The Ghost of the Rhine and Other War Stories PDF Download

Author: Fred A. Datig
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Author: Rick Beyer
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1797225308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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“A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way—ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Tom Brokaw The first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives—now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—artists, designers, architects, and sound engineers, 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. 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. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, along with maps, official memos, and letters, accompany Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’s meticulous research and interviews with many of the soldiers, weaving a compelling narrative of how an unlikely team carried out amazing battlefield deceptions that saved thousands of American lives and helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions also offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. This updated edition includes: A new afterword by co-author Rick Beyer Never-before-seen additional images The successful campaign to have the unit awarded a Congressional Gold Medal History and WWII enthusiasts will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.

Author: Fred Datig
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781492140634
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Don't let the title fool you, because you don't have to believe in ghosts -- "of the Rhine," or otherwise -- to be spirited away into the all-too-real, flesh-and-blood, wartime experiences of this "tell it like it really was" author. Share the innermost feelings of an 18-year-old, "kidnapped" form his upper middle class family, taught to hate through the military's barbaric "Disorganization, Degradation and Dehumanization Program: (his terminology), and sent out by "them" as just another brainwashed sheep to kill and die for "his country." We're not dealing here with simply one more of the myriad "Flat-On-My-Back-At-10,000-Feet," or "Hell-in-a-Foxhole," repetitiously monotonous "war stories" memoirs. This is an adventure involving repeated unusual circumstances in a blitzkrieg of ever-changing scenery and situations, a "4 battle stars in 3 months" action drama bordering on fiction, yet each and every detail believably accurate. You don't have to be military-oriented, or any type of "armchair commando" to find a (male chauvinist pig) place for yourself among these pages. You'll discover circumstances which would've happened to you, personally, had you been there then, and which could still happen to you, even now, with the mere differences of perhaps time, place, and circumstance. As you'll see, none of "us" are invulnerable to the bloodthirsty greed of "them," past, present, or future. Who knows? This down-to-basics recounting of the sometimes-typical, sometimes-unbelievable situations which actually took place, may very well turn out to be a real-life "All Quiet on the Western Front" of the Second World War? . . . As the author dares, "Bite the bullet, take a chance, and find out for yourself!"

Author: Rick Beyer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615534343
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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"The Ghost Army" is full of art and photographs telling the story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, an extraordinary US Army unit that used inflatable tanks and sound effects records to stage a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe during WWII. Many who served in this to-secret unit were artists destined for illustrious post-war art careers, including a budding fashion designer named Bill Blass. In their spare time they painted and sketched their way across war-torn Europe. The book is a catalog for a museum exhibit about the unit, and a companion to the forthcoming documentary film.

Author: Mark Stout, Harry Yeide
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616739652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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This is the story of the Allied forces--the U.S. 6th Army Group and French 1st Army--that landed in southern France on August 15th, 1944. The book follows the action from the French beaches to the Vosges Mountains, where the first Allied penetration along the entire Western front reached the Rhine River. First to the Rhine covers the vicious fighting during the German Nordwind counteroffensive in January 1945 and the French-American offensive to clear the Colmar Pocket. It then pursues the forces of the Third Reich across the Rhine to their ultimate destruction. Unlike the forces landing in Normandy, these American divisions were hard-bitten veterans of the war in Italy, and, in the case of the 3d Infantry Division, North Africa. The French units included many veterans of the Italian campaign and comprised Frenchmen and Africans in almost equal numbers. As the campaign went on, the French ranks were swelled by tens of thousands of Free French Forces of the Interior, the famous maquis. The German forces arrayed against the Allies included the famed 11th Panzer Division, an Eastern front veteran known as the "Ghost Division," which would hit the Allied advance time and again only to slip away before it could be pinned and destroyed. This is the harrowing story First to the Rhine tells, from the strategic plane-down through the corps, division, and regimental levels to the personal experience of the men in combat, including the likes of Audie Murphy, Americas most decorated infantryman of the war. The book features little-known battles, including one at Montelimar, when an ad hoc American armored command and the 36th Infantry Division came within a hairs breadth and several days of hard fighting of cutting off the entire German 19th Army. This is the first popular work in English to explore the French role in the fighting and the relationship between the U.S. Army and the French forces fighting under American command.

Author: John Ringo
Publisher: Baen Books
ISBN: 0743499182
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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In the dark days after the events in the book Gust Front, but before the primary invasion, the Chancellor of Germany faces a critical decision.

Author: Douglas Niles
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780812574661
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 2

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A thrilling tale of a war that might have been. Their Fhrer is dead, but a cadre of SS officers back Himmler to seize control of the Third Reich and attempt to change the course of the war. They first form an armistice with Russia, then appoint the legendary "Desert Fox" Erwin Rommel to lead the European theater into a confrontation with General George Patton that will determine the fate of Europe--and perhaps the free world. (June)

Author: Nel Yomtov
Publisher: Capstone Press
ISBN: 1543573207
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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"Describes the special unit in World War II known as the U.S. Ghost Army, and how it used fake props and special effects to mislead German forces in several important missions"--

Author: Jack Kneece
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 9781455604876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was a force of only 1,000 men who, with skilled deceptions, often masqueraded as 34,000.

Author: Hélène Adeline Guerber
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781019450291
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This collection of legends and myths from the Rhine region of Germany provides a fascinating glimpse into the cultural history of this influential area. The author covers a wide range of topics, from heroic tales of knights to eerie ghost stories. This book will appeal to anyone interested in folklore or the history of Germany. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.