Rating: 
Summary: Rush to Press
Review: This is a story worth hearing. Unfortunately, this book doesn't deliver. If you must read it anyway, start on page 31, thereafter skipping to subsequent chapters reading only the first paragraph or two. In ten minutes you will have absorbed all the book has to offer that is noteworthy. The reader will quickly come to the conclusion that the author's primary intent, and perhaps his only intent, was to be the first to get the story to press, content, style, organization and facts be damned. This work poses more questions that it answers. On page 61, for example, we are told that Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, objected to strictures placed on diplomats' access to staging areas in England used by the Ghost Army. Certainly Mr. Eden was no fool so one has to ask what his motivation was. The author tells us that Mr. Eden was, "... a pain in the side of the Fortitude planners". How's that for a deep insight into the character of Mr. Eden? Don't bother looking for the index, there isn't one. That should give you a clue that this is not a scholarly work but just a story book, and a poor one at that. Too bad John Keegan didn't take on this project; that would be a book worth owning. Save your money for something better.
Rating: 
Summary: A great story in an ok book
Review: This is the second book I've come across about the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a unit of the US Army, active in Europe during WWII but unheard of by very few due to it's being kept secret until unclassified in 1996.
The first book, Secret Soldiers by Philip Gerard, was a well-written book and I encourage readers to check it out as well as this book by Jack Kneece.
"Ghost Army" gives a little more personal view of the this unit that used deception as it's weapon. It has many more personal accounts, photo's from personal collections and even a couple of chapters based on diaries written by soldiers in this outfit.
What I got from this book that I didn't get from the other was that these guys, with their use of camouflage and sonic deception may have indeed drawn artillery fire upon themselves that may have otherwise been directed toward my father's field artillery battalion (see my book "ALL MY LOVE, FOREVER:Letters Home From A WWII Citizen Soldier")as they fought to capture the heavily defended port city of Brest in Brittany, France during the late summer of 1944.
I thought one poignant item in the book is an illustration of their ghost embellished unit shoulder patch, which due to the secret nature of their activities, they were never permitted to wear. The only identifying patches they could use were of those divisions that they were portraying to in order to deceive the enemy. -Dale Lane
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