Can Modern Recruits Complete This Legendary WW2 Commando Mission? | Devil's Brigade | Timeline

one of the great privileges of working at history here and making films together with our team at timeline is the access we get to extraordinary historical locations like this one stonehenge i'm right in the middle of the stone circle now it is an absolutely extraordinary place to visit if you want to watch the documentary like the one we're producing here go to history hit tv it's like netflix for history and if you use the code timeline when you check out you'll get a special introductory offer see you there [Music] at dawn on december 3rd 1943 the devil's brigade launched one of the most daring assaults of the second world war on defensor you climbed your fingernails your teeth than anything else you got to work and we climbed and we climbed and we climbed 60 years later this group of soldiers has just found out how tough a climb that was jay was in front of me and uh he grabbed a rock it was as big as i couldn't put my arms around it and there was no i tried to push it away but it just overtook me and smashed me right into the other granite face first you know as the sun rose the brigade was within a few hundred meters of the enemy we watched them come out of those rock caves and emplacements and go to their weapons and get set up they were set up for the wrong direction the german forces were battle-hardened and desperate and although the devil's brigade had surprise on their side the struggle for mount defenza was far from over and then somebody said okay let them have it and that was it [Music] [Applause] italy's leery valley vast and fertile has been the southern highway to rome for 2500 years in his 1944 documentary san pietro director john houston described it this way leary valley lies in the italian midland some 60 miles northwest of naples to some 40 miles southeast of rome a wide flat corridor enclosed between four walls of mountains the valley floor with its olive groves and ancient vines its crops of wheat and corn is green the year around that is in normal times last year was a bad year for grapes and olives [Music] by november of 1943 the allied advance had bogged down in a sea of winter mud and fierce german resistance san pietro monte lungo monte casino some of the most bitter battles of the second world war were fought in the leery valley into the maelstrom came a group of men whose very name would chill the enemy they were the first special service force the devil's brigade our orders were the regiment was assigned to take a mountain called defensa after the allied landings at salerno the u.s fifth army advanced rapidly towards rome north of naples they ran into a german defensive position which stretched across the spine of italy known as the gustav line it stopped the allied advance at a town called casino in the leary valley overlooking the valley and key to the german strategy was a mountain known as la defenza from defense's peaks the germans could see the allied armies in the valley below and what they could see they could kill [Music] this is defensa today its tranquility masks the horrors men faced here as they fought often hand to hand for a small plateau near the summit known as the saucer 60 years later the saucer is once again home to a unit of german troops these men are all experienced soldiers who have come to italy as part of a war game they'll defend the saucer from a squad of canadian and american infantry who will try and overrun it but they've also come out of respect for the panzer grenadiers who fought and died here and like those men the soldiers have no idea when the battle will begin but they do know the enemy these are the men they will face canadian and american troops who have recently finished almost a month of training in the year 1942 but not just any training devil's brigade training the first special service force was history's original hunter killer unit the training those men took was so brutal so intense so unlike anything the army had taught before the soldiers believed they could do the impossible at defenza they would do just that this was our first combat action and we as far as i was concerned we wanted to to make it a success these soldiers will try to do what the devil's brigade did scale defends us cliffs and overrun the german positions and although their weapons will only fire blanks the mission they face is very real i mean look at this place you know your avenues of approach are really constricted you know if you're moving up a road you're probably going to get ambushed so you got to get off into this this jungle it's intimidating i mean looking up at that peak right there and thinking well we're gonna have to go up there you know attack this group you know thinking that you have to do that under fire is a daunting challenge but climbing defensa will be more than a daunting challenge for some it will be the most difficult mission of their lives i have a very very bad fear of heights you know some people are afraid of spiders i'm afraid of snakes i'm afraid of heights oh yeah i'll be fighting fighting my fear of heights the whole way when we do this the climbing part if the men are to do with the devil's brigade way they'll climb the mountain at night november 1943 the first special service force arrives in the shadow of mount defenza and it was