During World War Ii, The First Special Service Force Was Known By What Nickname?
By Michael D. Hull
When General George C. Marshall visited London in April 1942, the new chief of the British Combined Operations Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced him to a "very odd-looking individual … [who] talks well and may have an important contribution to brand." The man in question was Geoffrey N. Pyke, a bearded, unkempt maverick and former journalist, philosopher, and inventor who had joined Mountbatten's coterie of noncombatant strategists. Just weeks before Marshall'southward visit, Pyke had conceived a plan called Project Turn, which envisioned specially trained troops on motorized, armed sleds attacking vital hydroelectric plants in Nazi-occupied Kingdom of norway, traversing mountain passes from Italy into Federal republic of germany, and sabotaging enemy targets in Romania. Mountbatten viewed it every bit "probably the most bold and imaginative scheme of this war." The antisocial genius'due south project eventually fell by the wayside. Nonetheless, the truly unique commando assail forcefulness created to carry it out—the 1st Special Service Force (SSF)—later made quite a name for itself with its successful combat tape and its colorful approach to fighting, earning information technology a raft of nicknames during its year and a half in service: "The Thugs," "Freddy's Freighters," and "The North Americans." The Germans invented a particularly endearing nickname subsequently encountering the 1st SSF in battle: the "Devil's Brigade."
Lt. Col. Robert Tryon Frederick, Organizer of the Devil's Brigade
Later that same year, the Allied high control decided to go alee with Projection Plough, which called for covertly training and inserting a 1,600-man sabotage strength into Kingdom of norway to wreak havoc on High german occupation forces. British Prime number Minister Winston Churchill insisted that Canadian troops exist included to enhance the value of the unit and suggested that information technology be called the "North American Force." The official unit name finally chosen was crafted to mask its identity by echoing the name of the U.Due south. Regular army's entertainment branch (Special Services).
By early that summer, the new unit of measurement's housing was undergoing hasty renovations at remote Fort William Henry Harrison outside Helena, Montana, and trains and trucks began to roll in bringing volunteers. The volunteers came from many walks of life, only virtually were hardy outdoorsmen who had been told only that they were joining an elite unit. Forming about a third of the force's overall force, the Canadians were drawn from proud regiments such as the Regal Winnipeg Rifles and the Queen's Ain Cameron Highlanders, while the Americans comprised a motley assortment of lumberjacks, miners, trappers, game wardens, and misfits from Army stockades. There were also teachers, farmers, Lord's day school teachers, choristers, political bosses, and former bodyguards for Hollywood stars.
The commander of the strength was 35-year-old, San Francisco-built-in Lt. Col. Robert Tryon Frederick, who had served in the Coast Artillery Corps after graduating from West Point in 1928. At the time that Dwight D. Eisenhower—then chief of the War Department'due south planning division—and Lord Mountbatten selected him for the new consignment, he was desk and working for the War Department general staff. Tall, slender, and mustached, Frederick was soft-spoken, dynamic, and incisively intelligent. He was to prove fearless in combat, and past the end of the war he would become the youngest major general in the Regular army Basis Forces. His Canadian regimental commander was 34-year-sometime Lt. Col. Jack F.R. Akehurst, an Anglican clergyman's son and erstwhile miner from Southern Ontario.
Frederick and his 172 officers organized the men of the SSF into a brigade-size unit comprised of three regiments of 2 battalions each. Its insignia was a reddish spearhead bearing the words "U.s.a. Canada." Once the ranks of the SSF had arrived at Fort Harrison, the men underwent several months of intensive preparation in hand-to-hand combat and killing silently without weapons, skiing, mountaineering, parachute jumping, and demolitions.
How the Devil'south Brigade Went from Barrack Brawls to a Cohesive Unit
Organization and training proved to be the like shooting fish in a barrel part of forming the SSF into an effective fighting force, though. Edifice team spirit proved much more difficult, and there were initially many barracks and barroom brawls among the 2,194 men of the U.S.-Canadian force. Over time, though, they grew to respect each other and idolize their commander.
