Can Modern Soldiers Pass WW2 Basic Training For Elite Commandos? | 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 all right go ahead okay the battlefield of today is a shadow world of special forces soldiers who stalk each other without mercy these highly trained teams are often the first boots on the ground when diplomacy fails and the going gets tough they come in early they come in hard and they come at night because night is the killing time this assault has been an exercise for a team of soldiers undergoing the tough training the original special forces unit took back in 1942 [Music] history remembers those men as the first special service force but hollywood called them the devil's brigade the movie created the myth these soldiers are living the reality for the next month they'll train and fight the way the devil's brigade did hey come on and if they think being the soldier in 1942 was easy they're in for a shock come i tell him to do something he does it their time in the past will be violent and brutal before it's over one of these men will almost die four will be hospitalized and two will go home those who tough it out will come to europe to attempt one of the devil's brigade's most dangerous missions [Music] the experience will be harder than the soldiers could ever have imagined it will push some to their limits now we do it because we're all soldiers and we don't turn back or none of that [ __ ] because we that's just what we are we're soldiers using muscle courage and all their special forces training the men will try to do what the devil's brigade once did overcome the odds and defeat a resolute and determined enemy these men are not actors but experienced german soldiers and just like the panzer grenadiers who held this outpost 60 years ago this squad is held bent on holding their position [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] on a spring morning in 1942 the legend of the devil's brigade was born here in montana [Music] one section two in the middle these fifteen men are all professional soldiers they're men like brian haynes from fort benning georgia brian is a drill sergeant in the us army in one section put your kid outside where you go next and albert boucher a master warrant officer in the north saskatchewan regiment who has recently returned from afghanistan we'll show you one bird burke and chris byrd a sniper from the royal regina rifles who also teaches unarmed combat these soldiers like all the others are hard men who've led courageous lives and just like the original devil's brigade volunteers who came here a lifetime ago they have no idea what they're in for i was completely amazed at the destination i had no idea when i volunteered for this unit that i would be heading for the united states of america all we knew is that we're going west somewhere off the train and you're about ankle deep and dust [Laughter] what on earth have i got into then when we saw all these different uniforms and everything what's going on here we couldn't figure it out okay welcome back to elena what you're about to take right now is the same training as they did in 1942-43 no surprise you're all qualified soldier and this is the way you can be treated as such you can wear your equipment as you see fit what we're looking for is people who can perform with the equipment that they're given the men of the brigade were both canadians and americans this squad is too we're going to set up the big danny hassell is a u.s ranger who's seen tours of duty in iraq and afghanistan in the middle right let's get to hey what do you think brother let's put the new one jay budd is the third man in his family to wear the green beret jay specializes in high-altitude free-fall jumping at night andrew rowe is a tough kid from nova scotia who will soon earn the nickname the fighting fetus and every unit has its rookie meet 18 year old kevin hansen a high school quarterback who's recently volunteered for the us army the troops have been issued a standard 1940s kit this kit right here is not the best for canadian scott young it's a big change from what he's used to it's so awkward like it's just difficult like we have brand new webbing and stuff back home attack vests and stuff and this is so hard to like adjust yourself and like scott likes army life he won't like it in 1942 sucks very disappointed really hasn't oh no it's really been a big disappointment i've been really upset about the whole time the whole thing the devil's brigade was born in the darkest days of the second world war as the third reich conquered europe churchill secretly worried the german fighting man was tougher than anything the allies had something special was needed the devil's brigade was the answer the british couldn't afford the cost of the unit so the americans stepped in but few american soldiers had ever fought in the cold canadians had a lot of us had never met canadians before we didn't get along too good with them right in the beginning not too great canadians pretty much in the yes sir no sir spitting polish type thing and especially the guys that went to the force the americans were kind of a loose crew the brass knuckled americans but brass buttoned canadians the canadians got paid less than the us soldiers