pouring rain it was pretty rugged because it was nothing but mud had been raining that was the worst winter apparently in italy in i don't know how many years across the leary valley men were wet and cold anxious to keep their weapons dry by the mks we were always worried the machine guns would jam they would freeze up in the cold it was constantly snowing wet snow and it stuck to the metal and froze metal is engaged after they believe to give liver if you tried to pull the trigger nothing happened i remember the rain i remember the food and i remember the guns and i figured to myself this is going to be one syllable war these men have come to the leary valley in the dry season their olive grove is an oasis not a swamp but like the men of the brigade who paused here 60 years ago they have no tents no fires and no hot food dinner is what soldiers call sea rations box lunches from 1943. we have one can of chicken luncheon meat we have graham crackers and defense biscuits vanilla caramels bullion powder sugar compressed sugar those wooden spoons matches cigarettes gum a little can opener on the mountain top the german squad prepares their meal the vermont rations of canned meat bread and soup are what german troops ate when and if the supply trains got through the difficulty lay in the constant resupplying of the front-line soldiers with ammunition and especially with food the essentia the food carriers often had to climb up the mountain with jerry cans of soups or meat dishes and often they came late the soup or the meat was spoiled the super the flesh in 1943 the allies patrolled this valley constantly capturing pows meeting partisans anything to determine where the german guns were but this squad has no one to help them so chris byrd and jay budd have gone to do what any good soldier facing a tough mission would do find out what they're up against so we're looking for a nice natural path that's through this thick brush right here and uh a lot of times if you just take your time and you can find a natural trail that the animals use so that's going to be the path at least [Music] resistance since the war the mountain has become overgrown with thorn bushes and dense brush climbing defends as cliffs will be dangerous finding a route to reach them might be impossible [Music] on the day of the assault the squad prepares with quiet confidence these men are soldiers from some of the finest regiments and they've worked hard to prove themselves worthy of this mission looking forward to it just want to get up there it's a long ago you won't dishonor those guys the advantage on any battlefield is held by those who control the high ground these troops are expecting an assault but they don't know how many men are coming or from which direction so they're following the routines the panzer grenadiers did in nineteen forty three maintain the perimeter use the cover and wait the of dutchess for the most part the german soldiers of the italian front came from the campaigns in france and russia so they were experienced soldiers used to quietly following their orders to doing what they were told without complaining the germans had everything zeroed in and they they're they're looking down from the top of that mountain and they could see an ant move you want to put it that way [Music] [Music] hundreds of artillery pieces were coordinated from defense's heights the men who controlled them were dug in and almost invincible to frontal attack but the devil's brigade was not the type of unit to walk into the enemy's line of fire colonel frederick the brigade commander wanted to see the mountain for himself so he commandeered an aircraft and flew repeatedly over the german positions if others couldn't find a way to silence those guns he would the colonel made the decision when we go up we won't take the usual route we will never make it we'll have to do something different when frederick returned he had a plan and this is what he decided he would take the brigade north through the allied front lines into no man's land where they would hide directly below the german guns until nightfall his scouts would then move on to the mountain placing ropes on the undefended cliffs behind the german positions the rest of the brigade would then climb those cliffs in the darkness and at dawn attack the germans cheers boys to the force [Applause] 4 p.m the long climb begins the squad's plan is to follow the route the devil's brigade took and reach the foot of the cliffs before dark but it's a long way to those cliffs and the men have no maps they're prepared for a long night they have no idea you don't want to talk to anybody you just want to get the hell in there and get it over with [Music] as soon as possible you're almost you're almost beaut i went out on patrol mike mikeljohn went out on patrol and thomas was out on patrol several of us including tom and bill rothen went up of ways where there was a little rise that we had to climb and we set ropes there uh to make it easier yeah the guys went up first and put in the ropes and what have you but they had to wait until uh well i was told that it was about 900 artillery pieces put in a four-hour barrage on the mountain basically they kept the germans occupied trying to stay out of the artillery barrage and they i wouldn't think they'd hear anything and that was the idea that it would divert them thinking