley, Omaha Public Schools

School Library Journal

2019-03-03

During World War II, the U.S. 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was created to launch a series of operations to deceive the Germans.

Artists, actors, telegraphers, set designers, engineers, and sound technicians were recruited for this secret unit—an atypical group of soldiers. By using prerecorded sounds of moving tanks, staging false camps with inflatable tanks and artillery, driving around the countryside wearing fake unit patches, and feeding locals false information, the men of the 23rd may have influenced the course of the war. Although the information presented is accurate and generally interesting, the structure of this effort is unsatisfactory. Numerous pageslong supplemental sections (printed on darkened pages and in a sans-serif type) provide additional information on topics introduced in the narrative, but these sections confusingly interrupt the story, sometimes midsentence, and too often come before the topics are introduced. Other additional sections provide brief biographies of some members of the 23rd, sometimes long before or after they're mentioned in the story. Additionally, each operation performed by the unit is described in repetitive detail, reporting over and over the use of uniform unit patches and unit designations on vehicles. Backmatter, however, is ample and detailed, including extensive source notes, a bibliography, image credits, and an index (the latter two not seen).

Save this one for only the most dedicated of World War II buffs. (Nonfiction. 11-18)

Kirkus Reviews

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