The Daring Dozen (16 page)

The men who did volunteer – and many had exemplary military records and simply sought adventure – were sent to the Force’s training camp at Fort Harrison in Helena, Montana. By now Frederick had been made a full colonel and the unit was officially designated the 1st Special Service Force with a red spearhead as their formation patch, on which ‘USA’ was written horizontally and ‘Canada’ vertically.

On 19 July 1942 Frederick and his HQ staff were installed in Helena and men were arriving every day by road and rail. They came from all over the United States and from Canada, too, though the latter, paid by their own government and subject to their code of discipline, received lower wages than their southern comrades. The Canadians and Americans eyed each other warily at first, and there was the odd brawl with the Canadians obliged to show that they ‘didn’t take kindly to jokes about the King and Queen’. It was in training, however, that a mutual bond of respect was forged between the two nations.

Having divided the 1st Special Service Force into three regiments, Frederick put them through a brutal training regime; having expected a high drop-out rate, he had recruited 30 per cent more men than he needed. Each day followed a similar routine: rise at 0445hrs, then cleaning duties and breakfast by 0630hrs. At 0700hrs the men were put through a calisthenics programme and at 0800hrs they completed the 2,000m obstacle course. The rest of the day was spent on route marches, target practice, demolition courses, unarmed combat and parachute training. Two-hour lectures were held four nights a week on a broad range of subjects related to their training, and in any spare time the men went off into the hills on the ‘Weasel’ cargo carriers. To turn them into proficient Alpine troops, Frederick seconded a dozen Norwegian ski instructors to the force and, after six weeks’ training, the men were able to complete a 30-mile cross-country march on skis carrying a full pack and a loaded rifle.

During the training Frederick flitted in and out of Fort Harrison; sometimes he would appear during a parachute drop, other times he would sit in on a lecture, and then disappear for days or weeks on end. Much of his time was spent in Washington at the Munitions Building discussing possible targets for his unit. It was suggested that his men might drop into Romania to attack the oil fields of Ploiesti, while several industrial installations in the rugged north of Italy were also mooted.

Concerned by the fact that there was no clear objective for his unit, Frederick travelled to London in the autumn of 1942 to discuss Project Plough with Mountbatten and Eisenhower (now based in Britain). He was dismayed to be met with an air of indifference to the 1st Special Service Force, even apathy in some quarters, with the Norwegians openly opposed to the idea of their country being subjected to guerrilla warfare. After a frank discussion with Mountbatten, in which the Briton was sympathetic but explained there were no other priorities, Frederick agreed to abandon Project Plough.

Frederick returned to the States deflated but defiant, and after a positive meeting with General George Marshall decided to reinvent the 1st Special Service Force as a unit capable of fighting in any terrain – not just snow. His next problem was to find a theatre in which he could show off the fighting qualities of his men, many of whom were becoming restless after months of hard training with no sign of action in sight.

At the end of November 1942 Frederick received orders to embark for New Guinea to operate against the Japanese, but 24 hours later the order was rescinded. Instead the Force underwent a course in amphibious landing tactics at the Naval Operations base in Virginia. By June 1943 Frederick was still waiting to blood the 1st Special Service Force and rumours were growing that they were bound for England to carry out raids on German-occupied France.

The rumours were wrong, however, and instead on 9 July Colonel Frederick led his 169 officers and 2,283 enlisted men on board two troopships bound for Kiska, one of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska that had been occupied by the Japanese since June 1942.

Intelligence reports indicated that there were 12,000 Japanese in well-fortified defensive positions on the island, and the Special Service Force was just one component of an Allied invasion fleet that numbered nearly 35,000 troops and included three battleships and a heavy cruiser. The Americans began landing on the night of 15 August with the 1st and 3rd regiments of the Special Service Force in the vanguard of the attack; they were braced for furious opposition but they stepped ashore in silence – the Japanese had withdrawn two weeks earlier. The invaders were relieved but staggered at the inaccuracy of their intelligence, which had also stated the island’s beaches were flat and strewn with pebbles. In fact the beach was covered in huge boulders that would have been a serious obstacle to any landing under fire.