Project Plough, the operation in Kingdom of norway for which Frederick'south Devil's Brigade had trained, was called off in the autumn of 1942, and he was ordered past the general staff in Nov to set up to take his men—fighting fit and eager for activeness—to New Guinea. The side by side day, this too was canceled. Frederick was now told that the brigade would take part in a planned invasion of the Aleutian Islands in the Northern Pacific the following jump.
On Army Day, April half dozen, 1943, subsequently marching in dress parade through Helena attended past the governor of Montana, Frederick and his men headed for Campsite Bradford at Norfolk, Virginia, for preparation in amphibious tactics. Subsequently intensive instruction in gunkhole landings and dark loadings, the force moved on May 23 to Fort Ethan Allen almost Burlington, Vermont, its final staging ground in America.
Afterward a few weeks, the men headed for San Francisco, where they were to lath transport ships that would have them to their start action in the Aleutians. A 12,000-man U.Due south. amphibious force had invaded the island of Attu on May 11 and waged a bitter offensive, with the loss of 561 killed and 1,136 wounded. Of the 2,500 Japanese defenders, only 29 survived.
The Forcemen embarked from San Francisco on July 10 and arrived in the chilly, fog-shrouded Aleutians on July 25. On August xv, Frederick's brigade was part of a 34,000-homo U.South.-Canadian set on force—supported by three battleships—landing on Kiska. Simply the Japanese had evacuated the island, and the Forcemen were denied their baptism of burn. The task force commander, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett, yet cited Frederick for his "splendid leadership" and his men for their "fine spirit and unselfishness."
Frederick's Men Become their Chance to Enter the Fray
Finally, later tireless pleadings past the frustrated Colonel Frederick, the Forcemen won their risk to fight. Frederick's superiors tapped the SSF to join the Italian entrada, where General Bernard L. Montgomery's British 8th Army and Lt. Gen. Mark Due west. Clark'south Anglo-American Fifth Ground forces were slogging northward and struggling to dislodge Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's well-entrenched High german armies.
Subsequently returning to Fort Ethan Allen and and then staging at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, the SSF boarded a British troopship, the Empress of Scotland,on October 27, 1943, at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and sailed to Casablanca. Frederick and his men landed at Naples on November 19 and went into the line at Santa Maria with Maj. Gen. Fred Fifty. Walker'southward 36th Infantry ("Texas") Division. The North Americans faced a tough assignment in their kickoff action: to capture several enemy mountaintop outposts that were office of Kesselring's Bernhardt (Wintertime) Line in the rugged Mignano Gap, southward of strategic Monte Cassino.
The key to breaching the line was represented past two formidable peaks named Monte la Difensa and Monte la Remetanea. The area was held by the crack 15th Panzergrenadier Division, with the Hermann Göring Division in reserve. Previous assaults by British, American, and Canadian troops had failed at not bad price.
The beginning objective for the Devil'southward Brigade was the three,120-foot Monte la Difensa, christened the "One thousand thousand-Dollar Colina" after it had been pounded with 206,929 shells from British and American artillery. At 1:xxx am on December 3, the North Americans started climbing, burdened with 60-pound rucksacks, weapons, and actress ammunition. Little past little, they inched their way upwards along steep mountain trails through the i,000-foot tree line. Worse all the same were the blank, about perpendicular crags and stone faces that had to exist surmounted. It was a nightmarish, hr-by-hour ordeal in fog and swirling snow that left the soldiers sweating and shivering.
Somehow, though, after resting on narrow ledges, 600 of them neared the cloud-enveloped elevation where hundreds of unsuspecting German language troops were dug in hugger-mugger and in foxholes in a saucer-shaped area the size of a football field. The North Americans were ordered to hold their fire until 6 am, but others—with their faces blackened and wielding trench knives and bayonets—slipped forward in the darkness and quietly slit the throats of enemy sentries.
Equally Frederick'south lead battalion neared the objective, a rock slide all of a sudden alerted the Germans. They fired light-green and red flares silhouetting the Forcemen, and a furious two-hour battle started. "All hell broke loose," remembered Canadian Lieutenant Percy G. Crichlow. Tossing grenades and firing car guns, the North Americans fought desperately to overcome the stubborn enemy force. In the forefront of the activeness was Colonel Frederick, armed with a pistol and grenade, wounded, and as "muddy, moisture, and miserable as anyone."
