Modern Recruits Face Their First 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 you see something let me know down there in combat the first thing to die is often the plan and on this mission things have gone wrong from the start hey albert i got nothing they're not moving anymore [Music] these men are canadian and american soldiers on a training exercise in montana they're here to learn how to fight like the first unit of special forces troops did back in 1942. the army called those men the first special service force but history remembers them as the devil's brigade [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] summer 1942 the devil's brigade arrives in helena montana the soldiers were a mixed group of canadians and americans some were outcasts from their regular units others had more ambition than brass button army life could satisfy they didn't like the army they didn't like officers they didn't dislike our officers don't get me wrong they dislike officers that were we called reversal on officers within a few months the training would turn the men into an aggressive hunter killer unit who in churchill's words would leave a trail of german corpses behind we scared the hell out of them they were just scared were really scared of us the basic weapon of the devil's brigade was designed by a canadian john garand in fact the grand m1 became the standard rifle of the us army the garand was widely considered the most effective infantry rifle of the second world war a semi-automatic 30 ought 6 with 8 rounds in the magazine the clip ejected when the last round was fired with a 24-inch barrel and weighing just over nine pounds the garand was deadly to a range of three thousand meters i liked the grand very much the idea of putting a clip of eight bullets into that rifle and squeezing the trigger eight times but then after the eighth round was expelled and uh the block would stay open and he had to load quick another clip of ammunition to it and start firing away again the mauser 98k was the german counterpart to the garand first adopted by the vermont in 1934 14 million mausers were used by the german army the bolt action five round had a slower rate of fire than the grand but weighing just eight pounds it was lighter and easier to clean with an attachable high-powered scope the mauser became the weapon of choice for german snipers chris byrd is one of the best shots in the unit ready send it okay left two right of correction two right and give me three more up the instructors think he has the potential to become a sniper ready send it probably a year or so before i would say anything because to recommend him forward but if he maintained that we got him out and did some more skill sets got him to see how he handled situations put a little stress on him he deprived the sleep put him out for three or four days working carrying and bouncing just going different missions and just see how he handled the stress for about three four five days if he handled that he recommended fourth chris can hit a target on the range but he's never fired in combat and a sniper must be willing to do the unthinkable and then do it again everybody will shoot once but will they shoot the second or third time can they live with that fact when we were taught if you see a young child walking across the bridge at 10 o'clock in the morning and your orders are that no one should cross a bridge what should you feel and the answer proper answer was recoil because no one crosses recoil the men of the devil's brigade may not have agreed but they would have understood another hit on the triangle i think it was um eric blair you know his opinion was george orwell right he said that i'm paraphrasing but we we sleep soundly at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf so that's um that's a key part of being a soldier you have to be ready to you have to be ready to take another person's life and of course there's there's nothing morally wrong with a soldier doing his job most of these soldiers have taken leave from their units to do this training this is their vacation they've come out of respect for the men who ran this course a lifetime ago but they've also come to test themselves scott young a canadian private from the queen's york rangers has pushed himself too hard i slid down the rope too fast well i was i climbed up right and then i went down and i guess i went too fast and i didn't feel that uh i don't know i didn't know that i was hurt until i was at the bottom and yeah i looked at my hand and it was bleeding all over the place the brigade was ruthless in cutting men who missed training even a small injury like this meant a ticket home two months after pitching their first tent 250 canadian officers and men had been returned to their units almost half their original number many went home on stretchers it didn't matter who you were if you hadn't broke broke a leg or broke up an arm or something you were gone our commanding officer colonel mcqueen he was a great guy and he made his first jump and broke his leg that was the end of them by the time you would have healed the training was gone it was on to something else scott's injury means he too will miss training so the instructors have decided to send him home yeah it makes sense to me but you know it blows because like i was so stupid for doing that like i don't know i'm i'm pissed right now i'm just such a bad man i've been in badminton since it happened sucks very disappointing i'm really disappointed that happened in the first place you know if i could turn back time and change it i definitely would because it really hasn't i don't know it's really been a big disappointment let's split it so i don't know how i'm