Book description
In 1940 a group of artists, sculptors, film makers, theatre designers
and set painters came together to form the Camouflage Unit. Led by Major
Geoffrey Barkas and including among their number the internationally
renowned stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, the unit's projects became a
crucial battlefield weapon. At the siege of Tobruk the unit made a vital
desalination plant appear to have been destroyed by enemy bombers; from
then on they used their storytelling skills to weave intricate webs of
deception, making things appear that weren't actually there, and things
that were, disappear, to deceive the enemy. Their stage was the
enormous, flat and almost featureless Western Desert.
The unit's schemes were so successful that in August 1942 the Unit was
ordered by General Montgomery to come up with a way to hide the
preparations for the Battle of Alamein, the biggest battle the 8th Army
had ever fought. 'Operation Bertram' was born. In six short weeks two
divisions, with armour, field guns and supporting vehicles, were
conjured from the sand, while real tanks and lethal twenty-five pound
field guns vanished from sight. Then, on the eve of the battle, the unit
performed the biggest conjuring trick in military history. Right in
front of the German's eyes they made 600 tanks disappear and reappear
fifty miles away disguised as lorries. Rommel had been bamboozled by an
army made of nothing but string and straw and bits of wood.
The Phantom Army of Alamein
tells for the first time the full story of how some of Britain's most
creative men put down their brushes, pencils and cameras to join the
rest of the world in the fight against the Nazis and played a vital role
in the winning of the war. I don t know of a better description of
what these Allied tricksters did Rick Stroud is a writer and film
director. He is the author of The Book of the Moon
and, with Victor Gregg, co-author of the acclaimed Rifleman: A
Front-line Life from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
. He lives with his wife on a houseboat in Chelsea, London.
