[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein was born in Cleveland, Ohio in August 1923. He served with the 603rd Engineers Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Special Troops [Annotator's Note: 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops; known as The Ghost Army] and he achieved Private First Class. He lived in a below ground apartment. They were a middle class family. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], they did not live lavishly. They did not own a car and used public transportation. His father owned a gold ring that was a snake with diamonds for eyes. Bluestein admired it as a child and during the Depression it was gone. It startled him and he later learned it was pawned. They ate properly. He had an older sister. He was overly protected for a good deal of his childhood. He did not have a good feeling about himself. His father was not athletic but did roller skate and liked to swim. When kids played baseball in the streets, Bluestein was always picked last for the team. He got an inferiority complex over that. He sold newspapers. Hucksters would go down the streets selling fruits and vegetables. He would join up with some of them for work. He worked in a factory that made regulators for air conditioners. The Depression did not affect his schooling, but other things did. He was the tallest student and was put in the back of the class. He could not see the blackboard from there. Near the end of elementary school, his mother discovered he needed eyeglasses. His grades were not good until then. The last day of elementary school, the kids sat in the seats to await to see what school they were going to. He was last and found out he had flunked sixth grade. That shocked him. He resolved to change when he got into high school. He made every honor roll after that. The events of the impending war were off the radar. His family did not discuss worldly affairs. When he got into high school, he became aware that there were enemies. He realized there was something going in when he was going to art school. He was 19 and knew he would be drafted. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bluestein how he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He heard the news by radio but did not think about it. He was not very political. He did not want to be drafted. One of the school instructors saw that the Army was looking for young artists for a new outfit being formed at Fort George in Maryland [Annotator's Note: Fort George G. Meade in in Anne Arundel County, Maryland]. It would be a non-fighting unit. He was not interested in killing somebody or having somebody kill him. He took the camouflage course and then enlisted in the Army. He was sent to Fort Hayes, Ohio [Annotator's Note: in Columbus, Ohio] for basic training and then to Fort George G. Meade.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Everything was different for Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein when he went into basic training. He had to do things he had never done before. The regimentation was okay as his parents were pretty strict but he had disturbing incidents that happened to him. There was a lot of anti-Semitism going on. The service did not seem to appreciate the Jewish people and he got assigned a lot of the dirty jobs to do, like scrubbing a floor with a toothbrush. Other than that, it was learning how to use a rifle and march. When he got assigned to his unit [Annotator's Note: 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops; known as The Ghost Army], he was amazed by what was being done. He learned how to construct Army equipment like tanks and jeeps out of wood. They used thin strips of wood and built them like model airplanes. They made a framework and then covered it with canvas. They then painted them. They were crude but when visualized from the air, they looked real. He enjoyed doing that. He was a loner and not very sociable, so he kept to himself. He knew there were a lot of talented artists there. There were sculptors and professional painters there. He was inspired by them and started doing his own sketches in ink. He knew Seymour Nussenbaum [Annotator's Note: Army Private First Class Seymour Nussenbaum's oral history is also available on this Digital Collections website]. Nussenbaum had been in artillery training before they met at Fort Meade, Maryland [Annotator's Note: Fort George G. Meade in in Anne Arundel County, Maryland] where the 603rd came together. They did not know what they were doing the work for. The government decided they had a better way and started making rubber dummies in Akron, Ohio. They then learned how to take them out and inflate and deflate them. They worked hard at that. He went to Camp Pine [Annotator's Note: now Fort Drum in Jefferson County, New York], but his memory is vague. Fort Meade was their last place before going overseas.