American Military News by Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan - The Charlotte Observer July 28, 2022
When World War II veteran George Dramis came home, he didn’t talk much about the war. If someone asked what he did there, he’d tell them the truth: He was a radio operator.
But there is much, much more to his story.
Dramis, 97, was one of the 1,100 soldiers in the U.S. Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. Referred to now as the Ghost Army, they formed in 1944 with a key job: deceive the German military as to the whereabouts of Army divisions. This was after the D-Day invasion at Normandy, as Allied forces fought to free Europe from the Nazis.
“We would come in at night,” Dramis told The News & Observer, explaining how the Ghost Army operated.
“[An Army division] would sneak away, quietly. We would come in and fake their radio transmissions. We had huge half-tracks with tremendous speakers on them that you could hear for 15 miles. They were recorded things of actual troop movements — tanks, trucks, guys swearing, yelling ‘Get over here!’” he said.
A half-track was an armored personnel carrier. Those speakers that carried sound for 15 miles weighed 500 pounds, Dramis said, and it sounded like a real division coming in. The Ghost Army used inflatable tanks, trucks and other equipment that would appear to be camouflaged, and soldiers even wore fake division patches.
Those 1,100 troops used visual and audio deception to appear to be 15,000 troops. And as Dramis told people after the war when his worked was still classified, he was indeed a radio operator. He kept the secret until 1996, when the Ghost Army’s efforts were declassified.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/07/wwii-ghost-army-was-a-secret-for-51-years-nc-vet-now-being-honored-for-his-role/