More Forcemen arrived, and casualties soared on both sides in the procedure of flushing out the Germans. 1 group of Germans rousted out of their emplacement surrendered, carrying a white flag, simply when one of the prisoners shot the squad captain in the face and killed him, his enraged men mowed down the rest. From then on, the Forcemen took no prisoners unless ordered to do so.
Frederick's gallant troops had secured the top by the time the fog began to burn off at dawn, while to the south, the British 56th Infantry Division had captured Monte Camino. The SSF now took shelter in deserted pillboxes to await for supplies to come up.
Meanwhile, the retreating Germans swarmed down the gradient and beyond a connecting ridge to the second objective, Monte la Remetanea, while German artillery and mortars zeroed in and pounded the Forcemen on Monte la Difensa. But they held on, repelling probing counterattacks every bit rations, ammunition, and blankets were laboriously hauled upwardly by the men and mules of their service battalion. Colonel Frederick was proud of his GIs and Canadians. In their showtime activeness, they had prevailed against a superior force and achieved one of the war's epic feats of artillery.
Heavy casualties forced Colonel Frederick to delay his assault on Monte la Remetanea for three days. Patrols were sent out to kill what German snipers they could find, and then, on the afternoon of Dec half dozen, Forcemen armed with knives, guns, and grenades moved silently through cold rain and shifting fog to kill more Germans. Afterwards a lengthy and barbarous disharmonism in which no quarter was given by either side, the enemy defenders began pulling back, and Monte la Remetanea was secured past noon on Dec 9.
Frederick lost 532 of his men killed or wounded, but the seizure of Monte la Difensa and Monte la Remetanea opened strategic Highway six for the Allies to advance frontwards. "This feat captured the imagination of the entire Fifth Army," reported Clark Lee of the International News Service. "And overnight Frederick and his soldiers became nearly legendary figures in a battle expanse where heroism was commonplace." When Prime number Minister Churchill received word from General Eisenhower of the La Difensa success, he declared, "If we had a dozen men similar him [Frederick], we would have smashed Hitler in 1942. He's the greatest fighting general of all time." By its disrespect and courage, the U.S.-Canadian Devil'southward Brigade had quickly joined the ranks of the Allies' fabled assault units, such as the British commandos, Special Air Service, Gurkhas, and Chindits, and the U.S. Rangers, Marine Raiders, and Merrill'due south Marauders.
Frederick'due south Men Plow Their Eye Toward Cassino
After a brief respite at their Santa Maria bivouac area, the Forcemen went on to seize German-held heights disallowment the Centrolineal push button toward Cassino. Defying biting cold, snow, water ice, and gale-force winds, they vanquish well-entrenched enemy units twice their size and took iv,000-foot Monte Sammucro (Hill 720) on Dec 25, 1943; Monte Vischiataro on January eight, 1944; and the Monte Majo Range to the north, the maneuver pin needed for an attack on Cassino. Despite grave losses, the North Americans moved forward stealthily past darkness to surprise the enemy. On one colina, they captured 100 unsuspecting Germans dug in amidst mortars and machine guns. Colonel Frederick received three more wounds during the Monte Majo assault.
After their ordeal in the mountains effectually Cassino, merely a few trucks were needed to carry the exhausted Forcemen back to Santa Maria on the afternoon of January 17. Of 1,800 gainsay personnel, 1,400 were either dead or lying in field hospitals. Fifty percent of the unit'south service battalion packers and litter men were laid low by wounds and fatigue.
Operation Shingle: The Amphibious Invasion of Anzio
While the Allied attacks on Cassino were floundering, Full general Sir Harold Alexander, Eisenhower's deputy Mediterranean field commander, ordered Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas's U.South. VI Corps to undertake Performance Shingle, an amphibious invasion at the historic port of Anzio, thirty miles south of Rome and seventy miles behind the German Gustav Line. The ultimate objective was to push on and liberate the Italian capital.