yeah but you know we all said americans couldn't play poker with a dam we straightened the money out after payday and of course just being from a different country started some bar fights [Music] that really was that was overplayed in that stupid movie uh there really wasn't a lot of problem above everything else it was the brutal training which broke those barriers whether you came from texas or toronto was meaningless everyone double timed around camp and was loaded like bullets in the back of a truck for another day running the mountains [Applause] we had a lot of stuff in common and you found those common things and that's what broke down the barriers us infantryman fears only god and his own artillery joe george has just returned from iraq he's volunteered for this tough training to learn from the past we can't forget the lessons that are have been passed down to us written sometimes literally in the blood of soldiers we cannot afford to forget those lessons and they took us over to muscle mountain and that looked like about a 10 000 foot mountain to us you didn't make that one on the run the first few times but look that way pine mountain that's where we're going the one with trees on the right hand side that's the one two jericho per section first section to the top must wait for the other two to arrive okay special forces soldiers like many of these men consider themselves the best of the best they say weak links simply don't exist today they'll find out if that's true hey it's going great life is good we're going to find out if i'm as hard as my grandfather running up this mountain carrying jugs of water was something every member of the brigade did on their first day of training how's it going okay the way it was put you want to get out of this outfit just don't finish doing what you're supposed to be doing and you'll be gone well nobody would drop out i ate i ate for a while until i got i got accustomed to it and then it just sort of didn't bother me the anymore cans of water the heavy gear and the thin montana air all take their toll however these are elite soldiers who've climbed mountains in afghanistan hunted killers in iraq they've seen a lot worse than this and everybody makes it to the top take a look around guys that's beautiful [Music] almost worth the climb the technology of war may have changed but the essence of being a soldier has not respect is earned not ordered and you work hard to prove you belong if the training is tough you had better be tougher the whole thing in the training was i'm gonna make you quit and the answer was like hell okay listen up we're going for a four and a half to five hour walk kit is fairly light we probably got in there radios 35 to 40 pounds only that's your first one the weight and the distance will increase as we go along they took you out on a 25-mile route march to and say this is just conditioning marches there had never been a unit like the first special service force three regiments almost 2 000 soldiers who trained like commandos but fought like partisans designed to operate behind enemy lines the men were selected for their unconventional skills cowboys farmers street tough city kids if you liked a good fight you were the brigades kind of soldier training was very rugged and very stuff very tough and and very a lot of it it wasn't just a little bit here a little bit there it was training every day and every morning and every night and we got toughened up pretty good it was tough i've been through some pretty tough training parachute training was always tough but this i think was about at the upper end of toughness it certainly put us in condition for anything that was to come next the men took the training in stride hiking hundreds of miles across the montana foothills although the instructors tried to break them in an age of guts and glory no one wanted to be called a quitter it wasn't so much it was the training it was the stick-to-itiveness that's what was important about the training and of course physical conditioning and you know tough men need an even tougher leader lieutenant colonel robert frederick was just such a man we just idolized that man he was a real highly qualified officer of great ability outstanding intelligence and great bravery personally when frederick took command he requested two things a specially designed killing knife and a stockpile of enemy weapons he got them both frederick knew a large force operating behind enemy lines would be difficult to resupply so he trained his men to fight with german guns [Music] the luger the schmeiser machine pistol were standard vermont weapons the schmeiser in particular was a favorite of german paratroopers it had a light trigger hey hey whoa whoa whoa what was that but there was one vermont weapon feared and admired above all the others the mg 42 machine gun 1200 rounds a minute accurate over half a mile and weighing less than 25 pounds the mg 42 was a simple reliable killing machine that's a great gun it was a lot faster than our browning machine gun oh much different sound uh the rapidity of the firing was a dead giveaway the brigade had a great weapon of its own the thompson m1 submachine gun the men called them room cleaners oh tommy gun was everybody most a lot of