Last month, TikToker Rebecca Siegel (@easy_writer_) went to the birthday party of a man named Bernie. He was turning 102 years old. Bernie is a World War II veteran. Rebecca knows him from writing a book about his army unit, which is sometimes referred to as the Ghost Army.
They were the American soldiers who went into Nazi-occupied Europe and used a bunch of different tricks and tactics to fool the Germans about the real location and movements of American troops.
They were most well-known for using inflatable tanks, planes, trucks, and guns to set up realistic scenes, making it appear as if there were large numbers of American troops in one area.
Rebecca finds Bernie to be the kind of person who is easy to relate to. He wasn’t one of those guys who craved battle and was eager to go to war for his country.
In fact, he was actually a little scared. He didn’t want to go to war and have to shoot someone. He also really, really didn’t want to get shot at.
His passion was art. At the time the war was starting, he was in art school. The army put him into the Ghost Army unit because they needed as many creative people as possible to make the deceptions realistic and believable to the Germans.
As a result, the unit ended up with a lot of artists, fashion designers, set designers, actors, and architects. These people were in constant danger because if the Germans ever found out that they didn’t have real tanks, they could’ve eliminated them easily.
About a year ago, Rebecca was sitting in Bernie’s apartment one day, eating pizza. She was asking him questions for her book. Bernie is Jewish, and during World War II, anti-Semitism was not limited to Germany.
It was pretty prevalent in America as well. There were still men within their military units who discriminated against Jewish people, harassed them, or treated them as less than.
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As Bernie was doing all these secret missions during the war, a couple of men within his unit, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, were outspoken about their anti-Semitism. They would give Jewish people in the unit all the worst tasks.
Finally, Bernie had had enough. One day, he was alone on a hilltop with one of these anti-Semitic men and pushed him down the hill. He threatened to kill him if he ever said anything else about Jewish people.
Then, he turned around and marched away. A large group of men from his unit had witnessed the whole scene, so they applauded him.
When the war ended, Bernie returned home and got back into art. No one in the Ghost Army was allowed to talk about what they did until the 1990s, when the unit’s files were declassified.
Bernie was deemed a hero. Even at 102 years old, he still does art as often as he can. He spent so much time at his local community college’s art studio that they named one of their sculpture studios after him.
Bernie encouraged Rebecca to start making art, even though she isn’t the best at it. For his birthday present, she painted him a picture of a soldier standing next to an inflatable tank, and he absolutely loved it.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
