Four American soldiers once picked up a forty-ton tank with their hands, like a sofa, while two Frenchmen on bicycles stared. That is the way a veteran told it, and the tank was rubber. So was most of the army it belonged to. How do you help win a war with an army that isn't there?

We meet the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, switched on in January 1944: about eleven hundred hand-picked painters, sound engineers and radio operators, many straight from art schools and advertising agencies, who played a much bigger army for an audience of one. Four kinds of magic: things you see, hear, intercept and are told. An inflatable Sherman that weighs about ninety-three pounds, speakers on a half-track that could be heard for miles, radio operators who copied the "fist" of real Morse operators, and shoulder patches made right there in the field.

Then the shows. Brest, the first full one, and its honest cost. Bettembourg, where a few hundred played an entire division, a furious colonel refused to believe there were no tanks, and a man in a horse-drawn buggy spotted the one thing they were never meant to be seen doing. And the Rhine in March 1945, when a whole real division went missing from the enemy's picture. We separate the record from the legends, including the lives-saved estimate, the medal dates, and the versions you may have seen online.

Three of them were killed and dozens wounded. Their secret was kept for fifty-one years, until a filmmaker found the story in a coffee shop. Then a Congressional Gold Medal, and three veterans in the room to hear it.

Plus a bridge to today: decoys in Ukraine, a deepfake, and what that makes two synthetic voices telling this story. And Ellie Unfiltered: a Ghost Army for the age of AI, a balloon named Gerald, and the rule we made up in the room.

Every date, quote and figure is named on air so you can check us. Thank you for marching with us tonight.

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