the guys wanted that because you could spray a pretty good path with that thing and it a lot of guys had it i thought to myself wow tommy gun al capone introduced in 1921 the thompson was a crime-fighting submachine gun knock him down and he'll stay down the ads boasted but at 200 each the thompson was too expensive for most police departments so the military bought them in the us army has fired many weapons he says nothing beats the thompson firing the 45 caliber thompson it's one of the best experiences to do uh ever since i was a kid you know you carry around the toy gun and you're hoping to get a chance to shoot it someday and this is the first chance i ever got to have it in my hand so yep that was great for the men of the brigade the thompson was no toy they'd soon be facing an enemy which had conquered nations in weeks they wanted all the firepower they could get and the troops eat well the devil's brigade was probably the only infantry unit in history not to complain about frederick ordered his cooks to either buy or steal the best food they could we ate very well very well indeed food was marvelous absolutely and the toughest part about the eating was that you had to eat quickly and you had to have a long reach otherwise you didn't you left the table hungry good food means good morale and after a few days in the past these soldiers are also a happy squad they ran the mountain shot the guns and think they can do what the old guys did without too much pain but they haven't gone one one-on-one with bill wolfe yet you can need a wider angle so you can block wide falls okay there's the knife trapped okay take it off all right this is not gonna drive into them keep your hands on your head right there you couldn't be a very good cook okay meet bill wolf one of the meanest 60 year olds around drive into the guy's chest okay then you got his eyes with these hands wolf a hand to hand instructor in the canadian army teaches what's called defendo fighting dirty if the guy's going gung-ho on you protect bust his legs if he's got no wheels he can't fight he learned his trade from pat o'neil the man who trained the brigade the hand-to-hand combat was was with pat o'neil and it was his his kick and poke method that he he had developed while he was with the shanghai police and he was an expert unarmed combat guy he was a sixth degree black belt he had a very simple philosophy if you have a gun use it if you have a rock use it if you have a stick use it if you don't have anything this is what you do and what you did was forget the rules and fight like a shanghai street cop because what you're thinking is fighting square fight okay what you got to do is get out of the boxing mindset the sportsman said if i go boxing you bust my legs the first thing he taught you was to close never retreat which is what your opponent expects if he menaces you you've got to close and take the guy out if he's throwing jabs you're backing up you fall in a hole keep your hands up cover bust him take his lead leg out break it you're thinking sport got it practice let's go close the hole and kill for for me personally because i was a kind of a mild mild mannered kind of a youth i had a hard time with that i uh in the hand-to-hand combat i i was always the loser you know i didn't think i had it in me to to do this sort of stuff but after a while i'm gonna have to hurt him aren't i back to his eyes again okay position nervous stop up okay eyeballs there's it's no sport at all it's killed and and it's in this you're how good are you at defense against somebody attacking you so you can be effective in killing just that simple nice and simple grabbing left hand to his wrist unrun pull get behind them all right this is called an arm drag the purpose of it is to clear the front position take us back so you can pick them up all right so nice and simple in here pause take them out down all right working it off nice and simple from here one two pass the dirtier it is the better i like it got it partner up practice thank you the dirtier it is the better i like it the devil's is about to find out exactly how dirty that can be mr bird get over here okay now keep your stance okay when we're looking in here eyes chris teaches self-defense and knows his way around a fight but he's not prepared for wolf in case you missed it here it is again right finger left eye fight over okay get out of he's being decapped now you understand roger where does hands go right then you can take advantage of position okay you guys got to get out of the sports concept this is brutal savage but they asked for it we can take it and we can dish it out just do it nice and simple chris bird got off easy kevin hansen is up next his hands dropped you can take position any time the guy keeps his hand in a hut position smack him here break in here if you're too close ball okay and now it's just a light tap how old are you 19. 