The British 1st Infantry and U.South. 3rd Infantry Divisions landed w and east of Anzio, respectively, on Jan 22, while five American battalions attacked the port itself. The theory was that Field Marshal Kesselring would panic and pull back his Fourteenth Ground forces, led by General Eberhard von Mackensen, as far as Rome. The Allied invaders met picayune opposition, and the cautious Lucas, fearing a repetition of the almost disastrous Salerno landings the previous September 9, dug in around a 15-past-7-mile perimeter and massed his forces, instead of pressing inland.
His hesitation gave the able Kesselring time to deploy the Fourteenth Army and seal off the crowded Allied beachhead, kicking off a series of fierce battles. A major Centrolineal try to suspension out on January 31 was blunted by six High german divisions, dooming Functioning Shingle to harden into a bitter, four-month stalemate. To Adolf Hitler, the Anzio beachhead was an "abscess" that had to exist excised.
In apprehension of a German counterattack, the Anzio bridgehead was reinforced by elements of the U.S. 1st Armored Division and iii other infantry divisions, two British and 1 American. They were soon joined by the North Americans led by newly promoted Brig. Gen. Frederick. By then, more 35 percent understrength, they landed at Anzio on February two and dug in for 8 miles forth the Mussolini Canal on the right flank of the beachhead. The Forcemen were given twice as much front to concur as Maj. Gen. John West. "Iron Mike" O'Daniel'due south veteran U.S. tertiary Infantry Division.
Trained as an assail force, Frederick's men balked at bold a defensive posture. "Defend, hell!" protested ane soldier. "Permit the goddamned Krauts do the defending!" And then the Forcemen went on the offensive in their own inimitable fashion by raiding and killing equally many of the enemy equally they could. They snuck across the canal to German positions and looted horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, and annihilation else they could detect. I patrol returned with a wheelbarrow total of sweet potatoes, four bushels of peanuts, 22 eggs, a rabbit, and a wounded enemy soldier.
The N Americans' favorite activity, though, was the death raids. Heading out almost every night with charcoal-blackened faces, knit caps instead of helmets, and loose gear taped to prevent rattling, the raiders would silently slash the throats of sleeping Germans and sentries, and so steal back to their own lines with prisoners just earlier dawn.
1 Forceman returned from a patrol with a diary taken from a German lieutenant who had been strangled with piano wire. A recent entry lamented, "The 'Blackness Devils' are all around us at dark. They are upon us before we even hear them coming." Word spread swiftly through the enemy ranks that their attackers were onetime convicts—mostly murderers—who showed no mercy and took no prisoners.
General Frederick added a gimmick to fuel the enemy's fears. He ordered "courtesy calling cards" printed that displayed the Northward Americans' insignia and the words, "Das dicke Ende kommt noch!" (The worst is yet to come!). Forcemen pasted the stickers on the faces or helmets of Germans they had dispatched, and Devil's Brigade intelligence reported that the psychological bear on of these tactics was devastating.
Force intelligence officers later found a Wehrmacht headquarters message on 1 of the prisoners they interrogated that read, "You are fighting an elite Canadian-American force. They are treacherous, unmerciful, and clever. Y'all cannot beget to relax. The first soldier or group of soldiers capturing 1 of these black-hearted men will be given a 10-day furlough."
Legends in Their Own Time
A number of the Forcemen became colorful legends during the iv months that German language artillery, bombs, and two 280mm railroad guns pinned down the dispirited Anglo-American troops in Anzio. 1 was tall, blood-red-mustached Lieutenant George Krasevac, who ventured out on solo patrols, captured a herd of cattle, and was wounded 3 times. On other occasions, he carried an umbrella and rode a cycle along one of the streets to draw enemy burn. Another was Lieutenant Taylor Radcliffe, who was captured, beaten when he refused to reveal Allied dispositions, and escaped several times in ane night.