The man who came to the rescue of Frederick and his unit was Lord Louis Mountbatten. At the time that the Special Service Force was stepping ashore at Kiska, he was attending the Allied conference at Quebec, a month after the Allies had invaded Sicily. During the conference Churchill and Roosevelt and their chiefs of staff discussed an invasion of France as well as the establishment of a front in Northern Italy. Lieutenant General Mark Clark, the commander of the US Fifth Army, approved of the idea but pleaded for more troops for his Mediterranean campaign. Remembering the Special Service Force, Mountbatten suggested that they be deployed for operations in Italy.

Two months later the Force was en route to Casablanca aboard the
Empress of Scotland.
Frederick, who had flown on ahead of his men, met them at the quayside on 5 November 1943, and together they entrained to Naples Harbour and a bivouac camp. One of the men, Lester Forrest, recalled how Frederick behaved during their stay in Naples: ‘[He] never blew his top except when we were sloppy, unshined shoes, bearded faces, no neckties, etc. His attitude was almost motherly at times. He would send his personal recon car to gather us up. We could see the distant firing, and hear the booms which set us to wondering as to when it was our turn.’
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The Force’s turn came at the start of December. Blocking the Allies’ advance to Rome was a section of the German Winter Line, constructed along the Camino massif with the twin peaks of Monte la Difensa and Monte la Remetanea on the right. Dug in on the mountains was the 15th Panzer Grenadiers with the Hermann Göring Division in reserve. They had resisted all attempts so far by the Allies to seize the two peaks, and inflicted on Clark’s Fifth Army some 10,000 casualties by the time they pulled back to rest in the middle of November and plot their next move.

Clark planned another attempt to smash the German Winter Line and advance into the valley of the river Liri, beyond which lay Rome. Codenamed Operation
Raincoat
, the assault would begin with a heavy air and artillery bombardment followed by an attack by the British X Corps on the left and the American II Corps on the right; the 1st Special Service Force would be tasked with taking Monte la Difensa and Monte la Remetanea.

Frederick was assigned his mission on 22 November, perhaps one reason why he was ‘motherly’ towards his men around this time. He was confident his unit could achieve their objectives but he envisaged heavy casualties. To acquaint himself more fully with the task, Frederick took a few men and scouted Monte la Difensa under cover of darkness. Three thousand feet in height, the first third of the peak was heavily wooded, but after that it was bare crags all the way to the summit – where the Germans, in crevices and caves, were well protected from shells and bombs.

The only footpath to the top of Monte la Difensa was a rough track on the south side. On the north side was a 200ft sheer cliff, above which were six ledges each approximately 30ft in height that the Germans, and hitherto Fifth Army, deemed inaccessible. Frederick thought otherwise.

Gathering his officers around him, Frederick outlined his plan of attack: the honour of leading the assault on the mountain would go to the 600 men of the 2nd Regiment under Colonel D.D. Williamson; the 1st Regiment would be held in reserve and the 3rd Regiment would be supply carriers for their comrades in the 2nd.

Accompanied by Frederick, on the night of 2 December 1943 the Special Service Force began moving up into position under heavy rain and an artillery bombardment. The best climbers among the 2nd Regiment secured ropes on the more challenging parts of the ascent up the northern side of the mountain. At times the Germans were so close they could hear them chatting to one other. By midnight most of the men, including Frederick, had climbed noiselessly up the cliff face and were concealed among the rocky ledges. Their commander then signalled to the lead company to move forward and eliminate the German sentries with knives. This was done as planned, but as the Force edged ever-closer to the main enemy positions, which were in semi-underground bunkers on the crest of the mountain, a stray boot caused a rockfall. Suddenly a flare burst overhead, illuminating the 600 American and Canadian soldiers. One of them, Percy Crichlow, remembered: ‘All hell broke loose. I dived for cover and my section, who were laboriously climbing over the ledge behind me, started to crawl into position to my left as soon as they were on the ledge in front of the topmost lump.’
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As the 2nd Regiment rushed forward to engage the enemy in a series of desperate hand-to-hand combats, behind them on the cliff face swarmed the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Regiment, who had been held initially in reserve. Despite the flare, the German defenders were caught off-guard by the appearance of such a large enemy force from the north side of the mountain. Many were overwhelmed in the first rush of Special Service troops and those that emerged from their deep gun emplacements were shot dead regardless of whether their hands were raised.

