It was the known officially as the First Special Service Force, a unit of combined Canadian and American soldiers. It was a secret commando regiment gathering the elite of both armies and training them even further in specialized and deadly warfare tactics.
Today. February 3rd, survivors and their descendants will be given a gold US Congressional Medal for their service from US President Obama. It is the highest civilian honour the US Congress can bestow.
The force of about 1,800 were specially trained for the most dangerous missions, usually behind enemy lines. They earned the nickname “the Devil’s Brigade” during a 37-day operation in Anzio, Italy. They would blacken their faces with shoe polishto operate behind the lines after dark. Before his death in 2000, the late Sgt. Tony Planinshek told Calgary Sun reporter Michael Platt, “We started putting American-Canadian stickers on the foreheads of helmets of the bodies we left behind, saying ‘The worst is yet to come’ in German”. This created enormous fear and confusion among the Germans. Later a German communique was discovered which referred to them as “the black devils” and the name stuck as the “Devil’s Brigade”.
The brigade inspired a 1968 war film of the same name, based on a book co-written by American novelist Robert H. Adleman and Col. George Walton, a member of the brigade.
The WWII force then became the forefather of all other special ops/commando forces such as the US Navy Seals, and Canada’s JTF-2.
The special medal service will take place at 1500 hours this afternoon with about two dozen survivors and their families in attendance, The survivors are mostly in their mid 90’s now.
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