And in that location was the indefatigable Frederick himself, described as "a crazy bastard" by some Allied generals. Wearing a knit cap and with his face blackened, he went on many patrols into German language territory. One dark, he and his men wandered into a minefield and were raked by automated-weapons fire. Several Forcemen were cutting down, including a stretcher bearer. Left with a badly wounded man, the surviving bearer shouted to a dark figure, "Don't merely stand there, you stupid bastard! Grab hold of the other end of the litter!" Afterwards the ii Forcemen carried the wounded soldier out of the minefield under fire, the medic recognized the human at whom he had shouted. It was General Frederick.
Wounded nine times, the SSF commander was the near shot at general in American history. No other World War II general spent more time with his men in activeness than Frederick. He eventually received no less than eight Purple Hearts, and his many other decorations included 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, 2 Distinguished Service Medals, the Argent Star, the British Distinguished Service Order, and ii Legions of Merit.
Despite mounting casualties in the confront of nonstop German attacks, during which Frederick's men were in action for 99 consecutive days, the Anzio defenders held on. The hapless Lucas was replaced by dashing Maj. Gen. Lucian Thousand. Truscott, Jr., commander of the U.S. VI Corps. Eventually, on May 17, 1944, the twenty-four hours on which Cassino was at last secured, the Allied troops broke out of Anzio before linking up with the 5th Ground forces's U.S. II Corps led past Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes. The Anzio struggle had cost ix,200 British and 29,000 American casualties.
Every bit Centrolineal units pushed on toward Rome, meanwhile, General Clark lauded the functioning of Frederick'due south "aggressive, fearless, and well-trained" North Americans in the Anzio cauldron. He cited their "devastating and terrifying raids" which "gave birth to the fable of the invincible 'Black Devils,'" and decided to reward them by assuasive them to spearhead the entry into Rome. Defying General Alexander'south instructions for the Fifth Army to make its main endeavour eastward through Valmontone behind German forces on the Gustav Line, which would have speeded Allied operations, the celebrity-hungry Clark was eager to steal the limelight from General Sir Oliver Leese's British Eighth Army and liberate the offset Axis capital with the 45th and 36th Infantry Divisions.
The Forcemen Adamantly Pursue High german Forces in Italian republic
Later a 12-24-hour interval pause for regrouping and residual, General Frederick's Devil's Brigade went back into activity, trekking across the mule trails of Rocca Massina toward the Alban Hills and the gates of Rome. In Valmontone and the trivial town of Artena, a finish on Highway six heading into Rome, the Forcemen battled through fierce resistance from German armor, cocky-propelled 88mm guns, flak wagons, and sharp-shooting snipers. Losses were heavy, but the North Americans pushed on adamantly.
At i:06 am on Sunday, June 4, 1944, Frederick received a radio message from General Keyes tersely ordering him to enter Rome and capture vi bridges over the River Tiber. The outset elements of the brigade entered the city at six:30 am. Hitler had given Kesselring permission the previous twenty-four hour period to carelessness the city, but the Forcemen yet came nether fierce burn from enemy tanks, flak wagons, and snipers. Handsome Lt. Col. Alfred C. Marshall, commander of the 1st Regiment, was killed, and Frederick was wounded three more times in the arm and leg, but the resolute North Americans pressed forward.
Riding a one-half-rail out front end, Frederick led his men—some on human foot and others mounted on tanks of Maj. Gen. Ernest N. Harmon'south 1st Armored Division—through the urban center as snipers continued shooting and jubilant, cheering Romans dashed into the streets with fresh bread, vino, and flowers. With bazookas, grenades, and machine-gun burn down, the Forcemen skillfully outflanked and cleared out pockets of German resistance, rolled on toward the vi assigned bridges, and seized them by 11 pm. The 85th Infantry Division, meanwhile, captured the other eight spans to the due south, and Rome was firmly in the hands of the Fifth Regular army.
With cameras focused and accompanied past his able main of staff, Maj. Gen. Alfred Chiliad. Gruenther, Full general Clark triumphantly rode a jeep through St. Peter'south Foursquare on the morn of June v. He was the first general since Belisarius in ad 536 to capture the city from the south, and information technology had taken the 5th Army 275 days and 125,000 casualties since the Salerno landings to become there. "This is a corking mean solar day for the Fifth Regular army," he declared, without mentioning the sacrifices of his British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish allies. Clark's bliss was dampened inside a few hours by headlines proclaiming the massive Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6. The Italian campaign had go a sideshow.
