Commentary: Honors for Canadian veterans overdue

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Aug. 12, 2005) – Canadian members of a unique U.S.- Canadian World War II unit will soon receive retroactive recognition for their service fighting side-by-side with their U.S. Army comrades.

This long-deserved recognition will join other honors received by this unit’s members – to include the enemy’s back-handed tribute that gave it the name its veterans have worn for 60 years as a badge of honor.

On Aug. 13, surviving Canadian infantrymen of the First Special Service Force will be presented with the U.S. Army’s Combat Infantryman Badge at the First Special Service Force’s 59th annual reunion in Calgary, Canada.

You might know the First Special Service Force by its better-known nickname, the one popularized by a book and movie of the same name – the Devil’s Brigade.

The Devil’s Brigade moniker came from an entry in the diary found on a dead German officer. In it he had written, “The black devils are all around us every time we come into the line and we never hear them.” He was referring to the aggressive patrols and night-time raids by the Force’s U.S. and Canadian members – their faces blackened as camouflage -- on German positions at Anzio. The North Americans of the Force liked the name and were soon referring to themselves as the Black Devils of the Black Devils Brigade.

The origins of the Devil’s Brigade are as fascinating as its make-up and exploits in combat. Its genesis is due to a plan conceived by a brilliant but eccentric British scientist named Geoffrey Pyke.

Pyke came up with the concept of a force of highly trained commandos using a specially-designed snow-traversing tracked vehicle to prey on the Germans in occupied Norway and disrupt their ability to exploit Norway’s resources. Neither the commando force nor the special vehicle existed at the plan’s conception but the plan received a big boost toward becoming reality when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations and the man in charge of carrying the war to occupied Europe by operations just like this, enthusiastically endorsed it in early 1942.

At a special conference in April 1942, American participation in developing the vehicle was agreed upon. The plan then made its way to the U.S. Army’s operations division, headed by Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. As a matter of routine, it was given to an operations division staffer, Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick, for evaluation.

Frederick carefully studied the plan and then wrote a scathing report, recommending that the entire project be dropped as soon as possible. Eisenhower angrily rejected this conclusion for a project personally approved by Churchill and Mountbatten, especially since he had just told them both that the Americans were moving ahead with it.

In the ultimate irony, Frederick was soon put in command of the project and became the guiding force behind the creation of the Devil’s Brigade. In a little more than two years from the time he first studied the plan’s feasibility, Frederick would organize the force from scratch, make it into one of the most highly trained units of World War II and lead it through its most difficult combat actions. Frederick’s leadership and battlefield successes would see him rise to the rank of major general by age 37 in 1944. He left the Black Devils in late June 1944 to command the airborne task force that invaded southern France in August 1944 and then took command of the 45th Infantry Division in December of that year.

The Force was activated at Camp William Henry Harrison near Helena, Mont., July 9, 1942. Consisting of some 2,300 men, the Force was organized into three regiments of about 600 men each, plus a service battalion. Each regiment was divided into two battalions of three companies each. Its Soldiers would carry a variety of U.S. small arms and wear U.S. Army uniforms. Its heaviest weapons would be 60mm mortars and light machine guns.

It had earlier been determined that the Canadian Army would participate in the project. The Canadian volunteers, who made up about one third of the unit, were rigorously screened before arrival at Camp William Henry Harrison. Some of the American volunteers were hardly volunteers. Per long-standing custom, many commanders used Frederick’s call for Soldiers to man this new unit as an opportunity to rid themselves of their less-desirable troops, to include some who reported to Montana from post stockades and arrived under armed guard. On the other hand, many of these garrison Soldier troublemakers would prove themselves to be ideal combat Soldiers in the unorthodox Devil’s Brigade.

The training that all members of the Force received was intense and extensive. The unfit were weeded out. Those who withstood the rigorous training became experts in small unit and individual combat, demolitions, amphibious operations, and mountain warfare. They became airborne-qualified. They also got used to using the Weasel, the specially-designed vehicle intended for the snows of Norway.

They would never use it there because the Norwegian operation, the reason for the Force’s creation, was cancelled. Fortunately, the unit itself was not disbanded. It took part in the anti-climatic invasion of Kiska in August 1943 (Unknown to the invading forces, the Japanese had secretly abandoned this Aleutian island prior to the invasion and the only casualties resulted from left-behind booby traps.).

As fate would have it, the North Americans of the First Special Service Force would first see real combat action in neither northern Europe nor in the northern Pacific. Instead it would go into combat in southern Europe. The Force joined Fifth U.S. Army in Italy in November 1943. Its first mission was to take the strongly held German position at Monte La Difensa and Monte La Rementanea. Several previous assaults had failed. Instead of making a frontal attack, the Force’s 2nd Regiment scaled the 200-foot cliff on the back side of Monte La Difensa on the night of December 2-3, taking the defenders by surprise. They then took neighboring Monte La Rementanea. This first action by the Force cost it more than 500 casualties.

More bitter fighting in the mountains south of Rome followed, with the North Americans adding to their list of achievements and their list of casualties. On February 1, 1944, the Force arrived at the Anzio beachhead. Its strength then was about 1,200 men. Despite its small size, the Force took over one quarter of the 52-kilometer-long Allied perimeter at Anzio; the rest was held by three divisions. It successfully defended its sector – and earned its nickname – by keeping the Germans opposite them off-balance with night patrols and raids.

The Black Devils were among the lead elements in the drive for Rome following the breakout from the Anzio beachhead in May. On the morning of June 4, a combined column from the Devil’s Brigade and the 1st Armored Division entered Rome. Frederick later submitted a sworn statement attesting to the First Special Service Force being the first unit to enter the Italian capital, a fact he was sure about since he was in one of the lead vehicles of the column.

Re-assigned to Seventh U.S. Army, the Devil’s Brigade took part in the invasion of southern France in mid-August 1944. Coming ashore in rubber boats during the night of August 14-15, the Black Devils captured two fortified islands near the naval base of Toulon in advance of the main invasion force. The Force was then tasked to cover the right flank of Seventh Army’s advance, which took them through the Riviera in an operation so free of notable resistance that it has been dubbed “the Champagne Campaign.”

By late 1944, the need for a specialized force like the Devil’s Brigade was at an end. The unit was disbanded in December 1944 because of the need for replacements for line infantry units. The Black Devils were reassigned to other units in the U.S. and Canadian Armies.

A number of the Americans went to the 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate), which brought the story of the First Special Service Force full circle when the 474th went to disarm and repatriate German troops in Norway – the initial objective of the Force that was the reason for its creation -- following the German surrender.

The story of the Devil’s Brigade did not really end in 1945. The lineage and honors of the First Special Service Force are carried and maintained by today’s U.S. Army Special Forces, whose elite Soldiers wear the famed crossed arrows insignia as were worn by the Black Devils.

Their training, skills and exploits on battlefields around the world are worthy of those great American and Canadian Soldiers who preceded them at Monte La Difensa, Anzio and Rome.

For these interested in reading more about the First Special Service Force, there are a number of books available, such as:

o The Devil’s Brigade by Robert H. Adelman and George Walton

o Super Commandos by Ross R. Todd

o The Black Devil Brigade by Joseph Springer

o U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II by David W. Hogan Jr.

o The First Special Service Force: A War History of the North Americans, 1942-1944 by Robert D. Burhans,

"The sergeant is the Army." - General Dwight D. Eisenhower