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein does not remember how or when they [Annotator's Note: 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops; known as The Ghost Army] were told they were going overseas. It had to be a month or so before D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They left from the United States to England and spent some time there. That was his first time on a ship. It was unbelievable. They knew they were going to war. They tried to make them happy and there were a lot of talented people on the boat that would put on shows every night. One of his unit fell through the loading hole on the ship and died. It was a long trip. They did have to worry about German submarines. He did not get seasick then, but he did when crossing the Channel [Annotator's Note: English Channel]. They crossed on what they called a garbage scow. He stood on the deck and the boat would go up on one side and all they could see was the sky. When the other side went down, all they could see was the water. That was not a pleasant trip. Landing in England was a great experience. He hitchhiked one time and he could not understand a word because he [Annotator's Note: the driver] was speaking Cockney English [Annotator's Note: a dialect of English traditionally spoken by working-class people from London, England]. Bluestein went to dances in Lymington [Annotator's Note: Lymington, England]. He went to Stratford-on-Avon [Annotator's Note: Stratford-upon-Avon, England] to a Shakespearean Theater and play. He saw the play but did not understand it. Other guys would open up their lockers and kiss their wives' pictures and then go find a whore [Annotator's Note: prostitute] in the town. Bluestein was not interested in that, so he would sit in the barracks and write letters home. That was his pastime. He got mail back and that was good for him. He was a loner. He did not see much of Seymour [Annotator's Note: Army Private First Class Seymour Nussenbaum served with Bluestein in the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion; Nussenbaum's oral history is also available on this Digital Collections website] because Seymour went out and visited people. Seymour was like him though and watched the VD [Annotator's Note: venereal disease] films. That gave them no desire to participate in having relationships with local women.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein did not have any particular feelings about going into France except for fear. When marching off the beach, he saw a cow that had been blown up into a tree and some bodies along the way. He was never fired upon until his last mission at the very end. He was in the factory section of Headquarters and Supply [Annotator's Note: 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops; known as The Ghost Army]. They did not go on the regular missions and stayed back to make needed items like patches [Annotator's Note: members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops would often wear shoulder patches identifying them as members of units that were in theater but not supposed to be in that area in order to deceive enemy agents or spies]. They were simulating real divisions so that the Germans thought they were the real outfit. They were only 1,100 people. In their final mission, they saved the lives of 11,000 people who were up in Germany crossing the Rhine River. The Germans thought his unit was those divisions. They had sound effect trucks that broadcast the sounds of trucks and tanks moving [Annotator's Note: by the 3132 Signal Company, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops]. Another was sending false messages back and forth. They would circulate in the local villages. They knew the locals would let them [Annotator's Note: the German military] know about them [Annotator's Note: the American troops]. They were shelled one morning. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer tells Bluestein a story he heard from another interviewee and asks if he recalls it. He does not.]

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein remembers when Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died but it does not ring a strong bell in his mind. He was not about history and wars and stuff like that. Bluestein was sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi [Annotator's Note: in Hattiesburg, Mississippi] for separation. The tall people were told to step forward to be made MPs [Annotator's Note: military police]. He did not want to be an MP. He had not been in combat and was not going to tell someone who had been and who had seen their buddies die, to straighten up his tie. But he managed to live through it. He was discharged with a friend, and they thumbed their way from Camp Shelby to Cleveland [Annotator's Note: Cleveland, Ohio]. The G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] was important to him. He could never have afforded to buy a home and he did so after he got out of school on it. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art [Annotator's Note: in Cleveland, Ohio] again to finish his prewar education. He became an industrial designer. There was a lot of anti-Semitism and his instructor, Victor Schreckengost, was a German who did not like Jews. He got everyone a job except Bluestein. He finally ended up in Gary, Indiana and designed signs rather than products. He moved to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and got a good job in an industrial company owned by Jewish brothers. Another person who worked there and he started their own business designing the style of products. He retired in 1983 and it is great. In 1989, he decided to go to school at Harper College for Fine Arts outside of Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. He is still going there 30 years later. He is 96 now and that is keeping him going. He goes five days a week.