19. my daughter's 21. that's why i practice on young fellas hits to the temple which could kill a man hit through the nose up here right under there which would drive hard enough to drive portion the nose portion back up into the brain and kill an individual here there's no see i straighten them up this gets into here and i kill him when these legs come in tap his nuts four or five times go like that with your heels and those balls go hit us nuts does that feel good no sergeant you're doing that where do you think his mindset's going out the window to stop this from choking then you choke the frog take out his right eyeball and feed it to that just crossing your legs means when you cross four times in the balls choke them out as you're doing a poke out of an eye and do it get out of here practice kill him if he resists take his eye out we weren't in a wrestling match it was kill and maim not hurt and shake hands so to this day none of us know how to do that we're teaching him how to tactically kill the enemy using stealth movement and overwhelming superiority of mental attitude the devil's brigade claimed they owned the night patience stealth and sudden violence was what it took to stay alive all right now what i'm gonna show you is brutal okay it's not dog this is the real deal it is for most people very repugnant the fact that you actually gonna practice killing all right and it takes repetitive training to break down the barriers to the concept of killing okay in the infantry everything is about killing it's quite a shift in uh your thoughts and your feelings and all this thing to realize that hey you're gonna have to maybe kill somebody with with your knife now the philosophy is very simple there's you and there's me and it's gonna be you and as sure as that is gonna be me that's all you need to know in a close combat situation you either kill the enemy or he kills you that is the real deal okay and if you cannot find it in yourself to utilize that skill you will lose in the real deal oh yeah we knew how to use it and where to use it but it's one thing to do that and use it on a dummy and another thing to perhaps sneak up on a german sentry and put your arm around his naked and stick them in the in the kidneys i never worried about the you know the morality or any of that stuff i just knew that i was coming back and i was pretty sure the other guy wasn't first action you can hold the knife so the blade's parallel down you come in here see when i hit him what happens to his body okay that's the one side here okay it's the other side all right what's in this area right here what's right here kidneys i'd say i any real infantry soldier has to learn how to use a weapon like this because if it comes to this kind of weapon and this is all you have if you're not the people we're going against definitely know how to use one of these so all the training was done with naked weapons naked bayonets naked knives we had the knives and eyes are very very sharp so he told you that getting cut was not a big deal getting killed was a big deal you might get a cut superficial cut of some kind but you were going to kill this person when i come on the guy in we were taught how to come in back of a soldier an enemy soldier and pull his head back and cut the juggler ander how to do that effectively by putting your knee in the back of the soldier and how to do it very quietly you get it in and you bury it up to the thumb print in order to get out you're going to go back and forth like this inside the guy eviscerate a big hole to pull it out because how many guys ever got it a goat a deer here what happens to it it sucks on so you make a hole right eviscerate pull it out damn you gotta love this right and most of these men do violence is their trade and they can handle wolf's casual cruelty with one exception hansen is leaving something's come up he says i've got to go these guys were tough this equipment that they use is raggedy it's by by today's standards i mean if we were using our own equipment this would be easy and their equipment was raggedy you know all this wool and this heavy equipment and these guys were tough hands down i mean these guys had been the toughest people in the war despite the best efforts of the program producers kevin went home at the end of the third [Music] day the hand-to-hand combat hurt him bill wolf scared him too intense too angry too real yeah well tomorrow's story is don't send your sons and daughters off the war if you don't want him to learn it ready on the right right side's ready left stand by go after months of being taught how to kill the devil's brigade was literally at the end of their rope these were hard men who had signed on for action but all they'd had was endless training the the rough training encourages one to want to get out of the training and into the action rumors began to spread a mission was in the wind well we pretty well knew that we were going to go to norway allied intelligence had learned germany was moving quickly on their atomic bomb project nazi scientists were making heavy water at a research facility deep in a norwegian fjord the devil's brigade was tasked to destroy it uh that was louis mountbatten's idea same guy that was pushed the the up raids too so the mission called operation plow was a mess right from the start i think to me it was a rather strange mission oh i think it's the usual military screw-up particularly since uh the the final plan to deposit us into norway uh had not been worked out we knew it was a suicide mission if you can imagine how dumb people could be we knew it was a suicide