I highly recommend The Ghost Army of World War II. Written by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, it is an exciting and entertaining read. Rick Beyer is an author (and many other things) and Elizabeth Sayles is a children’s book illustrator. She had listened to her father’s stories growing up on this topic because he had served in the Ghost Army.
I had listened to the book on Audible. It is unabridged and runs for 4 hours and 12 minutes. It’s a great read!
“Description:
In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs – including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey – landed in France to conduct a secret mission. Armed with truckloads of inflatable tanks, a massive collection of sound-effects records, and more than a few tricks up their sleeves, their job was to create a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe, with the German army as their audience.
From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Between missions, the artists filled their duffel bags with drawings and paintings and dragged them across Europe. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war’s end. The Ghost Army of World War II is the first publication to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives.”-Amazon