David Saul - The Force

As darkness fell on December 2, 1943, Captain Bill Rothlin, a no-nonsense former metalworker from Berkeley, California, ordered the 88 men of his company to shoulder their weapons and packs and begin the steep climb up Monte la Difensa, the keystone to a formidable German defensive position in southern Italy known as the Winter Line. Difensas 3,000-foot-high summit was held by the crack troops of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division, veterans of the fighting in North Africa and Sicily, and all previous Allied efforts to take the position had failed: four weeks earlier, multiple attacks by two battalions of the US 7th Infantry had been repulsed with heavy casualties (91 dead and 538 wounded). Bloated American bodies still lay on the lower slopes. Now this mission impossible was being given to the First Special Service Force (the Force)later dubbed the Black Devils by the awestruck Germansan elite unit of Canadians and Americans trained for winter warfare behind enemy lines.

Ten days earlier, an officer and a scout with Native American blood had reconnoitered the mountain. The only militarily feasible approach to the summit was thought to be via a gulley that ran up its eastern face. But the open terrain would expose an attacker to direct fire from the summit above and to enfilade fire from machine-gun nests that had been cleverly sited on a spur that ran down the mountain. So the scout suggested an alternative: to work around to the steeper northern face of the mountain and use ropes to scale the collar of near-vertical 200-foot cliffs that lay just below the summit. This assault route had two main advantages: it would allow the Forcemen to utilize their training as mountaineers and, more important, it was so steep it was unlikely to be defended. The final go-ahead was given after the Force commander had made a personal reconnaissance over the target area in his Piper Cub light plane. But he knew he was taking a big risk: if the Germans got wind of the attack before the men had scaled the cliffs, they would be caught in the open and cut to pieces.

The Force was made up of three combat regimentseach composed of two battalionstotaling around 1,650 men. Yet just a single battalion of 291 men was assigned to the initial night assault on Monte la Difensa. Its spearhead was Rothlins company. Commanding the point platoon was a 26-year-old lieutenant from Appleton, Wisconsin. The son of a millwright, with film-star looks, the lieutenant was the first of his family to go to college. He had joined up as a private and trained as a medic, but his leadership potential was quickly recognized and he was persuaded to go through Officer Candidate School where, like Rothlin, he volunteered for a new unit specializing in parachute jumping, mountain climbing and skiing. Though put in charge of arguably the most unruly and ill-disciplined platoon in the Forcefull of tough former miners, loggers and trappersthe lieutenant soon became something of a father figure to his young NCOs and privates.

Among them was an athletic and adventurous 18-year-old private from Saint-Lambert, Quebec, who had just finished Grade 9 when he lied about his age to join the Canadian Army in 1941. As he climbed on December 2, the young Quebecois was astonished by the number of Allied shells exploding on the upper slopes of the mountain and its neighboring peaks (where a British assault was in progress): 925 guns fired 22,000 shells in the first hour of the barrage, or 11 tons a minute. German guns were responding in kind. Shells roared overhead in both directions like freight trains, recalled the private.

Rothlin and his men reached the base of the northern cliffs and waited while the artillery continued its saturation shelling of the peak. It seemed like the mountain was on fire, wrote a 19-year-old from North Carolina who had been facing a court-martial for striking an officer when he signed up for the Force. I never saw a barrage like it during our whole time. You wouldnt think an ant could crawl out of it alive.

It was well after midnight, and the barrage had lifted, when two scouts led Rothlins men up the cliff. Encumbered as they were by packs, weapons and extra ammunition, the climb was only possible because the scouts had earlier fixed two rope lines to the rock face. Even with the help of ropes, the ascent up the dark, slippery slope was an exhausting and nerve-jangling experience. The climb under combat load, noted the battalions XO, was incredibly difficult. Scrambling up cliffs with every foot and handhold doubtful demanded superhuman effort by men loaded with weapons, ammunition, radios and litters. To our ears, every rock displaced clattered downhill with sound magnified a thousand times and raised the question in our minds, Did the enemy hear this?a not very comforting thought.

At the top of the cliff, the assault platoon dumped its packs while the two scouts searched for a route up the 200 yards of gently rising scree to the summit. It was 4:30 a.m. when one returned to say he had found it. By now the whole of Rothlins 1-2 Company had made it up the cliff. Led by the scouts, they edged along a narrow, rough and rocky path toward the German positions concentrated in a saucer-like area ahead of us. The young Quebecois could see the rocks of the peak silhouetted against the skyline. He knew that German sentries were just yards away. We tried to make as little noise as possible, he wrote. 2 and 1 Platoons were close behind us.

They were nearing the top when a German sentry shouted a challenge. He was shot by one of the scouts and, seconds later, the German defenders fired flares and swiveled their MG 42 machine guns and Schmeisser machine pistols to meet this unexpected threat from the rear. The stillness of the night was shattered by the roar of German machine-gun bullets, fired mostly blind but no less deadly for that as they pinged off rocks and sent lethal fragments in all directions. All hell broke loose, recalled a staff sergeant, as he and his men dived for cover.