Properly designated as the 1st Special Service Force, the Devil's Brigade was a joint World War II American-Canadian commando unit trained at Fort Harrison near Helena, Montana in the United States. Many modern American and Canadian Special Forces units trace their heritage to this unit. For the movie of the same name, see The Devil's Brigade.
Background
The volunteers for the 1800-man force consisted primarily of enlisted men recruited by advertising at Army posts, stating that preference was to be given to men previously employed as lumberjacks, forest rangers, hunters, game wardens, and
the like. The 1st Special Service Force was officially activated on July 20, 1942 under the command of Lt. Colonel Robert T. Frederick. Much feared for their fighting prowess, the monicker "The Black Devils" was adopted after the discovery of the personal diary of a German officer referring to "die schwarzen Teufeln (the Black Devils)."[citation needed] With blackened faces, small units would often overwhelm German defenders without firing a shot, and then disappear into the night.
Force members received rigorous and intensive training in stealth tactics; hand-to-hand combat; the use of explosives for demolition; parachuting; amphibious warfare; rock-climbing; mountain warfare, and as ski troops. From the outset, the 1st Special Service Force was armed with a variety of non-standard or limited-issue weapons, such as the M1941 Johnson machine gun.[1] The Johnson
LMG in particular helped greatly increase the firepower of the unit and was highly regarded by those who used it in combat. Frederick himself participated in the design of a fighting knife made exclusively for the Force called the V-42 combat knife, a derivative of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife.
The formation patch was a red spearhead with the words USA written horizontally and CANADA written vertically. The branch of service insignia was the crossed arrows formerly worn by the U.S. Army Indian Scouts. The unit wore red, white, and blue piping on their garrison cap and on the breast oval behind their parachutist wings. Members of the unit also wore a red, white, and blue fourragere, lanyard, or shoulder cord made out of parachute shroud lines.
History
The 1st Special Service Force was activated on July 9, 1942 as a joint Canadian-U.S. force of three small regiments and a service battalion. Following its initial training period in Montana, the 1st SSF relocated to Camp Bradford, Vermont, on April 15, 1943, and to Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont, on May 23, 1943. On July 4, 1943, it arrived at the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, and on July 10 sailed
for the Aleutian Islands. On August 15, 1943, 1st SSF was part of the invasion force of the island of Kiska, but after the island was found evacuated, it re-embarked and returned to Fort Ethan Allen, arriving September 9.
Stealth will be required at times. Please bring a scribblin' stick.
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