mission you're going to parachute into a place like norway and you're going to ski and blow up a power plant which is defended by by germans who are very skilled in winter warfare because they've been fighting in russia this and where were you going to go was only one place to go if you were in the first regiment you would go to sweden except that sweden didn't want you story may be right it might have been a suicide mission all i'm saying is none of us thought so the american army had built a prototype snow machine to carry men and equipment the weasel but with a top speed of 30 miles per hour and almost no armor the weasel was every infantryman's worst nightmare the vehicle we had the weasel the only bomber that could handle it was a lancaster and the lancaster was under the control of brits who did not want to trust their great new obama to such a mission operation plow was canceled when the norwegian government objected to the plan the resistance eventually destroyed the plant and the devil's brigade was sent back to montana advanced the only brigade members who'd seen any action were the canadians who had fought in france early in the war then we had we had battle derral training which which was imported from canada canadian army which worked very well for the special service force that gave us fire and movement where one group is protected by the fire that's laid down by another group and then when they're in their position then that group moves up so on enemy 12 o'clock 75 yards the brigade worked relentlessly on the fire and movement drill suppressing fire from one flank allowed the other to close on the enemy fire and movement became the basic infantry squad tactic of the second world war even today it's taught at military colleges around the world these soldiers have all done this type of exercise many times but in this age of unlimited firepower attacking an enemy position with only eight rounds in the magazine is harder to do than they thought fix it welcome to 1942. wow why did we learn a few things guys uh yeah i have a satchel bag filled with freaking grenades because i had six rounds left and i reset over here right i was done i only had four mags to start with okay so in other words you got to get a slower rate of fire to suppress when you're moving you need to save it for the assault line so you can do suppressive fire yeah and the counter-attack and the counter okay it's not bad if we hold the hand right hand out shaking yeah yeah may guess what that is it goes away after a while all right all right all right gents this issue we need to deal with tonight we need to get a general feeling of the training so far one week into training and the instructors are not happy we're looking at some schedule changes and i have some concern about three individuals that i observed today i'll bring up both three soldiers in particular have caught their attention they concerned about young george and pierce young is the guy that apparently doesn't care about anything twice today i told him to fix his equipment and basically he told me that he didn't care and he got somebody else to fix it for him and this word where i don't care just fix it the way you own it he asked him where he wanted it on the belly so yeah i don't care george is a tall one with the glasses i think he's in three section i would like you to keep an eye on him on two different occasions today he wasn't on time even though he gave them the 15 minutes warning he still had his boots off and he just didn't care he is slower than slow believe me i'm not saying slow mentally i'm saying you tell him to do something and it's just like ten times today i said five millimeters apart five meters apart and everybody and i was like shoulder to shoulder with him and i was purposely and he was the only guy basically touching the rack soccer buddy over ahead of him i think we have a concern with this guy the third one is mr pierce maybe he just need a fire under his butt but right now it's just not keeping up mr pierce is spencer pierce a tough kid from toronto who joined the army after the police caught him repelling from a bridge apparently the first sergeant thinks i have an attitude but lots of people tend to think that we'll find out maybe he can actually get to know me before he thinks something like that to get spencer and the others back on track the instructors have decided to conduct a snap inspection joe what detonated over here anything in there that was a question joe did you get away with a bro look like this anywhere else in the military it's a negative song okay so rock we're getting over here right treasure all right okay i want you to be embarrassing somebody have you wore those uh no sir i don't blame you there you go yes sir all the kid is good all right i gotta ask i've heard this nasty rumor about you having a uh electric toothbrush i do have an electric toothbrush where on earth is that it's over in the shed oh it is okay what are you using now i've got a standard bristle brush outstanding the soldiers in this camp all hope to be selected for the devil's brigade mission in europe but the instructors have been told to cut anyone not measuring up and joe spencer and scott young are in their line of fire all right guys