At Anzio, the Germans nicknamed them ‘Schwartzer Teufel’—the Black Devils—because they crept in silently at night from No Man’s Land with blackened faces and wearing baggy cargo pants and slit the throats of the enemy. The black-faced commandos that struck fear in the hearts of Hitler’s finest belonged to the illustrious First Special Service Force, a joint American-Canadian brigade that trained in Helena, Montana, saw its initial WWII service in Alaska, and fought pitched battles against the Nazis during the Italian campaign and Battle for Rome in 1943 and 1944. Specifically trained for cold weather insertion, mountain combat, and covert operations behind enemy lines, they would become one of the most celebrated units on either side in the Second World War and caused considerable consternation in the vaunted Hermann Göring Division and other crack German outfits. Especially in the dark of night.
The 2,500-man FSSF—made up of two-thirds Americans and one-third Canadians—was formed in 1942 by American Colonel Robert Tyrone Frederick as an elite guerrilla force specifically for montane winter combat. The name Special Service Force was conceived by Frederick to conceal its military mission and fool outsiders, both foreign and domestic, into believing it had to do with frivolous GI entertainment. Frederick—a 1928 West Point graduate known for his mediocre record as a cadet in the grand tradition of Ulysses S. Grant and George S. Patton — had specified in his call-out order to fill the brigade that his recruits be “rough, tough and unafraid of anybody or anything.” What Frederick got was some of Canada’s finest soldiers and a hefty number of American lumberjacks, Canadian prospectors, and assorted ruffians, adventurers, misfits, cutthroats, and ne’er-do-wells of both nationalities emptied from stockades, or who volunteered in order to join an elite unit. When one trooper showed up to commence his training in Montana, he reported that he wasn’t sure how he got accepted into the unit because he didn’t have a criminal record.
It became their special calling card and it scared the holy crap out of the Krauts.
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The Force’s original emphasis in training was in mountaineering, skiing, and delivering hard kicks to the groin; and the Forceman’s credo, borrowed from the British Handbook of Irregular Warfare, held that “every soldier must be a potential gangster.” The motley gang of hard-drinking American and Canadian gangsters experienced some early friction between the two groups of North Americans early on in the training, but by the fall of ’43, after a mission to Alaska, they became a brotherhood. Shipped to Italy in December 1943, the Force’s military function broadened, and it was to be used to make swift surgical strikes against enemy outposts, to tie up large numbers of German combat troops with nighttime raids, and to perform impossible missions no other Allied outfit had the ability to carry out. The Force went on to fight at Monte La Difensa and La Remetanea, Anzio, and the Battle for Rome.
But it was at Anzio where the Devil’s Brigade earned its moniker. The unit took part in daring nighttime raids between the Mussolini Canal and German front lines on the Allied right flank. In a display of macabre psychological warfare, on the foreheads of the Germans they killed Forceman would place a sticker containing a symbol with two crossed lightning bolts, a dagger pointing upward through the bolts, and a phrase in German that read DAS DICKE ENDE KOMMT NOCH! THE WORST IS YET TO COME! It became their special calling card and it scared the holy crap out of the Krauts. Mark Clark, Commanding General of U.S. Fifth Army in which the Force served, was quick to recognize the unique capabilities of the unconventional unit: “[The] 1st Special Service Force was selected to hold 13 kilometers [of the front at Anzio]. This aggressive, fearless and well-trained organization…immediately undertook a series of raids and bold probings of the enemy front. Repeated unsuccessful operations by the Germans, to neutralize these devastating and terrifying raids by small units of the 1st Special Service Force, gave birth to the legend of the invincible Black Devils.”
He is the only U.S. serviceman to receive eight Purple Hearts in the war, which earned him the moniker as “the most shot-at-and-hit general in American history.”