something was coming from somewhere else so many shells were fired that night the men called defensa the million dollar mountain money they said which was very well spent tom ordered the battalion to get started and we started up in pretty much single file up the mountain and we climbed and we climbed and we climbed well it was pretty it was a pretty steep climb rain showers every night and then and we could hear the artillery preparation pounding the mountain preparing it for our final assault 8 p.m the squad is at rest well right now we're at another security halt uh we got a good view of the mountain the leadership uh jay and albert are gonna get their bearings and uh then we're gonna pick the best avenue approach up the mountain we have to go ahead and walk and load now because these grounds you hear that noise right we can't go up the mountain and do that the weird darwin was trying to be safe but if anybody that sound just travels through the chorus the climb has gone well but as twilight falls danny hassell is worried that jay budd does not know the right path to take down did you see that trail it's back there before the road forked it looked like it was going up straight to the cliffs right we might as well stay in this triple canopy but it's it's exactly yeah it's exactly where they went out okay i'm all over it you know all right if you want to take the tourists out we can go that way but now let's roll all right i'm gonna talk to the machine gunners on defensa's summit the german troops finish their last patrol of the day for almost a week they've been on edge waiting for the attack orders for the night if something happens and you run out of ammo he says keep your head down for these men their time on defensa has passed in a routine most soldiers know well moments of alarm hours of work days of boredom but tomorrow will be different midnight danny's instincts were right the squad is lost uh the traveling's been pretty uh pretty tough since the sun went down uh the train itself isn't what makes it difficult it's the night that we can't see where we're going a lot of the guys are getting quite a bit of kid one guy has a machine gun it's really big really heavy apparently we are 100 meters away from the germans they think they're near the cliffs but no one knows for sure a little challenging at night during the day this is just a quick boulder piece of cake the men have approached this climb like a real special forces mission no light no noise no quitting 60 years ago the devil's brigade had no choice but to do the same doing it in the middle of the night with dead silence and you can't see much as quiet as possible you cannot move that many man with that much equipment without making some noise you weigh so much you can hardly move your rifle 45 your ammunition for both i was carrying ammunition some ammunition for a machine gun i also had a jerry can of water which just about kills you getting up there you weigh about 300 pounds this is not very easy and it was cold and wet and the mountain was very steep so you're climbing with anything you could and we climbed and we climbed and we climbed as those men pushed forward struggling under the weight of their combat packs there was a moment of near catastrophe a helmet fell nobody knew that for quite a few years noah the guy in front of me slipped on the rocks and whacked me in the head with his boot and when you're climbing like that you don't have a tight helmet around you so it was loose and he kicked it off and it went down the hill but it was raining that night and the moment passed i was mad because at that time i smoked and all my cigarettes and everything were in the helmet 3 a.m the squad has reached the cliffs and they too are about to have a moment of near catastrophe in the darkness a rockslide danny hassell is hit by a boulder the size of a truck tire well jay was in front of me and uh he grabbed a rock that was easily a piece of granite bigger than i could put my arms around and it he stepped off and the whole thing rolled over and just crushed me onto the side of the mountain uh smashed my how's my teeth i chipped my teeth yeah right here yeah there's a little chip there [ __ ] my teeth smash my face crushed my whole hand yeah that hurt man it felt like a baseball bat i saw a couple white flashes and then a little one hit me too i took the big one and smashed and then as i raised up another one tipped me again i was like i did say rock in the middle of it all though i think i think i heard that i did i said it sounded pretty gnarly man it sounded like that was coming down talking about killing the camera i think we scattered down below i know i did i just went running in the dark hoping not to run off a cliff yeah i kept rolling right over top jumped off the rock and then fetus jumped into a little cave i mean i heard that and i like for a split second visualized the whole squat no the whole squad getting wiped out i mean it sounded like it was freaking coming down and drove my hand hurts so man nah man don't overreact how far are we to the top we're not even halfway up we're not even halfway well and where's the road the steep stuff i want to hurt somebody now pissed off dude we're just going to keep going because that's what we all want to do as a group right so we're going to the objective we're not going to wait till dawn we're just