​Wynshaw,  born David Wisnewitz, was the youngest of four children born to an immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York. His father had been a tailor in Russia; his mother was from Lithuania. Wynshaw served in Company A of the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, the visual deception arm of the 23rd Headquarters Special troops. 

After the war, Wynshaw married Frances Greenberg, who went to Cooper-Union to study art. Later on, he and Frances moved to Manchester CT, where he opened a bridal shop. In 1956, the Wynshaws moved to Los Angeles, where David was hired by CBS Records as a west coast sales representative. In 1963, he was named CBS branch manager for New York.

Wynshaw worked on artist relations, and was said to be involved in signing a number of well-known artists including Santana, Chicago, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and Janice Joplin. Riding the coattails of his boss, Clive Davis, who became president of the company in 1967, Wynshaw became a key figure at CBS records, eventually being appointed Senior Director of Special Events. Along the way he became known as “Mr. Gotcha”–anything an artist needed, he would get for them on short notice, no questions asked. "Two tickets to a Knicks game 15 minutes before tipoff? Front-row seats at the Copa when Tony Bennett’s in town? Fly 700 people to a Vegas convention in the middle of an airline strike? Gotcha could get anything," said an article in Vanity Fair .   Far Paul Simon described Wynshaw as "Clive's procurer." 

In 1973, Davis fired Wynshaw after "Mr. Gotcha" was named in an FBI investigation of payola, embezzlement and other financial wrongdoing. Davis himself was fired later that same year as a result of the scandal. He was accused of using CBS funds to finance his personal life, including an extragavant bar mitzvah party for his son.

Diavis  bounced back after the scandal and founded his own record company. Wynshaw ultimately served a  year jail sentence for conspiracy and mail fraud.

Davis blamed Wynshaw for any wrongdoing, but Wynshaw, in a 2000 interview, said, “Everybody knows I took the fall for Davis.”

The Wynshaws divorced in the aftermath of the scandal, and David moved to Florida, where by 1977 he was VP and General Manager for Tropical Record Distributors in North Miami. In an article in Rolling Stone magazine, his former personal assistant said that he “presented a diamond pinkie-ring image, but he wasn’t a seedy character... He was a good person and probably didn’t deserve the treatment he got.”

David Wynshaw died on May 5, 2006 in Miami, and is buried in Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla NY, in the Friars’ Club plot.

As an Eagle Scout, Helmut was lucky enough to meet and get to know Prince Emanuel of Liechtenstein, who was also active in the Boy Scouts. When Helmut's family  escaped Germany, the prince got them them admitted into Liechtenstein. (The photo at left was taken in the family's residence there.) 

​Soon thereafter, Helmut went to work as a photographer for Paris newspapers. In 1938, seeing the writing on the wall, the family fled to America, aided–according to family lore–by his brother’s Harvard classmate John F. Kennedy. There, he continued working as a photographer and met his first wife, Ellen Martha Pollack Kaufman.

​In 1943, Helmut enlisted, and in 1944, he was deployed to Europe as part of the Ghost Army. (His two brothers were also involved in the war effort.) During his service, Ellen, who worked as a sculptor, sent him a plaster “pinup” figurine of herself. The men on his battalion loved it–they said they would pay anything to get one like it. Ellen subsequently made a business of this, and, astonishingly, produced over 150,000 dolls.

A few years after the war, Helmut began traveling around the world as a salesman for Paper Mate Pens. He and Ellen divorced in 1950; that same month, his first child, George, was born to Irene Grosse, a 17-year-old German beauty queen. He married his second wife Josephine Johanna Woelfl in 1953, and had another son, Robert, in 1954. He later had a third child named Eva.

​In 1956 Helmut left Paper Mate and moved to Paris, becoming active in the American Legion, and eventually becoming commander of the post there.  His involvement led to his presenting the Legion’s Golden Peace medal to German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and, later, hand-delivering a Paper Mate pen to Winston Churchill for his 80th birthday. He also met Richard Nixon when he visited Paris in 1968. Helmut also launched a variety of businesses, selling gourmet products, running an art gallery, and even patenting inventions, including an artificial sweetener and a stereoscopic television.
​
He later moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, where he died May 17, 1992. He is buried at the Jewish Cemetery at the Nordfriedhof in Wiesbaden. In 2021, the American Legion Department of France Commander laid a wreath on the former Commander's grave.