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Following the liberation of Rome, the First Special Service went on to fight in Southern France before being disbanded in December 1944. The modern American and Canadian Special Forces trace their heritage to the Devil’s Brigade—the colorful gang of black-faced ruffians, rabble-rousers, and roustabouts from both sides of the border that struck fear into the hearts of the German Army during WWII. In 2013, the United States Congress passed a bill to award the First Special Service Force the Congressional Gold Medal. The living members of the legendary unit officially received the medal on February 3, 2015.
During the war, the Devil’s Brigade reflected the gritty adventurism and idiosyncrasy of its thirty-six-year-old commander. The son of a San Francisco doctor, Frederick had joined the California National Guard at the tender age of thirteen, sailed to Australia as a deckhand on a tramp steamer at fourteen, and graduated from West Point at twenty-one. It was rumored that he had made his first parachute jump after only ten minutes of instruction wearing bedroom slippers, and that in combat the only things he carried with him were his rifle, Nescafe, cigarettes, and a handwritten letter in Latin from the bishop of Helena, commending him as “altogether worthy of trust.” In late June 1944, following the liberation of Rome, he was promoted to major general and was ordered to move on from the beloved unit he had created and bled with in the Italian campaign to organize and train an airborne force for the Dragoon landings that would take place in Southern France in August 1944. He went on to command the U.S. 45th Infantry Division from December 1944 through February 1945; the unit saw heavy combat in French Alsace. The youngest general to command a division-size unit in WWII, he was awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses and several other decorations. He is the only U.S. serviceman to receive eight Purple Hearts in the war, which earned him the moniker as “the most shot-at-and-hit general in American history.” No less than Churchill himself called him “the greatest fighting general of all time” and proclaimed that “if we had had a dozen more like him we would have smashed Hitler in 1942.”
“Today Robert Tyrone Frederick’s career remains both an ideal and a cautionary tale: a style of leadership that was unique, inspired, brilliant, and tragically costly.”
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According to John Nadler, author of A Perfect Hell: The True Story of the Black Devils, the Forefathers of the Special Forces, Frederick ended the war a bona fide star destined for an important role in the post-war army, but his success in the European theater in 1944-1945 proved to be almost an impediment in peacetime and he did not take well to army politics. After serving in several U.S. and overseas posts, he tendered his resignation from the army in 1952 at the age of forty-five. In the words of his daughter, he had come to the end of his endurance and his “mental, physical, and spiritual expenditures in war were catching up with him.” He drifted into retirement, purchasing land in California and becoming “a gentleman farmer.” When the legendary exploits of the First Special Service Force were immortalized in the 1968 film The Devil’s Brigade, Frederick was portrayed by actor William Holden.
He died from heart failure in 1970 at the age of sixty-three, having never fully recovered from his numerous battle wounds or from being poisoned by gas fumes in his quarters at Anzio, an accident that caused enlargement of his heart. The architect of the Devil’s Brigade was interred at the cemetery of San Francisco’s Presidio, the military base where young Frederick a half-century before had first dreamed of soldierly glory. As Nadler says, “Today Robert Tyrone Frederick’s career remains both an ideal and a cautionary tale: a style of leadership that was unique, inspired, brilliant, and tragically costly.”
According to eminent WWII historian Carlo D’Este, “it was the outstanding leadership of men like Frederick that prevented the Germans from annihilating the Anzio beachhead. He was one of the most respected and fearless American commanders, and his accomplishments in organizing and commanding the Anglo-Canadian First Special Service Force were unparalleled. Like Darby with the Rangers, Frederick was the heart and soul of his unit and the right man for the very difficult task of creating and training the most successful unconventional unit ever fielded by the United States Army in World War II.”
And now, because of him, the Devil’s Brigade is legendary.
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In Altar of Resistance, Book 2 of his WWII Trilogy, Historical Suspense Author Samuel Marquis brings to life the crack U.S.-Canadian First Special Service Force that became known as the “Devil’s Brigade.” The hard-fighting, colorful unit fought in the Italian Campaign and Battle for Rome in 1943 and 1944.
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Photo: Reuters.com