Within two hours the mountain was in the hands of the 1st Special Service Force, and when dawn broke on 3 December Frederick established a forward command post on one of the ledges. From here he assessed his unit’s position, deciding that until further supplies arrived it was still very vulnerable to an enemy counter-attack. The only way to transport supplies, however, was by pack mule up the rough track on the southern side, a three-hour trip from the foot of Monte la Difensa.

Frederick remained on the crest organizing the resupply, showing what one of his men later remembered as ‘casual indifference’ to the occasional barrage of German mortar fire, as members of the Force’s 3rd Regiment embarked on the tortuous job of bringing supplies up the rough, muddy track. Removing the numerous American wounded was also a logistical nightmare, and in some cases it took eight men ten hours to remove just one stretcher case down the mountain to a point where he could be placed in a vehicle and transported to a field dressing station.

With the British X Corps having taken their objectives on the left by the morning of 4 December, Frederick switched his focus to the second peak of Monte la Remetanea, where many of the Germans on Monte la Difensa had fled 24 hours earlier in the face of the Special Service Force’s attack. He dispatched a reconnaissance patrol along the ridge that connected the two mountains and the information they brought back, along with the intelligence provided by some German prisoners, convinced Frederick to storm la Remetanea without delay.

He scheduled the attack for dawn the next day, 5 December, but in the hours before dawn the Germans subjected the Special Service Force to a murderous bombardment. At the epicentre of the barrage was the 1st Regiment, who had been held in reserve during the initial attack and were now in the act of moving forward.

As they dug in as best they could, the 1st Regiment was joined by Frederick, who had left the safety of his command post to be with his men. ‘I’ll never forget Colonel Frederick walking by our position and telling me to keep my head down,’ recalled Sergeant Allan H. Jamison. ‘And here he was up in full view of the enemy himself!’
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The onslaught lasted for an hour, during which time the 1st Regiment was more than decimated – it lost 40 per cent of its fighting strength, forcing a 24-hour postponement of the attack on la Remetanea as Frederick reorganized his brigade. Sending out patrols to flush out the increasing number of German snipers, the colonel brought up more reserves and questioned prisoners on the exact disposition of the German defenders on the second peak. He also procured 15 cases of bourbon, ‘for medicinal purposes’, and ordered a slug of liquor for every man huddled on the mountainside under heavy rain and heavy mortar fire.

By midday on 5 December the German snipers on the ridge had been eliminated and Frederick decided to press on with the attack in daylight. Twenty-four hours later he sent a despatch to his second-in-command, Colonel Paul Adams, in which he said:

Our attack to the west against hill 907 [la Remetanea] has progressed beyond the crest of 907. We are receiving much machine gun and mortar fire from several directions, principally from the draw running southwest from la Difensa, from west foothills of Maggiore and from north slopes of Camino … I shall push the attack on to the west past 907 as far as conditions of men will permit. Men are getting in bad shape from fatigue, exposure and cold. German snipers are giving us hell and it is extremely difficult to catch them. They are hidden all through the area and shoot bursts at any target. Please press relief of troops from this position as every additional day here will mean two days necessary for recuperation before next mission. They are willing and eager, but are becoming exhausted.
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On 7 December the Force saw the welcome sight of British troops pouring towards them after their capture of Monte Camino. The soldiers swapped stories and then at nightfall Frederick and his men began withdrawing.

In securing Monte la Difensa and Monte la Remetanea, the Special Service Force had suffered a 25 per cent casualty rate, with 532 of their number killed or wounded. Yet in accomplishing their objectives they had facilitated the Allied advance north towards Rome by dispossessing the Germans of the mountainous defensive position guarding Highway 6. Clarke Lee, a war correspondent for the Combined American Press, was effusive in his praise of the achievement, writing: ‘This feat captured the imagination of the entire Fifth Army and overnight Frederick and his soldiers became almost legendary figures in a battle area where heroism was commonplace. Despite two wounds, Frederick had gone on fighting with pistol and grenade at the side of his men. The Difensa attack is destined to live in military annals because of the endurance, daring and fighting skill it involved.’
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