Victor Dowd and the World War II Ghost Army tells the fascinating story of the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the Ghost Army. The troops were a special unit of about a thousand men specially selected for their skills. They were artists, sonic engineers, meteorologists, and radio operators. Most of them were not trained in combat.
What on earth were a group of non-combat-prepared men doing in the Army in the middle of Europe during World War II?
They were a deception unit. Their job was to make the Germans believe specific Army divisions were in one location when that division was actually somewhere else entirely.
Armed with rubber tanks and artillery, lots of sound recordings, fake radio transmissions, cans of paint, and very few real weapons, they helped the Allies battle their way across France and Luxembourg and into Germany. Along the way, they took part in the Battle of the Bulge by "filling in" gaps in the military lines by pretending to be entire other units.
Their greatest success came in March of 1945. The Ghost Army--a group of about a thousand men--had to pretend they were two divisions of the Ninth Army--about 30,000 men. Dwight Eisenhower was hoping to convince the Germans that the Allies were planning to invade Germany ten miles south of the true invasion point.
Once the Allies crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany, they discovered documents indicating the Germans believed Allied troops were massing exactly where the Ghost Army was.
Using the included spy tools--red acetate, vellum, cipher wheel, and Morse code--readers decode clues throughout the story to find Victor's sketchbook.
Although the information about the Ghost Army is fascinating and suspenseful, the story is short on characterization. Reluctant readers might not mind as the Ghost Army moves from one mission to the next, but I wanted a bit more detail about Victor.
The book gives teachers opportunity to discuss camouflage and how that's a benefit or a detriment. There's also brief discussion of minor details about daily life that people don't often think about. The Ghost Army had to convince the Germans they were someone they weren't. An Army isn't just vehicles and artillery and people. It's also the daily lives of those people--hanging laundry, getting water, leaving trash. It's a chance to discuss those tiny details with students.
Like the previous title in the series, this won't necessarily hold up to heavy library or classroom use because of the spy tools. If any of those are lost, you will have a hard time solving the puzzle without skipping to the end.
Having read the previous book in the series, I was more familiar with how the clues worked in this one, so I was able to spot more of them without using the answers at the back. I still missed some though!
This series is a fun way to introduce readers to codes and codebreaking without making it too difficult. Even readers who have cracked a few codes in their time will enjoy one more opportunity to spin a cipher wheel and work out a message. Maybe they'll even be inspired to create their own!
Victor Dowd and the World War II Ghost Army is written by Enigma Alberti and illustrated by Scott Wegener. It is the second of Workman's Spy On History series. The next book in the series, Anna Strong and the Revolutionary War Culpepper Ring, is scheduled for publication in January 2019.
Workman Publishing supplied a free copy of the book for review purposes.
Sara K Joiner is the author of After the Ashes. She is also a public librarian.
