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Devil's Brigade

 

In the summer of 1942, a strange collection of Americans and Canadians arrived at Fort Henry Harrison, outside Helena, to train for a mission that would never happen.

They were the 1st Special Service Force, conceived by Lord Mountbatten as a guerilla unit that would parachute into occupied Norway and sabotage Nazi hydroelectric dams. They learned to ski, to jump out of planes, to blow things up, and to kill silently with a knife their commander had designed himself. The town of Helena was wary at first — rumors had reached the capital that the soldiers training outside the gates were criminals and brutes. The truth was stranger and gentler than the rumors, though the men did occasionally blow out the town's plate-glass windows during demolitions training. (The mayor decided broken windows were Helena's contribution to the war effort.)

The Norway plan was eventually abandoned. The men weren't. By the time they shipped out in April 1943 — paraded down Last Chance Gulch while the town lined the street as if watching their own sons march away — they had a new name. The Germans would give it to them at Anzio.

"The Devil's Brigade in Helena" was written by Nick Mitchell for Distinctly Montana magazine. The audio episode is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

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