The Daring Dozen (18 page)

After months of leading his men from the front, Frederick was now obliged to sit down and plan a strategy that would ensure a swift accomplishment of their task, one upon which the success or failure of the invasion might hinge. The plan he formulated was straightforward: on the night of 14 August three pathfinder teams would insert into Le Muy, carrying the latest ‘Eureka’ hand-held radar homing beacon system. Once on the ground they would begin transmitting on a frequency that would be picked up by the main airborne assault force and used as a guide for the British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade, the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion and the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team. Once they had dropped and seized their objectives, gliders would land at 0800hrs on 15 August (D-Day for the main invasion) with heavy weapons and fresh supplies of ammunition. Finally, on the afternoon of the 15th, the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion and the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion would land in gliders to consolidate the expected gains made by the initial parachute assault.

The plan was executed with stunning success, resulting in the most accurate night-combat drop of the war. Eighty-five per cent of the paratroopers landed on their DZ and when the gliders landed at 0800hrs with heavy weapons and ammunition supplies, casualties were again light.

A few miles south on the landing beaches, VI Corps had established a secure bridgehead and in the afternoon of 15 August the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion and the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion landed in their gliders without serious difficulties. Operation
Dragoon
had achieved all its aims of the first few hours and Frederick’s 1st Airborne Task Force had been instrumental in securing the success of the mission. By late afternoon on 16August, VI Corps armour linked up with the paratroopers in Le Muy and Frederick’s task was complete.

At this point the British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade was detached from the Task Force and assigned to their Eighth Army in Italy; they were replaced by the Special Service Force (now under the command of Colonel Edwin Walker) on 22 August. Frederick visited his old brigade and greeted them with the words ‘I’m sure glad to see you’.

There was scant time to reacquaint themselves with one another, for the Task Force was instructed to exploit German disorganization and push east towards the Italian border. It was a memorable time for the Americans with enemy opposition light and French hospitality immense. Flowers, kisses and wine greeted the liberators in every town and village. On 24 August Frederick set up his HQ in a plush Nice hotel while his men continued on to the border and established a 60-mile north–south front along the Maritime Alps with the 1st Special Service Force at the southernmost flank by the coast.

While the war raged furiously further north in France, in the south it was all sunshine and pretty girls in what became known as the ‘Champagne Campaign’. The weather closed in at the end of October, and the following month the 1st Airborne Task Force was disbanded, having achieved its purpose and the German Army now being pushed back towards Germany.

On 22 November Frederick visited the Special Service Force HQ at Menton, a French coastal town two miles from the Italian border. He issued decorations and then expressed his gratitude for all the men had done in the preceding two and a half years. Six days later the Force was pulled back to Villeneuve-Loubet, a few miles west of Nice, and 5 December they paraded for the final time. Almost a year to the day since the ‘Black Devils’ had performed such heroics in seizing the supposedly impregnable Monte la Difensa, they were no more. The Canadian contingent was subsumed into their own army and the American members of the Special Service Force were transferred to various different airborne and infantry units.

Frederick assumed command of the 45th Infantry Division in December 1944, leading them across the Rhine and into Germany in March 1945, where they fought their way toward Nuremburg in the closing weeks of the war in Europe. After the war Frederick returned to America, but in 1948 he was back in Europe as the commanding general of the US forces in Austria. The appointment was brief and from February 1949 to October 1950 he commanded the 4th Infantry Division at Ford Ord, California before being posted once more to Europe as chief of the joint US Military Aid Group to Greece in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War.

He didn’t last long in Greece, retiring from the military in March 1952, a decision that Frederick never fully explained. According to the account given in
The Devil’s Brigade
, Frederick was alleged to have incurred the wrath of a high-ranking Greek politician who demanded of the American government that Frederick be either fired or forced to retire. Not wishing to see Greece fall to the communists, the US government acquiesced and the distinguished military career of Robert Frederick came to an abrupt end. His service had seen him decorated with, among others, the Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Silver Star Medal, the Bronze Star Medal with oak leaf cluster, the French Légion d’honneur and the British DSO.

In his extraordinary career, Frederick had shattered many of the preconceptions governing the behaviour of a commanding officer in battle. He had exposed himself to enemy fire on countless times in order to lead and inspire his men, an example that didn’t sit well with some of his more conservative peers, who not only objected to having Special Forces in the US Army but also believed Frederick’s conduct to be irresponsible and dangerous within the overall command structure. Ironically, however, in the same year that Frederick retired from the US military, Colonel Aaron Bank established the 10th Special Forces Group, which in time would gain global fame as ‘The Green Berets’. Much of the ethos and inspiration of the Group originated in the 1st Special Service Force, with some of its wartime members recruited to its ranks.

Further fame came the way of the Special Service Force in 1968 when a film based on the book
The Devil’s Brigade
was released, starring William Holden and Cliff Robertson. In the best traditions of Hollywood the film stretched the bounds of veracity at times to suit its purpose but nonetheless it helped cement the reputation of the brigade in the eyes of America. Two years after the film’s release, in 1970, Frederick died in California aged 63.

