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A Canadian sergeant in black boot polish, a wool cap, and taped gear went into the Mussolini Canal on the edge of the Anzio beachhead to solve a question more dangerous than any assault: where was the German line really? Outnumbered on an eight-mile front, the First Special Service Force and its Canadian officers chose night patrols, deception, and constant reconnaissance instead of silence.
Over the next three months, the Canadians read German routines, took prisoners, planted propaganda stickers, turned Borgo Sabatino into “Gusville,” and helped create the impression that a much larger force was everywhere in the dark. The result was a rare kind of military history story, part patrol narrative, part intelligence operation, part psychological warfare, all unfolding against the stalled Anzio campaign and the pressure of four German divisions.
The story also follows Tommy Prince’s wire-laying mission and Mark Radcliffe’s capture and escape, showing how close-quarters patrols, artillery observation, and battlefield deception shaped the fight on that canal. It is a gripping WW2 documentary-style narration for listeners who enjoy Canadian war stories, military history, Anzio history, and World War 2 stories built around real reconnaissance and special operations.
Created for fans of Canadian Army history, WW2 patrol stories, Anzio beachhead battles, military documentary narration, and historical war stories. If you search for WW2 stories, Canadian military history, special forces history, or calm narrated history with strong battlefield detail, this story fits that search exactly.
Over the next three months, the Canadians read German routines, took prisoners, planted propaganda stickers, turned Borgo Sabatino into “Gusville,” and helped create the impression that a much larger force was everywhere in the dark. The result was a rare kind of military history story, part patrol narrative, part intelligence operation, part psychological warfare, all unfolding against the stalled Anzio campaign and the pressure of four German divisions.
The story also follows Tommy Prince’s wire-laying mission and Mark Radcliffe’s capture and escape, showing how close-quarters patrols, artillery observation, and battlefield deception shaped the fight on that canal. It is a gripping WW2 documentary-style narration for listeners who enjoy Canadian war stories, military history, Anzio history, and World War 2 stories built around real reconnaissance and special operations.
Created for fans of Canadian Army history, WW2 patrol stories, Anzio beachhead battles, military documentary narration, and historical war stories. If you search for WW2 stories, Canadian military history, special forces history, or calm narrated history with strong battlefield detail, this story fits that search exactly.
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the night of February 2nd, 1944, on the eastern edge of the Anzio beachhead some 30 miles south of
00:06Rome,
00:07a Canadian sergeant with black boot polish smeared across his face slid down the bank of the Mussolini Canal and
00:14went looking for the German army.
00:16He was not wearing a helmet. He had a knitted wool cap instead because steel catches moonlight and knocks against
00:23a rifle barrel.
00:24Every loose piece of equipment on his body had been taped down so it could not rattle.
00:30He carried a knife on his belt and a rifle he did not expect to fire.
00:34His orders were not to attack anything. His orders were to find out where the German line actually was.
00:41That sounds like a small question. On that flank, on that night, it was the only question that mattered.
00:48Because the men who sent him out did not know the answer, and they had roughly 1,200 soldiers to
00:53hold 8 miles of front against 4 German divisions.
00:58He went into the water. On the far bank, he lay flat in a drainage ditch and did nothing at
01:04all for a long time,
01:05which is the part of patrolling that nobody puts in films. He listened.
01:10He heard a sentry somewhere ahead of him stamp his feet against the cold.
01:14He heard a voice, then a second voice answering it, and then a match striking.
01:20He counted paces between sounds. He fixed the shape of a farmhouse against the sky.
01:26Then he crawled backwards out of the ditch, went back into the canal, and brought all of it home.
01:33Nothing happened that night. No shots, no prisoners, no bodies.
01:38And I want you to hold that thought, because it is going to matter later.
01:42The most important thing the Canadians did on their first night at Anzio was leave without being noticed.
01:49Now here is the fact that turns this into a mystery.
