French President Emmanuel Macron speaking today at the 80th anniversary
ceremony of D-Day.
If you're just joining us,
we're live at the American Cemetery here in Normandy.
80 years since D-Day on a bluff that overlooks
Omaha Beach. Bloody Omaha, site of the worst fighting that
day,
but far from the end of the fight to liberate
Europe.
In the weeks after D-Day,
in fact, America poured more than two million troops into
France,
including a first of its kind top secret unit designed
not to fight the Germans,
but to fool them into chasing false targets and in
the process saving American lives.
The German war machine strikes again.
After D-Day, German spy planes tracked
America's every movement across France,
plotting counter strikes they hoped would stop the Allied advance
planes plus tanks plus infantry.
But some of those American tanks spotted from the air
were actually
93 LB inflatable dummies. Did you ever see a tank
walking part of a special battalion of fake everything,
including phony sound effects played on mobile loud speakers that
made it seem like American troops were on the move?
What was the mission of the Ghost Army?
Mission of the Ghost Army was to drive the Germans
crazy.
Seymour Nussenbaum is one of the unit's last surviving members,
recruited, like many others, directly out of art school in
New York City.
Nice Jeep. Yeah, that was a real one.
I appreciate that clarification. In France,
he set up fake jeeps,
tanks and planes. Never sure the ruse would work.
We had some incidents where we blew up a tank
and it started losing air and it got the big
cannon started to go like this.
So you're exposed. Well, they didn't see us because it
was at night,
but
they would have. I mean,
that would have been the end of us.
Of course, by drawing the enemy's attention,
they were basically asking to be shot at,
and they often were. At the National World War 2
Museum in New Orleans,
curator Chase Tomlin showed us evidence of those German attacks.
So this is a piece of shrapnel saved by one
of the Ghost Army veterans.
And for me, it just is a symbol of the
fact that these guys are are near the front lines
enough that enemy artillery is going off around them,
flying pieces of potentially fatal metal or whizzing by your
head.
What that shrapnel also proves,
of course, is that this war of deception
worked. So the ghost army,
the fake tanks, the fake equipment is going this way.
Meanwhile, the real stuff is going like this.
That's pretty much it, yeah.
With only about 1100 men,
Tomlin says the ghost army could simulate the presence of
30,000. And the military now estimates the lives of up
to
30,000 real life American soldiers.
We're saved by those diversions.
When you think about the,
the courage involved here, it's almost like you've got a
fake gun in your shirt,
you know, but it's actually your finger.
And at any moment someone could realize it's only his
finger.
That's one of the takeaways here
is, you know, you're, you're knowingly putting yourself in danger.
You, you're intentionally drawing enemy artillery fire.
It's dangerous. It's dangerous work.
And I get a lot of them just kind of
dealt with it.
So this is, this is what we're here for.
For Seymour Nussenbaum, those dangers were obvious the moment he
landed on Omaha Beach about two weeks after D-Day.
What did the beach look like?
That was kind of bedlam.
It was all messed up.
There was still bodies floating in the eBay.
Wow. His work would remain a military secret for another
half century.
When people asked you, what did you do in the
military,
what did you tell them?
I blew up tanks and they let it go at
that.
But the Ghost Army was never forgotten.
And now the National World War 2 Museum has a
traveling exhibit displaying some of the inflatables that fooled the
Germans.
Mr. Seymour Neusenbaum.
Plus, earlier this year, the remaining veterans of the Ghost
Army received one of
America's highest honors, the Congressional Gold Medal.
Oh, look, the guys in the back are holding the
tank.
It's, you know, it's like a symbol for the ghost
army.
Now, on this 80th anniversary of D-Day,
at 101 years old, now himself,
Seymour Nussenbaum has earned both clarity
and perspective on his unit's success.
Why do you think it worked?
Because we were good.
But you know, that's not the the,
the most important thing that happened to me in my
life.
What was the most important thing that happened to you
in your life?
Meeting my wife, having children,
grandchildren, having a good career.
What else?
I love that answer of his there.
What an example of his generation and and the ghost
army.
The army he was a part of operated in five
countries,
including Germany itself, and did so successfully that an Army
analysis concluded quote.
Rarely, if ever has there been a group of such
a few men which had so great an influence on
the outcome of a major military campaign.
But I have to tell you that Seymour,
like every veteran I've spoken to,
is a veteran worried about us and our times.
He's a veteran of deception,
of course. And what he's most worried about today,
in a bit of irony,
is misinformation, lies and deception.
Now in our daily political existence.
He says that above all,
after all he's seen is what really frightens him.
Tony, these interviews and sit downs have been incredible so
far.
Thank you for adding texture to this moment.
Is that Mister Nussbaum is better than good.
He was great and he's a hero.
But I love his answer.
Me too. What mattered most of his life?
Tony, thank you very much.