May 25, 2026 · Updated May 25, 2026
The Town of Huntington is marking Memorial Day 2026 with a noon wreath ceremony at Veterans Plaza honoring the classified 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a unit of 1,100 artists and engineers who deceived Nazi forces across Western Europe with inflatable tanks and fake radio traffic. Multiple hamlet parades also step off at 10 a.m. The ceremony at 100 Main St. is free and open to the public.
The Town of Huntington is marking Memorial Day with a noon ceremony at Veterans Plaza that focuses this year on one of World War II's strangest fighting units: the Ghost Army, 1,100 soldiers who bluffed an entire German command structure using rubber tanks, sound trucks, and fabricated radio traffic.
The ceremony at 100 Main St. on the front lawn of Huntington Town Hall faces Route 25A and centers on the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a top-secret outfit whose mission was not declassified until 1996. Soldiers recruited for the unit came largely from creative backgrounds — advertising agencies, art schools, and theater companies in the New York metropolitan area. Their tools were not rifles but inflatable rubber tanks, half-ton sonic trucks capable of broadcasting recorded battlefield noise across miles of open terrain, and a sophisticated fake radio network that fabricated entire divisional personalities: unit call signs, specific operator rhythms that enemy signals intelligence had learned to recognize over months of monitoring.
The 23rd executed more than 20 deception operations between 1944 and 1945, simulating units up to five times its actual size. Historians credit the Ghost Army with diverting German counterattacks from real Allied advances and helping prevent tens of thousands of American casualties. Congress awarded the unit the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022, more than 75 years after most of its members came home unable to explain to their families what they had actually done during the war.
Wreaths will be placed Monday at Veterans Plaza monuments honoring veterans of World War I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Women's Veterans, and service members who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Middle East conflicts. The ceremony begins at noon and is free and open to the public. Town officials ask attendees to arrive by 11:45 a.m. Parking is available in the municipal lot off New York Avenue behind Town Hall.
The Ghost Army's story resonates in a particular way on a holiday designed to hold specific names. The soldiers of the 23rd came home carrying a secret they could not share for 50 years — their citations blank, their unit's contribution invisible by design. Several Long Island veterans' organizations have made outreach to Ghost Army descendants a focus of recent Memorial Day programs.
Multiple parades step off across Huntington's hamlets at 10 a.m., two hours before the noon Veterans Plaza ceremony.
The Elwood/Commack VFW Post 9263 parade begins at 10 a.m. at the Home Depot on Larkfield Road at Jericho Turnpike. Veterans' organizations, fire companies from Elwood and Commack, and local scouts will march east through the Commack Road corridor before concluding at a veterans memorial for a brief service.
The Northport Memorial Day parade, one of the township's most-attended, begins at 10 a.m. from Laurel Avenue and proceeds south along Main Street to the village harbor, where the American Legion leads a waterside salute. Spectators tend to fill Main Street early; parking on Fort Salonga Road and nearby side streets is typically available until around 9:45 a.m.
American Legion Post 488 is holding a graveside service in Cold Spring Harbor at 9:30 a.m. on Cold Spring Harbor Road, open to the public and expected to run approximately 30 minutes.
Huntington Town Hall and all town offices are closed Monday. Municipal garbage collection scheduled for the holiday shifts to Tuesday. Residents with service questions can call the town at (631) 351-3000.
The Huntington YMCA's Memorial Day weekend carnival closes out its four-day run Monday with rides and games through the evening. Day-of POP wristbands are $45 at the gate. Restaurants along New York Avenue in downtown Huntington are keeping holiday hours; calling ahead before making the drive is worth the 30 seconds.