gonna go get my other stuff and i'll see you guys later as the summer of 1943 wore on the devil's brigade created to destroy the nazi heavy water project a mission cancelled at the last minute spent its days keeping fit and doing public relations although the men had developed a strong affection for helena where many would settle after the war explaining the flamethrower to housewives was not what they'd signed up for and i i'm sure that our commanding officer was afraid that if he didn't find us something for us to do we would you know we'd lose it we'd lose the esprit de corps we'd lose the desire etc he had he had to find something for us to do [Music] but matters would take a life of their own courtesy of the imperial japanese navy following their victory at pearl harbor japan expanded aggressively across the pacific sending occupation forces as far west as the aleutian islands off the coast of alaska as this japanese newsreel shows the next stop was san francisco these japanese commandos were the first invaders to set foot on american soil since canadians did in the war of 1812. [Music] the occupation of the aleutians was a propaganda victory for tokyo and a humiliation for washington the devil's brigade was ordered to get them back [Music] allied intelligence estimated as many as 12 000 japanese troops held the main island of kiska with the memory of the bloody battle at guadalcanal on their minds the brigade expected a fight to the death and uh it we were we were quite prepared that we would lose a lot of people if the japanese put up the same kind of fight at the spearhead of the invasion the devil's brigade first regiment led the assault in an armada of rubber boats while the second regiment the airborne unit waited nervously the second regiment was to make a parachute jump onto kiska in support of the seabourn landing and i was in the second regiment so we prepared for the jump we got on the planes around two or three o'clock in the morning waiting for the for the dawn and the call to come [Music] so we paddled shore and uh in the dark and it's strangely enough just before we got to the shore the moon came out the first time we'd seen it in about two weeks up there and it displayed a whole lot of rubber boats if somebody was looking we were really sitting ducks most of the time on the water [Music] and on the way up we passed a japanese machine gun position which had been vacated and i thought as we went by it thank god there isn't a japanese machine gutter in there because we'd all be dead the only enemy soldiers the men came across were casualties of the naval bombardment after all those months of training the devil's brigade took kiska without firing a shot the japanese were gone leaving still warm coffee and boxes of weather equipment the call came that the japs had gone and we did not need to make this jump which was very good news because i pictured myself floating around in the cold bearing sea once the beachhead had been secured other units came ashore less well-trained and expecting to find an enemy behind every rock they fired on themselves that that first night after we were relieved we would pitched our pup tents and were trying to get to sleep and we heard all this machine gun fire all night long and and you know it was dark and foggy and and these guys up above that are taken over from us were were just trigger happy they shooting their own people i counted 13 corpses come down the next morning but they're a lot more than that 32 men died on kiska victims of friendly fire the devil's brigade took no casualties but lessons were learned what i i i took away from kiska was that no matter how careful the planning is there's always the unexpected although the unit was still not bloodied the kiska adventure served the men well in the months to come they would meet an enemy who would not cut and run but would engage the brigade in some of the bloodiest combat of the second world war ten days into training and the squad has moved from the base to the bush the instructors hope a few nights under the stars will help the team come together so they've laid on a meal of montana elk there are two things guaranteed to get all soldiers talking and one of them is food my favorite meal was in uh it wasn't basic training we already were in advanced infantry training while i remember is it being it was a little chilly but it was just downpour and we had eggs and everything it was great but when your tray starts filling up with water and you're trying to eat it sitting under a tree shiver and that was about my best one the best one i can think of is it was in the field for us but it was in the home of a of an afghanistan local and it was it was goat and rice and flatbread and tea it was pretty good i've also had goat at a different place which was total opposite gamey you know disgusting my hands smelled like goat for six days no matter how much i washed them but this one time i went they actually prepared it real nice with the spices and everything was good living off the land is all part of special forces training but for the men of the brigade cooking bushmeat over an open fire was nothing special they were looking for individuals that had experience being on their own under unfamiliar circumstances for people who had outdoor experience ranchers trappers prospectors woodsmen hard rock miners they're looking for individualistic purse people who were outdoors people these men are also tough soldiers they can handle hard work but soldiers need leadership and in this group leadership is lacking joe george is the only officer in the unit some of these things we're learning are skills that aren't taught in a modern army you know we we uh we depend a lot on