To see Isenberg's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.

George Nardiello was a fashion designer who married a countess and became the personal fashion designer of Marilyn Monroe.

​​George was born on January 28, 1922 in Manhattan, one of four sons. His father, Vincent Nardiello, was the doctor for the NY State Boxing Commission, and also treated injured hockey players for the NY Americans and the NY Rangers. 

He attended several colleges, including Yale, before the war, dropping out of all of them. Seeing George's interest in design, his father was able to hook him up as an apprentice with Anthony Blotta, a New York fashion designer.

George registered for the draft on June 30, 1942. He joined the 603rd, where he served in Company C. He served in  Europe with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

Nardiello made a reputation as a designer of cocktail and evening gowns, traveling to Europe four times a year for inspiration and personal renewal. Unlike Blass he did not pursue his own label, but worked for design labels Anthony Blotta, Kiki Hart, Cameo, and Rona.

In 1954, he married Italian contessa Marisa Pompei de Lassi. The Palm Beach Post article says that their daughter, Mia, their only child, was "the only baby in the fashion business who had her clothes made by Blass and Norman Norell."

In 1955, Nardiello became the designer for the personal wardrobe of Marilyn Monroe. In Norman Mailer's 1973 biography of Marilyn, he quotes her as saying she liked Nardiello because he was "well-groomed and slim and fit into [his] clothes like a beautiful hand . . . inside a glove . . . [he] was so happy inside his suit. It was like the person within . . . also had a good suit which was their own skin." He maintained his "day job," and worked with Monroe on weekends. 

Nardiello says that "she was very difficult to design for because she wanted everything to look like a slip. Everything had to be skin tight. You had to reinforce every seam or everything would break."

After several years, Monroe went back to Hollywood and that was the end of their relationship. (Though he was called to her side in 1962 when he was asked to sew her into the Jean Louis dress she wore to sing "Happy Birthday" at John F. Kennedy's birthday party at Madison Square Garden.)
Other stars who wore his signature gowns included Marlene Dietrich, Mitzi Gaynor, Rosalind Russell, and Jayne Mansfield.

George and Marisa divorced about 1973. He continued to design his trademark long flowing evening gowns, and became sought after in Republican political circles. His gowns were part of the private collections hand picked by First Lady Pat Nixon and Lenore Romney (George's wife and Mitt's mother).

In about 1980, George met David Blank, and the two men developed a committed relationship that lasted for 25 years.

In 2002, George moved to Palm Springs, CA. He died on December 10, 2005 after a long illness. 

To see Nardiello's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.​

John Anderegg went from MIT to the Army back to MIT, and on to a career as an entrepreneur and engineer.
 
Anderegg was was born in 1924 in Philadelphia  He grew up in Colonia, NJ. His father had served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France in WW1, immediately after his graduation from Cornell, and his grandfather, born in Switzerland, had been a professor at Oberlin.
 
He attended MIT but did not finish his degree before leaving to join the Army.
 
He served in the 3133rd Signal Company Special, which operated as an independent sonic deception unit in Italy in 1945.
 
When he came home from Europe he used the GI Bill to study shorthand for a year at a secretarial school so he could take better and more complete notes when he returned to MIT! Graduated from MIT in 1949.
 
He was an  "intuitive mechanic," a traveling salesman for American Wire,  an engineer with Draper Labs, and an open wheel auto racing enthusiast. Later in life he also studied blacksmithing in North Carolina.
 
In 1955 he was one of the founders of Dynamics Research Corp, a technology/management consulting firm in Massachusetts, primarily serving the Department of Defense, and other government agencies). He served as President and Chairman from 1955-1986.
 
He married Hope Ingersoll in 1959  and they had 3 children. They lived primarily in Carlisle, Massachusetts, and he was active in Republican politics.
 
After her death he married Frances Garland, and retired with her to Buzzards Bay. He died at home on August 5, 2015.
 
