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Frederick received orders to embark for New Guinea to operate against the Japanese, but 24 hours later the order was rescinded.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.’4
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.’5
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!’6
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.7
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.’8
The Force was not allowed long to rest and recuperate after the rigours of capturing la Difensa and la Remetanea. Withdrawn to their base at Santa Maria, they shivered in tents as the European winter intensified and men reported sick with frostbite and ‘trench foot’, a debilitating condition that had tortured thousands of men on the Western Front a generation earlier.
Meanwhile the Germans were still stubbornly holding on to southern Italy, fighting bitterly for every inch of land. In the Venafro sector, north of Naples, the Germans were entrenched in and around Monte Sammucro, and once more it fell to the 1st Special Service Force to dislodge the enemy and so ease the passage of the main Allied advance.
Frederick once again scouted the area personally before the attack, postponing it for 24 hours as he organized resupply lines for his men once they had taken the target. At nightfall on Christmas Eve the attack began. The 1st Regiment moved up the snow-clad mountainside in darkness, clearing Germans from foxholes and repelling small pockets of counter-attacking troops. The closer the Force got to the summit of Monte Sammucro, the more intense the fighting became. Even in the darkness German snipers were close enough to kill, and machine-gun fire and mortar fire caused further casualties. Frederick advanced with his men, tending to the wounded and encouraging the unscathed. By dawn the mountain was in the hands of the Force, although Christmas Day was spent fighting off several German counter-attacks.
From Monte Sammucro Frederick led his men to the next targets in the mountain range, Monte Radicosa and Monte Majo. The former was seized by the 2nd Regiment, now under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bob Moore after his predecessor had been RTU’d (returned to unit) on Frederick’s orders. The officer, while far from disgracing himself, had nonetheless failed to live up to Frederick’s expectations and he no longer considered him fit to command.
The honour of securing Monte Majo, a key obstacle to the advance of the Fifth Army (and which was important strategically for the attack on Monte Cassino) fell to the 3rd Regiment under Colonel Edwin Walker. Having not been involved in the previous mountain assaults, the men of the 3rd Regiment were eager to prove themselves the equal of their Force comrades. Scaling a cliff almost as impressive as the one conquered by the men of the 2nd Regiment on la Difensa, the 3rd Regiment surprised the Germans on Majo and within five hours had triumphed. Furious German counter-attacks followed over the course of three days but the Special Service Force would not be moved and the attackers suffered 75 per cent casualties in their attempts to regain possession of the cold, forlorn mountain. When the photographer Robert Capa toured the battlefield a few hours later he described how ‘… every five yards a foxhole, in each one at least one dead soldier. Around them empty cans of C rations and faded bits of letters from home. The bodies … were blocking my path.’
In the fighting of late December and early January, the Special Service Force had suffered 75 per cent casualties, with 100 men dead or missing and a further 429 wounded or laid low with sickness. Yet still there was no respite for Frederick (who had been wounded a third time) or his men.
On 22 January 1944, the Allies landed at Anzio with the aim of outflanking Axis forces (estimated to consist of 70,000 men) on the Winter Line and expediting the capture of Rome. Crucial to the success of the operation – codenamed Shingle – was the speed with which the Allies moved across the marshland in the Anzio basin and into the mountains where the Germans and Italians were dug in. The initial landings caught the Germans off-guard and the Allies got ashore virtually unopposed, but within three days the Germans had reinforced their defensive positions around the beachhead with troops from the south, including a Panzer Grenadier Division and the Hermann Göring Panzer Division.
After ten days’ rest the Special Service Force, its fighting strength
bolstered to 1,300 men by replacements or the return from field hospitals of wounded and sick, landed at Anzio on 1 February. The Allied front line was now 32 miles wide, and the Force’s mission was to hold an eight-mile stretch of its right-hand flank against any German attack to force them back into the sea. General Mark Clark had chosen the Force for this task because, as he wrote later, they were ‘aggressive, fearless and well-trained’.
On 2 February the Special Service Force embarked on its first aggressive patrol across the Littoria Plain, through which ran the Mussolini Canal, and above which the Germans lurked in the mountains. The Force was soon losing men to snipers and mines, but within a week their belligerence had forced the Germans to pull back half a mile. Snipers became less of a threat, but the German artillery fire was still heavy at times. Undeterred, the Force moved beyond the canal and occupied the villages that lay between the waterway and the mountains. The village of Sabotino was renamed ‘Gusville’ in honour of Lieutenant Gus Heilman, whose patrol had been the first to enter. Soon Gusville became the headquarters of the 2nd Company, 1st Regiment, and it received a visit from a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, the US Army newspaper:
On the surface, this fantastic community appears to be just a collection of huts and tents and a few buildings; the home of cows, chickens, horses and a few pigs. But it is also home of sudden death – for Gusville is the base used by our reckless Anzio commandos whose motto is ‘Killing is our business’.
Every night the Black Devils of Gusville, American and Canadian troops, steal quietly out of town, move over deep into enemy lines to kill or capture Germans. ‘Black Devils’ is what the Nazis call them; the Fifth Army troops call them the wild men of the beachhead … it is another spot where it is being proved that the men of the Allied nations can be fused into a deadly fighting machine. And it is being demonstrated here that these fighting men do not lose their high courage, their lighthearted spirit and their sense of humour, even under the toughest battle conditions.9
The Daring Dozen Page 12