Edward E. Boccia: Ghost Army artist
Charles “Phil” Hornthall, left, and Edward E. Boccia, sketching in a bombed-out church in Trevieres, France.
Edward E. Boccia served his country during World War II as a private in the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion in the Ghost Army (23rd Headquarters Special Troops), which was presented a Congressional Gold Medal in March 2024. Born June 21, 1921, in Newark, New Jersey, to Cono and Frances Boccia, he was recruited by the U.S. Army while he was an art student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, before enlisting on Aug. 15, 1942.
Boccia was one of many art school students recruited for this top-secret unit designed to deceive and mislead German forces. Prior to shipping out to Europe, the battalion disguised strategic military installations along the East Coast from the air using camouflage. The soldiers served as expert deceptive artists during several major campaigns in Europe by deploying inflatable decoys of U.S. military tanks, cannons and jeeps to create dummy airfields, artillery batteries and tank formations accompanied by sound effects.
The Ghost Army staged 20 battlefield deceptions from Normandy to the Rhine River. Starting in England in 1944, they traveled to France and Luxembourg and then to Germany in 1945. In September 1944, the Ghost Army staged the illusion of 20,000 U.S. troops during Gen. George Patton’s Operation Bettembourg along the Moselle River in France, securing an American victory.
Like many other soldiers, Boccia would sketch in his free time behind enemy lines and in bombed-out cathedrals and send the drawings home to his mother. He drew numerous portraits of displaced Russian, French and Italian civilians along with his fellow soldiers in France, Germany and Luxembourg. Among his closest friends from Company B were Bill Blass and Arthur Shilstone. Blass became a world-renowned fashion designer and Shilstone worked as an illustrator for major magazines like Life and National Geographic.
Following the Allied victory in Europe, Boccia married Madeleine Wysong, a fellow student at Pratt Institute, on July 17, 1945. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Columbia University and began teaching and serving as dean at the Columbus (Ohio) Art School.
Boccia was the youngest art school dean in American history when the couple had their first child, David. Their second child, Alice, arrived after the family relocated to St. Louis in 1951, where Boccia served as professor in the School of Fine Arts of Washington University in St. Louis until 1985.