technology we depend a lot on our on our gps on our aircraft for for insertions on our humvees for moving around and we don't spend a lot of time just out light infantry on the ground moving from one place to another and i think that hurts us joe is a lieutenant in the national guard who fought in iraq before coming home to teach economics the instructors are not sure he's the right man to lead the group j bud however has caught their eye a third generation green beret jay has no doubts he'd have made it in the force yes pretty confident about that yeah still a soldier it doesn't matter um you know a soldier in 2006 or 1942 i think it's in my blood to be a soldier leadership was never an issue in the devil's brigade as all the officers led from the front colonel robert frederick the man who built the unit was wounded nine times the officers did not hold their rank nor did the ncos because of any service time or any pull or anything else they all had to earn it the officers went on the route marches with us carried the packs got wet and cold and still led from the front like the obstacle course three times a day tomorrow these soldiers will face the most dangerous part of their training they're going mountain climbing to do it safely they'll have to work together a cliff face is no place for debate the first special service force was trained to fight anytime anywhere and hanging from the side of a mountain was all part of preparing for the unexpected they found us a nice nice cliff and we had skilled instructors and we we'd learned how to claw our way up and then ballet down again the mountain climbing actually was a little scarier to me than the uh parachuting because you're you're learning how to rappel down cliffs and and climb places that didn't didn't look like they could be climbed most of these soldiers do know how to climb but none have climbed under fire in the case of a unit this size they're going to have to identify who's the best climbers and who's got the strongest back to carry the supplies and but that you're going to have to switch out those positions because that lead climber is going to get tired after a while so everybody needs to know how to do this because you never know when you're going to be put in that position where you need to go up and you know scramble through the rocks when the devil's brigade trained here the men knew if they couldn't make it up cliffs like this they were out these soldiers are also climbing under pressure the instructors have told them they'll cut any man who can't scale this face [Applause] is not a word brian haynes would choose i have a very very bad fear of heights i don't know it's just you know some people are afraid of spiders i'm afraid of snakes i'm afraid of heights no i'm sorry as you were tension hanes is a drill sergeant in the u.s army who's been in many high stress situations but few like this i feel like every time i move my feet it's like i'm going to fall every time i jump out of an airplane or rappel or climb it's overcoming that fear of heights that's part of the reason i have such a hard time climbing is committing myself to you know moving it's very hard to move when you're afraid tension right right hey tension i'm falling i didn't like it it frightened me the climbing was uh to jump parachute jumping never bothered me but the rock climbing i found scary as hell i could visual myself visualize myself lying at the bottom of the hill with you know with my head split open attention now you're doing good man tension 60 feet up brian haynes knows the feeling there you go good job good job all right brian good job big man [Music] good job nice one i don't know what techniques i use to overcome my fear i just do it i just you know you just kind of reach down inside yourself and say no matter what i'm going forward assaulting a cliff face in wartime takes more than courage it takes careful planning who carries the water the extra ammo the machine gun how will the wounded get down and where are the enemy sentries they had uh scouts which they relied on to go ahead and scout out the battlefield and i'm i'm i'm sure that they identified their the best climbers in the group and they sent those people out as the lead climber chris bird is everyone's choice for lead climber in this group he's the type of soldier who'd have been at home in the brigade strong agile but most of all chris is fearless it's actually the first time i've actually climbed uh a rock or a face like this kitchen the only other [Music] practice or experience i've ever had was on a climbing wall in regina which is pretty flat terrain in 1942 lead climbers had no second chances chris does he has one small safety rope i think most of the difficulty was in the uh the mental aspect of it the idea of going up the hill with no protection immediately um you mean the fear um the concern you you take your your steps a little bit slower you make sure you tie the the knots properly chris brian and the others all made it up this cliff but most had to fight for every inch when the brigade climbed here each man carried his rifle his water and a 60-pound combat pack i think it's part and parcel of the whole package you know the training package it kind of all integrated together and the end product just comes out as a guy who will do anything he's told to do and do it well and part of that training were combat patrols like this the soldiers have been ordered to scout a local bridge but the bridge is defended by a unit of the national guard familiar with these hills and the squad is aware of the potential for an ambush but these are experienced soldiers who've patrolled enemy territory before they know the key to avoiding detection is in how you read