Despite the many fine words that were spoken at Frederick’s funeral the passing of time had dimmed the memory and weakened the impact of such eulogies. None could be compared to what the war correspondent Clarke Lee had written just after the war by way of a eulogy for the demise of the Black Devils:

It is difficult to write about Frederick’s exploits without suggesting a wild-eyed composite of Sergeant York and General George (Blood and Guts) Patton. But the comparison is misleading. Frederick certainly saw as much combat as the average infantryman, and more than most, and in common with Patton, he demanded the best effort from those in his command and believed that the best way to win battles was by incessantly attacking, getting the enemy on the run and keeping him there. His military fame is founded on his own fighting record, rather than any striking of attitudes, display of showy uniforms and flashy bodyguards, or employment of a highly-coloured vocabulary.
¹¹

*
The result was the T-15 Cargo Carrier, later to become the M29 Weasel, which was used by Canadian forces into the 1960s.

It was in South Africa that Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne first left his mark on that continent. Not as a soldier, the profession in which he would later gain legendary status in North Africa, but as a rugby player of high repute.

In May 1938 Mayne sailed from Britain on board the
Stirling Castle
as a member of the British Lions rugby squad chosen to tour South Africa and Rhodesia. A recent law graduate from Queen’s University Belfast, the 23-year-old Mayne was one of the youngest players in the 28-man squad but he was also one of the strongest and most athletic, a second-row forward standing 6ft 3in and weighing 16 stone who had already impressed in his three appearances for Ireland. ‘He was a very quiet chap,’ recalled Vivian Jenkins, the vice-captain of the Lions, 60 years later. ‘He was a bit of a loner in one way but he was immensely popular on tour. At first glance you would think he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but we soon discovered that when he got steamed up he would do anything.’
¹

Mayne played in 19 of the tour’s 24 matches, including all three Test matches against South Africa, and though the Lions lost the series the young man from Belfast was one of the few tourists to earn the respect of their hosts. Dougie Morkel, one of the legendary figures of early South African rugby, described Mayne as ‘the finest all-round forward I have ever seen and he is magnificently built for the part. In staying power he has to be seen to be believed.’
²

Though Mayne was disciplined and controlled on the field of play, a player not known for violent excesses in an age when brawling was common, away from the pitch Mayne revealed to his Lions teammates an occasional glimpse of his dark side. Jenkins recalled an evening when Mayne and another player, a Welshman called Bunny Travers, went down to the docks in Durban with the sole intention of fighting. They got their wish and ‘flattened them all’, returning to the team hotel to tell their teammates all about their victory.

A few days later the squad moved north-west to Pietermaritzburg and checked into the hotel selected for them by the tour organizers. The hotel allocated the players the shabbiest rooms, reserving the best ones for some dignitaries in town for the game. Mayne was furious with their treatment, recalled Jenkins, ‘and decided to stage a one-man protest … he proceeded to break everything in the room, the bed, the wardrobe, the drawers, he broke the whole bloody lot, and then piled it in a heap in the middle’.
³

The hotel owner was apoplectic on discovering the vandalism and Mayne was summoned to a meeting with Jock Hartley, manager of the tour party, in the hotel garden. Whatever was said, Mayne took it badly, judging that the room had got what it deserved. When the tourists assembled after lunch to take the bus, Mayne was missing. He reappeared three days later, just in time to help the Lions beat Natal 15-11, a game in which he was described by one South African newspaper as ‘the outstanding forward’. Eventually Mayne disclosed to Jenkins, an experienced and talented full-back whom the Irishman admired and respected, details of his three-day escapade. Having found a bar in which to drown his sorrows, Mayne had got talking to a local farmer, then ‘the two of them had a few drinks and decided to go on a bit of a thrash. They had ridden on horseback to a village where a dance was being held. They rode straight into the hall, across the dance floor and then back out again, chased by several irate villagers.’
⁴

Mayne was in Belfast when war broke out in 1939. He had joined a firm of solicitors, George Maclaine and Company, and divided his time between the legal profession and the rugby field. He won three more caps for Ireland in that year’s Five Nations Championship, and in the same month as he played against Wales in what would turn out to be his last international match, Mayne enlisted in the Territorial Army, in an anti-aircraft battery of the Royal Artillery. In light of his subsequent actions, Mayne’s decision to choose such a passive unit was a startling one, though perhaps the intelligent Irishman foresaw that the early stages of the war would be defensive.

But the months of ‘Phoney War’ following the declaration of hostilities between Britain and Germany on 3 September left Mayne bored and frustrated, so with no aircraft to shoot down he decided to transfer to the infantry, enlisting in the Royal Ulster Rifles in April 1940. Two months later Mayne was on the move again, this time volunteering for Britain’s first Special Forces unit, the idea of which sprang from Winston Churchill himself. ‘We have always set our faces against this idea but … there ought to be at least 20,000 storm troops or “Leopards” drawn from existing units,’
⁵
Churchill instructed his chiefs of staff in a memo. The name ‘Leopards’ was subsequently ditched in favour of ‘commandos’, after the irregular Afrikaner units that had caused the British Army such strife during the Boer War.