The efforts of three Wheatley men in commemorating the Devil’s Brigade will pay dividends with the eventual dedication of plaques placed on boulders near the future site of the Wheatley Legion.
The First Special Services Force (FSSF) — commonly known as the Devil’s Brigade — was a joint Canadian-American military unit of 1,800 highly-trained soldiers.
They were a group feared by enemies and were dubbed “the Black Devils” by the Germans.
Four men from Wheatley and two from Kingsville were part of the famous brigade during the Second World War.
There is an annual reunion each year, which alternates between Canadian and American cities. This year’s reunion is in Helena, Montana, where the FSSF soldiers all went to train in 1942.
Roger Lamb of Wheatley, whose father Bill was a member of the FSSF, has teamed up with local military historian Bill Siddall and Wheatley Legion 2nd Vice President Tom Brown to bring the boulders to Wheatley and have the plaques installed.
The plaques are engraved with the 32 names of FSSF soldiers from Essex and Kent Counties.
The four men from Wheatley — Bill Lamb, Mel McCauley, Mike Cochrane and Clifford Foster — all returned from the war and spent many hours reminiscing about their experiences.
Dent Harrison and S. Nemeth were members of the brigade from Kingsville.
A similar commemoration was erected in Amherstburg last year and Roger Lamb was there to see it.
“It was quite a moment,” he says. “We are just continuing the Amherstburg project with our Wheatley project.”
While the Legion is fully behind the commemoration, Lamb says he has to give credit to the Municipality of Chatham-Kent for stepping up with the funding.
“We knew they were upgrading the cenotaph,” he said. “That’s when Tom Brown used his connections to get it done.”
The First Special Services Force was innovative and the first of its kind, considered the forefathers of today’s Special Forces units.
It was activated in July of 1942 under the command of Lt. Colonel Robert Frederick, a highly decorated American Army officer, and recruits trained in secret at Fort William Henry Harrison in Helena, Montana, where both Canadian and American governments agreed to provide an equal amount of officers and soldiers.
The “Forcemen” would be men who were resourceful, self-reliant and could operate in extreme conditions. Many of them were lumberjacks, forest rangers, hunters and explorers. Training was quick and extensive, and they became qualified paratroopers, weapons experts, demolition experts and hand-to-hand combat experts.
“My dad never talked much about it,” says Lamb. “But we had a lots of guys from the brigade show up and stay at our place over the years.”
The FSSF won all 22 battles they engaged in and never retreated.
A story about Wheatley’s Mel McCauley is one of those stories that shows the tenacity of the Devil’s Brigade soldiers and their willingness to put themselves in harm’s way to help their fellow soldiers.
Private McCauley’s actions on a winter day in 1944 garnered him the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which was recommended jointly by Lt. Colonel Gilday of Canada and Lt. Colonel Frederick of the U.S.A.
“On the morning of 27th of February, 1944 on the Anzio Beachhead, Italy, the enemy opened up an all-out artillery and mortar barrage as a prelude to an attack against one of our positions along the Mussolini Canal,” said the report from Gilday. “During the barrage, our LMG (light machine gun) covering the enemy was put out of action. The crew, seeing the enemy within 100 yards, abandoned the gun with a warning to Sgt. McCauley that a break-through was imminent. With two riflemen, Sgt. McCauley immediately ran to the machine gun and in the face of machine gun and machine pistol fire from three sides, stripped the gun, readjusted the headpiece and brought fire to bear on the enemy, who were now within 30 yards of his position.”
The report went on to say that McCauley’s exceptional devotion to duty and complete disregard of his own personal safety was an inspiration to the other members of his company and was a material factor in turning the tide of the battle.
McCauley’s Distinguished Conduct Medal was the only one handed out to a Canadian from the Devil’s Brigade.
The brigade spent 99 days without relief on Anzio Beachhead before clearing the mountaintops and the liberation of Rome.
The FSSF disbanded in December 1944, but their honours still continue today.
Those honours take the form of the boulders you see at the Wheatley cenotaph today, which will soon be permanently installed and commemorated with a proper ceremony.
The four Wheatley-based veterans of the FSSF met at the annual reunion in Kitchener many years ago. From left are Clifford Foster, Bill Lamb, Mike Cochrane and Mel McCauley.
Photo submitted
Dent Harrison, Kingsville