The Forcemen, whose reputation every bit rowdy garrison troops was as legendary as their fighting tape, missed the frenzied celebrations that engulfed the city. Instead, they were ordered to withdraw to the suburbs, where they slept before moving to Lake Albano near the Pope's summer residence. Frederick made sure that his men were catered to and told his officers to overlook whatsoever but the most flagrant breaches of discipline. Celebrating in their own way, the Forcemen gorged on beer and big Italian meals, caroused with prostitutes and willing girls, and pilfered papal article of furniture, bed sheets, and statues. Afterwards a serial of spot inspections and threats, the missing items were returned to the Vatican authorities.
Frederick Leaves his Devil's Brigade for Another Command
Recovering from his wounds and with a leg in a cast, Frederick summoned his men to an awards anniversary on June 23, 1944. It became one of the almost traumatic moments in the brigade's brief history when the general announced that he was leaving for another control. The tough Forcemen "cried like babies when nosotros said farewell to General Frederick," reported Sergeant Raphael P. Montone. Frederick had been directed to raise and lead the 1st Provisional Airborne Sectionalization for the imminent Functioning Anvil-Dragoon, the Centrolineal invasion of southern France.
The 10,000-man force was composed of British and American paratroop and glider regiments, and Frederick shaped and led it equally brilliantly as he had the Devil's Brigade. Full general Truscott noted later on, "Frederick's feat in organizing and grooming this composite force, and perfecting the operation within a period of less than one month, is one of the virtually remarkable exploits of the state of war. Information technology was 1 of the most successful airborne drops." Frederick, who went on to command the 45th, quaternary, and 6th Infantry Divisions, was succeeded as commander of the Northward Americans past Colonel Edwin A. Walker, a mild-mannered, respected combat leader.
Moving on to Operation Dragoon
Simply before the 1st Special Service Force left Lake Albano for Naples on July 1, Full general Clark again complimented the "elite" group. He told them that their exploits had forged "a bright new link in our military tradition." The unit of measurement bivouacked in a fishing village s of Salerno and trained for their adjacent action—an set on part in Operation Dragoon.
Set for eight am on Tuesday, August fifteen, 1944, the massive invasion on a 37-mile stretch of the French Mediterranean coast between Toulon and Cannes was to be mounted by General Alexander Grand. Patch's U.S. Seventh Ground forces, Truscott's VI Corps, General Jean-Marie Lattre de Tassigny's Costless French II Corps, and General Frederick's airborne division. Colonel Walker'due south ii,000 Forcemen were to strike the beginning blow against the Nazis' South Wall.
The Northward Americans left from Corsica in a destroyer fleet and headed westward as the Allied armada stood a dozen miles off the Riviera coast. Set up to spearhead the landings by the night of August 14, they crammed themselves aboard ship ships alongside 700 French Commandos led by Lt. Col. Georges-Regis Bouvet. The Forcemen's objectives were the small-scale enemy-held islands of Ile du Levant and Port-Cros in the Ile d'Hyeres group, 5 miles off Toulon on the western flank of the invasion. They were to seize the islands by dawn on the 15th and silence a German vi.v-inch gun battery on the Ile du Levant that posed a threat to the invasion fleet. The French Commandos were to tempest the mainland at nearby Cap Negre.
At i:30 am on Baronial 15, the Forcemen started scrambling down rope ladders from the transports. In that location were most 1,300 men of Lt. Col. Robert S. Moore's 2d Regiment and Lt. Col. R.W. Beckett'due south 3rd Regiment. Their faces blackened with burned cork, the soldiers were armed with rifles, Tommy guns, bazookas, grenades, and daggers. They paddled inflatable rafts to the rocky, pine-clad islands and silently slipped ashore.
On the Ile du Levant, Moore'south men scrambled up the outcroppings and made their way through thick brush toward the enemy battery. All was ominously quiet as scouts went forward. An attack was hastily organized, and the Black Devils charged the guns. But no Germans were in that location, and the iii big guns turned out to be camouflaged bleed pipes.