going to assault it kill everybody and then we're going to get him medical help that's what we want to do so we'll finish that that's right we own the night and we climbed and we climbed and we climbed ask any one of them would they ever want to do it again the answer is no mind the language when the hell are we going to get finished off of these things because you were getting pooped we really were well you know you see the movies and all that sort of stuff and they climb by means of the ropes and that sort of stuff and that's baloney on defensive you climbed your fingernails your teeth and anything else you get to work when the men left the olive grove they intended to follow the route the lead platoon of the devil's brigade took but the mountain had become overgrown and the squad lost the trail for most of the night they fought their way through thorn bushes and thick undergrowth and when dawn came they were on the cliffs but hundreds of meters below the german camp 5 a.m after a night of waiting for the next rock to fall tensions are high danny's close call has spooked them right knee over no more guys are coming out let them know guys getting bumped off [Music] at the german camp the night has passed peacefully but the dawn is cold in december of 1943 the panzer grenadiers would also have been trying to stay warm but the artillery barrage had them on alert these soldiers as far as we could tell by and large were experienced they'd come off the russian front but they were they were very well trained exceedingly well trained as all german soldiers were they knew their business 6 a.m lead climber chris byrd is beginning to think he's chosen the wrong route i've been saying we're 50 meters for the past kilometers [Music] i think this would be really good for some competent climbers however i don't quite count myself right now as a competent climber i mean my fear of heights and my inexperience on the rocks this is gonna suck [Music] after 12 hours on the mountain the men are exhausted they've climbed almost 3 000 feet and there's at least one more peak to scale before they reach the saucer joe george has made it the slowest climber in the squad joe has joined the rest of the men at the top of the cliffs chris bird's instincts were right after all he has brought them to the edge of the saucer and now these men can do what special forces soldiers do best stalk the enemy throwing any germans up there at that when we got up there we got up there they're all in their holes we watched them come out of those rock caves and emplacements and go to their weapons and get set up so so [Music] we watched them get set up they were set up for the wrong direction and then somebody said okay let them have it and that was it different men have different reactions my reaction was i had a got a coppery taste in my mouth uh you just got to face it and go on and all this ammunition was coming at you yeah i had some sobering moments when i heard that stuff coming in at me yeah i wish i could get the hell out of here this is no fun we were trying very hard to protect ourselves and there was no no way to dig a hole you couldn't dig holes up there and i think the only way i got over it was action i did something and as soon as you start to do something your fear dissipates sergeant john dawson told me take your machine gun and move it over and start firing over that other ridge and on my way over carrying my machine gun that's when i got hit then the thigh i said sergeant i said i've been hit by a rock and he came over he said you're dumb he said you've been hit by machine gun fire well it was everything was going on machine guns they had about three machine gun positions and we were trying to get the one out and i was trying to find this guy that was kept ducking in and out of the behind the rocks he try and pick him at the right time but he got it but i don't know whether it was me or not because there's so much going on there was a good ridesman up there a hell of a good racement up there they were pretty rough and pretty tough and in most cases a lot of them were a parachute regiment like ourselves machine gun right there that works chaos to the extent that you only knew what was going on in your particular immediate area you had an objective and you worked towards that objective y'all want surrendering it took the devil's brigade about two hours to overrun the saucer although the fight continued for most of the next day the victory was assured defenza had fallen [Music] hello for these soldiers this is a time to recognize new friends in the uniform of old enemies [Music] but most of all a time to be thankful that the weapons only fired blanks i shoot one magazine two magazine three magazine and my ammunition was over it's hard to find a good cover in this direction well we saw we saw your heads bob in there so we knew where you guys were yes when you do combat with guys with your own unit you know you always give an enemy force like a certain section and you know these guys and you see them all the time and it's it's just your game's not on but when you come up here you've worked hard you're both wearing different uniforms you're you're representing the old boys and you you see their enemy at the time and their uniforms and the adrenaline is going and and everyone switched on the attack was really good so my adrenaline was