To see Anderegg's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.

Claude Joseph Leon Dern was born on March 4, 1906 in Désertines, France, a small town in northwest France, about 40 miles from the coast. The family was poor. Claude's granddaughter says that he left school at 10 to become a cowherd, and then left home at the age of 18 to seek his fortune. He served as a private in the French army for two years during this period in his life. While working as a waiter in the south of France, he met the Goodmans, a couple from Dorset, Vermont, and they encouraged him to visit them. He emigrated to the US in October, 1929 and went to Dorset, and the Goodmans took him in. He was to remain in Dorset for most of the rest of his life.

Two years after arriving, he opened a French restaurant in Dorset, the Lafayette, which he owned and operated until 1936. He had married Olive Harwood in 1935, and their daughter, Suzanne, was born in 1936. In 1937, the couple divorced. Claude took his oath as a US citizen on September 1, 1938, in Rutland, Vermont. 

He also took up painting in Vermont. In France he had had no ambition to be a painter, nor any art lessons. But over the years in Dorset, before the war, he commuted to New York City to take classes at the Art Students League and Grand Central Art School. While in New York, there were four exhibits of his work at different galleries, including a 1941 exhibit at the Vendome Art Galleries in Manhattan.

On December 27, 1941, he married Dr. Elizabeth Byrnes and moved to Wisconsin. He enlisted in the Army on September 1, 1942 in Rutland, Vermont. He stated at that time that he had four years of college, was a commercial artist and a US citizen.

He served in Company D of the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, but evidence suggests he did not go to Europe with the 23rd Headquarters Troops. His granddaughter says he served in Wisconsin. His obituary and a couple of other articles say that he was in the 603rd and also worked in Army Intelligence as a Staff Sergeant.

After the war he and Elizabeth moved back to New Jersey, along with their son. Claude took a job teaching at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, and taught adult classes at Columbia High School. He also ran a private art school in Maplewood, New Jersey. Their second son, Robert John, was born in New Jersey in September, 1948. While they spent summers in Dorset, Vermont, he remained a New Jersey schoolteacher until 1954, when his wife retired from her medical work and they resettled in Dorset permanently.

Once back in Vermont, Claude did a considerable amount of painting, and  spent time as a dairy farmer, a strawberry farmer (he was known as the "Dorset Strawberry King"), and an "interior and exterior decorating contractor". He also was involved in politics for some years. He and his wife both threw themselves into local organizations and causes.

He became active in town and state politics shortly after coming back to Dorset. He was elected town "lister" (related to assessment) for four years, also serving as the first VP of the Vermont Listers Association in 1959. In 1958, he ran successfully as a Republican for the state legislature. 

He spent one term in the state legislature (1959-1960) where he sponsored bills to bring parimutuel horse racing to Vermont, and to liberalize the Sunday liquor laws in the state.

He lost his attempt to garner the Republican nomination for the US House of Representatives in 1960, and switched his allegiance to the Democratic party in 1961. He also ran unsuccessfully for the state senate in 1964 and 1974.

He was elected at least twice as a Justice of the Peace during the 1960s and early 1970s, and also served as a member of the Dorset School Board in the mid-70s.

He explained his involvement in politics in a 1974 article: "I've done about everything a man can do in the course of his life. . . . Life has been good to me, so I owe it to this state and country to do what I can."

In the community he had become active in the Dorset Players (a local theatrical group) when he moved to Dorset in 1929, and remained involved with that organization for decades, serving for a time as President. He was a Cub Scout den chief in 1956, and a Trustee of the Historical Society in 1977. He also served as President of the Fish and Game Club, President of the PTA, and Commander of the Dorset American Legion Post.

His wife, who had given up her medical career when they moved to Dorset, also became active in the community. She was active in the Dorset Players, the PTA, and her church, and was a school bus driver and a hockey coach. When her sons got older she took some medical refresher courses in preparation for returning to medicine, and and "Dr. Betty" became the only doctor with a medical practice in Dorset in 1961. She served as a beloved town fixture for 11 years until her retirement.

Claude died of Alzheimer's disease at the Vermont Veterans Home on March 30, 1995.

To see Dern's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.