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Some crazy things happened to Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein in the war. Some are funny and odd. He was on guard duty in France near Germany. He had only fired his rifle on the firing range. It was a dark night. He heard a rustling and hollered out "who goes there?" He lifted his rifle and just as he did, he saw a horse. He almost shot a horse. The long hill they climbed was at dusk [Annotator's Note: in Normandy, France, June 1944]. He carried a bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank weapon]. They were told they needed foxholes. He was asked if he wanted to dig a foxhole. If he did not want to, there was a latrine over there he could get in if he had to. He put his sleeping bag next to the latrine. He heard the planes and looked at the latrine. He zipped his bag over his head and just prayed to not get hit. The next morning there was a hole in his sleeping bag between his legs. It did not hit him. He has the piece of shrapnel at home. Bluestein believes it is definitely important to have the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. The children must learn what went on in the past. It is a good way of judging what to do in the future. It is good to realize that some of their forefathers did what they did to keep the country. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bluestein if there is a message, he would like future viewers to hear.] Change the world so there are no wars. The world is in a bad situation right now. It is not a good place to be; always worried about what is going to happen. He only did his job. He is being called a hero and does not consider himself one. He participated in the war and had a particular job that he did. The creator of the Ghost Army is the hero. Bluestein thinks the Museum is absolutely wonderful and great. He wishes the whole world well and he hopes they have a better world.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] When Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein was very young, his father would draw little caricatures from the newspaper. Bluestein thought it was interesting and fun and followed suit. He started sketching photographs of movie stars like James Cagney [Annotator's Note: James Francis Cagney, Jr., American actor and dancer] and Barbara Stanwyck [Annotator's Note: American actress, model, and dancer]. When he was about 12, his parents started sending him to the Cleveland Museum of Art [Annotator's Note: in Cleveland, Ohio] where they had classes for drawing. They gave him more interest in art. When he graduated to high school, he decided to go to East Technical High School in Cleveland where they had good art courses. He took those courses and made up a portfolio. He then won a scholarship for his first year at the Cleveland School of Art [Annotator's Note: now Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio]. His parents could never have afforded to send him there. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bluestein if he thought the Army would have a unit needing his talent when Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by the Japanese on 7 December 1941.] He did not even think about it at the time but when he became of age, he did. He was 19 and told one of the instructors that he would be drafted. The instructor told him about the Army looking for young artists. He decided to take the course [Annotator's Note: a course about camouflage] and then to get into the Army for that. He did not feel good about going into the Army. He had been babied most of his life and had never been away from his family. It was a scary adventure, and he did not have a lot of self-confidence.

[Annotator's Note: There is a loud hissing noise throughout this clip.] Bernard B. "Bernie" Bluestein only remembers his final mission [Annotator's Note: with the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops; known as The Ghost Army]. They made their stuff pretty rapidly. They used silkscreen printing to make the fake patches [Annotator's Note: members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops would often wear shoulder patches identifying them as members of units that were in theater but not supposed to be in that area in order to deceive enemy agents or spies]. He does not remember where it all was. He did not want to ever think about or remember these things. Bluestein did not interact much with Germans until the end when they were overseeing a German prison camp. They had some Russian girls who did their laundry. He was anti-social. They had a long stint in Luxembourg City, [Annotator's Note: Luxembourg, Luxembourg] and he remembers that the most. That was where his last mission was. They drove there with the speakers on, and it was amazing to hear all the noise. They encamped and set up the dummy equipment. They went into town. The next morning they were shot at by the Germans. Bluestein was in the mess tent and had just left. He was fortunate but a friend got hit by shrapnel. He has to say that all of what he is being asked about are things that he was not enamored with. This was not the best part of his life, and he had no desire to take it in. It interrupted his life and he wanted to get back home and continue his life. First of all, they were told to keep it all secret. It was not until the 1960s or so that it was finally released. If you could not talk about it, you did not think about it. It was something he had to do, and he did it. He wanted it out of his life and wanted to move on. That matured him and he started gaining confidence in himself. He was pulling guard duty and heard some officers yelling and screaming. He found out that the war was over. He was happy the war was over. He was very lucky. The war was still going on in Japan and they were to go. He had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to get discharged instead and he was very fortunate to have that.