the land well this terrain i don't think is any more any less dangerous than other terrain we've got good cover and concealment the trees are giving us concealment as well as the thicker trees will give us cover we are moving up ground or uphill yeah so we have the low ground but it's relatively relatively safe we can go undetected i think for the most part special forces missions are built on four principles planning reconnaissance assault [Music] extraction [Music] these rules are the same today as they were in 1942. technology can provide an overview but there is no better way to evaluate an enemy position than by putting human eyes on the target oh yeah a lot better we're going to send a couple people left right forward because we need as much eyes on as we can and here we can see three quarters of the bridge but not the first quarter so we're going to send somebody on our left flank so they can observe at a better angle and somebody on our right flank so we're looking at composition of the bridge size dimensions length construction that kind of thing and if it's defended the men survey the bridge without incident brian haynes takes notes from which a sand table model will be built to plan the attack and the squad withdraws [Music] this patrol has gone well they have been both skillful and lucky these soldiers all know their way around guns some have fired in combat a few have killed how many shots each man thinks he's the best shot in the unit the instructors have decided to find out they will test them first up is the green beret j bud way high the men will fire seven shots with their 45s from about 15 feet killing range next is a canadian soldier scott hollywood who as a winnipeg police officer carries a pistol every day as i said we uh we don't really train for groupings we space them out because if you hit a guy numerous times in one spot all the trauma is in that area so he doesn't know he's been shot well he knows he's been shot but you probably think he just got shot one time whereas if you space him out across the center of mass of his body it's more trauma more stopping power because he realizes he's got multiple wounds in him and he probably won't want to fight anymore that one missed the target loosen your grip and re-grip here there's oil all over the handle that's as good excuse as any look at that i think your buddy's got you on that one holy smokes next chris byrd who's out to prove he's as handy with a pistol as he is with a rifle bird you're a hell of a climber you can't hit the broad side of a barn that's better good job good job oh man not good i think i'm the only one that hit the center though these are my first three that i pulled and then these are my last four and which one am i shooting at yo you're the one that says albert on it oh right there [Music] [Music] you know it's kind of a contrived situation you know in a in a combative situation you want a quick draw and put some rounds down range try for two in the chest and one in the head joe george the thinking man soldier has found an advantage he's realized there is no time limit between shots you seem very focused what are you thinking about when you squeeze that trigger my next tour in iraq i think right with the last one oh was it sweet yeah okay you're starting to breathe a little next time i go to iraq hopefully i'm the commander of alpha company first of 163rd infantry i'll be carrying a 9ml okay that's damn good shooting there joe one you threw up here for bill go i think there's an extra one in there either that you missed all together when i was looking i think you put two right in here so i think you think you got a third one there yeah that's uh that's not that's not bad so good job joe how's it look so far bill well average just average nothing super no bill wolf the hand-to-hand combat instructor has gone along with this competition reluctant he believes soldiers should be taught to shoot by instinct to kill by reflex good stuff say it's not how you train soldiers this is how you train people to die okay because you don't have that much time to stand and take a sight picture all day long you're gonna have bullets coming at you so you got to be quicker and you got to be more instinctual what we did here is a target shoot but it's not the way to survive in combat all right you all know that uh we've talked about it you did your instinctive shooting with pistols that's the way you survive a shootout one of our best scorers here was the lt or george it took you three minutes to fire off seven rounds you know three seconds is a lifetime in a firefight right guys so uh our guess our winners would be who's the top dog there sergeant wolf did you decide out of this mess lt you're the man lt plenty of time t if you can do that in combat with bullets coming after you i'll follow you anywhere morale is crucial in any group of soldiers and joe's victory is met with humor and respect for out thinking them all the bridge assault is on for tonight joe george has been given a chance to prove he can lead it so our demo plan is first of all to crush or use cutting charges on the bridge on this span at this junction this junction here and here that will separate the top part of the bridge from this support the team won't actually destroy anything but they will have to overpower the sentries and plant dummy explosives on the trestles when the brigade did this type of training in 1942 most of montana knew the force meant business we've done we you know we've had intensive demolition training we learned how to place charges and uh we also learned the use of of tnt and the use of of dynamite sticks their dynamite was soon replaced with a new and experimental explosive rs the rs the the