Seconds later, incoming burn down struck the area, and the Forcemen hugged the ground. Holed up in a cave at the other end of the island were 200 Germans with mortars, machine guns, and plenty of ammunition. As the Black Devils deployed to assault the stronghold, shells from the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Lookout whistled in to blast the enemy out of the cave. Just the shells were not getting inside, so the Forcemen dashed through mortar volleys and approached the cavern from three sides to pepper the opening with bullets and bazooka rounds. Suddenly, a High german waving a white flag emerged from the fume-filled opening, and cries of "Cease firing!" rang out. The battle for Ile du Levant was won.
On the nearby island of Port-Cros, meanwhile, 700 men of Colonel Akehurst's 1st Regiment had slipped ashore and fanned out through the brush. In that location were no signs of an enemy presence every bit the Black Devils pushed on toward their objective, iii formidable Napoleonic forts with 12-foot-thick stone walls and twenty-pes earth and greenery ceilings. Entrenched within were 58 Germans with car guns and rifles.
As they crossed open ground to storm the forts, Akehurst's gallant men came under withering fire. They had no armament heavier than bazookas, and then Colonel Walker put in an urgent phone call to General Patch for a naval bombardment. Minutes later on, gunfire from the heavy cruiser USS Augustabracketed the forts, but the Forcemen looked on in dismay every bit the 8-inch shells bounced harmlessly off the thick walls. The struggle for Port-Cros continued while Patch'due south main American and French forces splashed ashore, Frederick'southward paratroops dropped inland, and Prime Minister Churchill watched the invasion intently from the span of the destroyer HMS Kimberley.
The action on Port-Cros raged for 2 days and two nights every bit the tenacious Germans beat off repeated efforts by the Black Devils to root them out. Deadly Royal Air Forcefulness Hawker Typhoon fighters bombed and rocketed the citadels, but to no avail. Akehurst's men somewhen fought their fashion into one of the structures, but the other two held out.
Afterward Akehurst appealed for another naval bombardment, the 150-ton British battleship HMS Ramillies moved to a six-mile range and opened upwards with her eight 15-inch guns. Her commencement earthshaking salvo fell long, and the second brusk, simply the 3rd scored a directly hit on the forts. German white flags waved through the smoke, a drawbridge was lowered, and 1 of Akehurst'south companies dashed into the citadels and disarmed the dazed defenders. The boxing for Port-Cros was over. A few days after, Colonel Walker's Forcemen advanced rapidly eastward forth the Riviera shore and took upwardly positions behind the Franco-Italian border. They remained in that location until November 30.
Giving Rise to U.Due south. Special Forces
On Dec 5, the North Americans paraded on the Loup River flats at Villeneuve-Loubet, nigh Overnice, and tears rolled downward many cheeks every bit the adjutant read their inactivation order. Afterward chaplains had read prayers for the men who had fallen from Italia to the Riviera, the Canadians formed into a battalion, marched past their American comrades, and went on to serve under their own colors. Some of the GIs were after assigned to airborne units, while Walker, now a brigadier full general, plus a nucleus of onetime SSF men joined the newly formed 474th Infantry Regiment (Separate) of the U.S. Third Army. Led past Walker, the regiment served briefly in Deutschland and then, ironically, was sent to Norway in August 1945 to assist disarm and repatriate German Regular army units.
The Devil'due south Brigade, which inflicted an estimated 12,000 casualties on enemy forces and took 7,000 prisoners during the war, gave rise to the U.Due south. Special Forces.
The legendary unit'southward exploits were later dramatized in a 1968 film, The Devil's Brigade. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, it starred William Holden every bit Colonel Frederick and Cliff Robertson as his Canadian deputy, supported by Vince Edwards, Claude Akins, Dana Andrews, Richard Jaeckel, and Michael Rennie as General Clark. Information technology was shot partly in the Wasatch Mountain Range in Idaho and Utah, with 300 men of the Utah National Baby-sit every bit extras. The Hollywood Reporter and The Citizen-News praised the picture, merely other reviews were mixed.
Source: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2020/06/16/what-the-devils-brigade-did-in-world-war-ii/
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