pumping for sure sounds like real war and um i didn't expect that but that is so real we have no sharp ammunition but it was really real if you look down in that valley there there's no way you think guys would be able to come over without being detected what the the forcement did is it's unbelievable it's unheard of you know when they were young men they were 19 20 22 they were young guys and uh yeah you just look around the hills and and you think those men spent years of their life doing this you know years and and died by the hundreds and thousands in these valleys so yeah you think about that all the time [Music] sixty years after the storming of mount defenza the saucer has once again become a pasture the domain of shepherds not soldiers [Music] but in the mountain shadow lie many of the men who died on that long ago morning soldiers who fell far from home the soldiers of the first special service force who lie at the foot of mount defenza have become a legend and the world remembers that legend those who survived remember the men men like tom mcwilliam a school teacher from new brunswick tom mcwilliam was a lieutenant colonel who commanded the first battalion stu hunt was his bodyguard guy this leading reading maps and all this sort of stuff can't protect himself i had i was very young and so i think uh colonel williamson uh mcwilliam said come on kid i'll come with me i'll take care of it pulled me out of the company he said you're my bodyguard newly married mcwilliams wife harriet had written with news of her pregnancy the letter arrived the day before the defense attack but only american troops received mail that day tom mcwilliam went into battle unaware of the news from home the main battle moved off to the right maybe a couple hundred yards mcwilliams said we've got to get over to where the last of the germans are to get at them we got partway across they dropped the bomb on them yeah i sort of went this way and he went that way i knew he was dead i mean this is not something where you got to check the pulse like doing the in the movies guy gets hit with a close mortar bomb in the open you don't need to look for a pulse historians estimate 73 first special service forest members died that day the german losses were in the hundreds the devil's brigade took few prisoners [Music] under the silent watch of the storied monte casino this squad of american and canadian soldiers have come to pay respects to the fallen as they pause at the graves of their brothers in arms these young soldiers see more than names carved in stone they see the men who were once just like them [Music] i think i'm gonna speak for most of the guys when i say this uh my voice is quivering uh it's overwhelming i mean we got to walk in their footsteps very little that it was you know in those three weeks before coming here mission in italy and uh standing here is it's heavy it's heavy on my heart i started off by just reading the names and the regiments and stuff they're from and i started reading the how old they were in the comments at the bottom and most of them are the same as as i was like the average age i think was early 20s and i've seen a couple 19 couple 20 and that's that's me you know there's a lot of comments on the bottom a lot of them had wives and it's it's sad right here in this row there's five headstones from the force all day that are dated third of december 43 the day they took defending and it's just i it helps put things in perspective that after that mock assault that we did the other day same like my regimen wasn't here but there's a lot of people from regiments that i have friends and and it's it's hard it's tough to believe that uh that could be them as you walk up the steps and turn the corner it it literally takes your breath away seeing the thousands of stones um i i can't really comprehend or even uh begin to comprehend what um the force would have went through going up there under fire it's kind of um it just hits home and um okay next question when we sit here in the leery valley in this grave remember that they're veterans old and young almost a year to the day after the victory at mount the first special service force held its final parade the devil's brigade was no more the military bureaucracy decided canada's best trained troops ever could better be used as replacements as they left the field the canadians saluted their american comrades and quietly vowed never to forget those that i remember and we remember a lot of them you couldn't find any better no matter where you looked we're proud to have borne the colors of the first special service force you kind of can't believe you're stupid enough to get involved but as most people say if they needed me now i'd go i mean you don't learn a hell of a lot even after 60 years i don't think well we're not looking for riches or money or medals because we was doing what we thought was important to save our country and the peace that we enjoy and you'd be surprised what a simple thank you [Music] means [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 134,125

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, devil's brigade, modern soldiers, ww2 commandos, ww2 soldiers, ww2 history, canadian military history, devil's brigade mission, italian campaign

Id: FU4DYpnezjY

Length: 46min 46sec (2806 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021