orion special which is long sticks of explosive and it was joined by a product called primacord which was a an explosive core rs was a first generation plastic explosive easy to use hard to forget when the men attack the bridge they'll have to wire replica rs to the trestles but the instructors have introduced a last minute twist the squad will have just one hour to neutralize the sentries and plant the charges before a train crosses the ravine if the train arrives before the explosives are in place the mission will have failed but tonight is to be a night of cross and double cross these men are special force soldiers who rarely play by the rules they've decided to do what the devil's brigade would have done adapt [Applause] afraid the instructors have tipped off the national guard the squad has begun the attack early and scott hollywood disguised as a jogger has ambushed the national guard sentries i played joe jogger freaking out what the hell's going on when he turned his attention away from me i drew my pistol from my back uh fired took his weapon and his ammo so now i got a little bit more firepower and i linked up with my boys here got you now [ __ ] let's go underneath yeah hand it to me i got my fingers under there use rocks weird what do you got okay i got him the men are only firing blanks but their surprise has worked the national guard is beaten okay okay so it's ready to go the pin is already out of it all you gotta do is pull it ready we're going to bring this up this one the squad is now fighting the clock the one-hour time limit is tight so joe's elaborate demolition plan is dropped in favor of simply getting the job done just getting these lined up whenever you're ready going to derail the train albert stayed up top he lit that when the train was two minutes out and uh it was a one-minute fuse so to go off one minute before the train hits the rail though no time to stop it's gonna derail now there's charges on the trestles we're having a little bit of a problem with we still got them in in time they're not as pretty as we'd hoped but they're going to work and the fuses are burning on trestle three guys where's albert devil three all right albert is let's go over let's go we're good [Music] [Music] i guess it would be going off like right now so we're clear the objective and uh looking forward to a long march home that's what it looks like anyway uh not too bad uh we had we had a couple machine gun nets that we were surprised by so uh murphy kicked in kind of like i expected but uh but we still made the time these men are elite soldiers and their training kicked in the mission was a success the aftermath of combat is always the same no matter time or place moments of reflection and the thankfulness that it's over some of these men have fought in firefights in afghanistan or iraq and although tonight's battle was only a war game no soldier likes to lose especially not this squad who are men of courage and men of honor men determined to earn the respect of the devil's brigade by the late summer of 1943 the devil's brigade had become a superb fighting unit colonel frederick had done his job but earlier in the year the devil's brigade had been locked in purgatory without a mission of their own so frederick had done the one thing fighting men hate to do he'd written a memo unless employment is found in the near future the force should be discontinued frederick's memo had ricocheted from washington to london where it landed on churchill's desk long a supporter of special operations churchill was not happy he wrote on no account dissipate the force it may alter the whole strategic position of the war to which roosevelt himself responded proceeding vigorously frederick's gamble had paid off the devil's brigade was going to gi heaven bomber crew on a gi vacation arrives at an air force rest camp on the italian seashore listen the air force has always had it easy or so the infantry says america's newsreels made the italian campaign seem like one long vacation fishing salute gurgle gurgle gurgle those with boots on the ground knew otherwise infantrymen of the first special service force carry out a successful daylight raid on an advanced german position in the anzio area men surround the german outpost in no man's land this position is 400 yards in advance of the enemy lines in the mud and blood of italy in a dozen battles over a hundred hilltops the men of the devil's brigade would earn their medals and build their reputation but they would pay a terrible price and the fog lifted a minute and there was nothing but bodies around which hadn't even been able to remove them well going past those dead guys was i think the sobering moment for everybody then is when you start realizing hey that could be me yeah i sort of went this way and he went that way i knew he was dead god gets hit with a close mortar bomb in the open you don't need to look for a pulse next time on devil's brigade anzio the brigade goes into action what are all those things coming in they said those are shells from the germans oh i volunteered for this these were the helmet that they apparently issued and the squad takes parachute training devil's brigade style so we got up in this damn c-47 and the guy said stand up hook up stand in the door out we went getting to the door that was the big scare you know that's where i got the serious butterflies jump or go home that's next time on devil's brigade you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 127,601

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, commando training, devils brigade, canadian commandos, ww2, ww2 history

Id: NA6w_rPmt88

Length: 46min 25sec (2785 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021