tell me what we're going to do now is we're going to talk a little bit about the mission for tonight um basically what a mission is tonight is an ambush uh in this scenario what we've got is we've got a two vehicle the squad has been ordered to conduct a mission the brigade did many times in battle ambush a convoy and kill the occupants moleskine mountain whatever fall right down here and come on up to the tower okay uh those two vehicles will be uh lightly uh lightly armed uh only just a few individuals in it so basically we want both trucks destroyed uh and whatever occupants are in there they're coming through the art of the ambush is in the planning danny hassell the us ranger has done this type of planning before go across the road send two guys up they go through sweeping through bodies and all that staying together though man because you never know who somebody might still be alive i don't know if we're gonna have to go up there and show you exactly some guys watching i like personally the same two that go up there are also demo guys just like in the force you know they all knew that so instead of sending everybody up there the two guys that are searching are now demo guys as well this will be the first time the group has worked together and the men are focused [Music] but the gods of war are fickle and many a soldier has died on a simple mission just like this there's always the unexpected no matter how careful the planning is it's sort of like defensive driving you anticipate that the guy ahead of you is going to do something stupid so be ready for that in 1942 this is what the soldiers would have seen as they set up their ambush but with the low light lenses today's special forces use this is how the same scene looks danny's plan is to divide the convoy and assault each vehicle individually so an explosive charge is laid across the road primed to go off as the first vehicle passes approaching the trap an armored personnel carrier and a truck with a 50 caliber machine gun in the back from the outset things go wrong the charge to separate the vehicles fails to go off the convoy does not stop it's time for plan b only there is no plan b and the chaos of war ensues even though the weapons are only firing blanks it's clear the machine gun controls the battle the squad is caught in the open in a real fire fight they'd have taken heavy casualties [Music] all right one dead crowd in the front [Music] seat these men are all professional soldiers and they know the ambush did not go as planned but they adapted to the changing circumstances um so these two vehicles did what i didn't want them to do so i had the left side of the assault assault to vehicle number one over here and the right side went with me and assault through over here for vehicle two i gave you guys a very rough operations order just basically a mission and i saw several times when things screwed up but you adapted fairly well i went with the alpha team the demo didn't work remember p stands for plenty that's one of those things there when the assault started we'd uh divided good on you petroleum you divided the assault element to take on multiple targets this was good stuff good stuff yep is there anything you think we need to do better on the next one me and angela for our team there was no reason why we couldn't strap double the amount of ammo to our backs like we both should have had a problem that's what i was going to ask yeah that's what i said to you when we pulled as soon as i was there i'm like for plenty you know we aren't used to using these weapons but that's all a part of you know training and rehearsal that's what it's all about so you guys know to take this back and the weapons you use and the things you do every time just keep doing it over and over nobody's going to be just perfect at it you know perfect practice makes perfect it's not just practice makes perfect you understand that so and this was a learning experience guys this wasn't a real thing so we have to be thankful for that and nobody was hurt we all came home right the men of the first special service force were the elite soldiers of their time they too understood the need for perfect practice but they also needed action finally in the summer of 1943 the unit received battle orders the devil's brigade was going to war the men had trained in the snow in the bush and in the mountains so the army sent them to sea [Music] next time on devil's brigade alaska the brigade spearheads an invasion to win back american soil and we were quite prepared that we would lose a lot of people if the japanese put up the same kind of fight the drill sergeant from texas faces his fears hey attention i'm falling i feel like every time i move my feet i feel like i'm gonna fall and another soldier goes home he's a really close friend so for him to leave kind of sucks that's next time on devil's brigade you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 585,414

Rating: 4.9100304 out of 5

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, modern soldier, devil's brigade, ww1 commandos, ww2 commandos, special forces, world war 2, 1st special service force, world war ii

Id: Z4BKDfrCDfE

Length: 46min 20sec (2780 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021