01:53Within the first weeks of February, the German division facing that canal, the Hermann-Gurring division,
01:58one of the best-equipped formations in Italy, pulled its forward line back roughly 1,000 meters.
02:04It gave up ground it had prepared. Nobody had assaulted it.
02:08There was no breakthrough, no bombardment, no armored push.
02:13The allies on that flank were outnumbered somewhere in the order of 10 to 1.
02:17An army does not surrender a mile of prepared ground to an enemy it outnumbers 10 to 1.
02:24Unless it has stopped being able to tell what that enemy is.
02:28If what the Canadians did on this canal matters to you,
02:31a subscribe helps these stories reach more people.
02:34It makes a real difference.
02:36To understand how 1,200 men frightened a division into walking backwards,
02:41you have to understand what Anzio was in February of 1944.
02:45Because it was not going well.
02:47The landings had gone in on the 22nd of January.
02:50The idea had been elegant.
02:52Put an allied force ashore behind the German winter line,
02:56threaten the roads to roam,
02:57and force the whole German position in central Italy to come apart.
03:02Instead, the beachhead stalled almost immediately.
03:05Kesselring, the German commander in Italy,
03:08did something nobody expected him to be able to do.
03:10He assembled a ring around the beachhead
03:13out of units scraped from across the theater,
03:15and he did it fast.
03:17By early February, he had four divisions
03:19and something in the region of 70,000 men
03:22pressing in on a strip of coast the allies could not expand out of.
03:26The allied troops inside that ring were being ground down.
03:30On the 30th of January,
03:32two American ranger battalions had gone forward
03:35toward the town of Cisterna
03:36and been effectively destroyed.
03:38Of some 767 men, a handful came back.
03:43That disaster left a hole on the right flank of the beachhead.
03:47Somebody had to fill it.
03:48The unit sent to fill it landed on the 1st of February.
03:52On paper, it was called the 1st Special Service Force.
03:55Its Canadian half carried a separate name on the Canadian Army's books,
03:59the 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion.
04:02Two things about this unit are usually skipped,
04:05and both of them are the reason this story is a Canadian one.
04:09The first is proportion.
04:11Canadians made up roughly a third of the force's strength.
04:14The second is command.
04:15Of the six combat battalions in the force,
04:18five were commanded by Canadian officers.
04:21The men who wrote the patrol orders on this canal,
04:24who decided how deep to go and what to bring back,
04:27were in large part Canadians.
04:29Men like Tom Gilday,
04:31before the war,
04:32the Canadian Army's only qualified ski instructor,
04:35and John Bourne,
04:36both of them battalion commanders
04:38who ran their operations from the front
04:40rather than from a map table behind it.
04:43So when the force took over the right flank of Anzio,
04:45it took over 8 miles of it.
04:48Read that number again against the one beside it.
04:518 miles held by 1,200 men.
04:55The United States 3rd Infantry Division,
04:58a full division,
05:00was holding roughly half that frontage.
05:02Their boundary was the Mussolini Canal,
05:05an irrigation work dug in the 1920s
05:08to drain the Pontine Marshes into farmland.
05:11At its widest, it ran about 60 yards across,
05:14and it was deep enough to stop a tank,
05:16which was the only piece of luck the force had.
05:19Behind that canal, there was no continuous line.
05:22There could not be.
05:241,200 men cannot form a line 8 miles long.
05:28They can form a row of separated outposts
05:30with enormous black gaps between them and hope.
05:35Every professional soldier who looked at that position
05:37understood the arithmetic.
05:39If the Germans discovered how thin it was
05:42and pushed at any point along it in daylight with a battalion,
05:46they would go straight through
05:47and roll up the flank of the entire beachhead,
05:50which meant the commanders on that canal
05:52had exactly one problem to solve,
05:54and it was not a tactical problem.
05:57It was a problem of perception.
05:59The Germans could not be allowed to find out
06:02what was in front of them.
06:04There were two ways to handle that.
06:06The obvious way was to go quiet,
06:09dig deep, stay hidden, show nothing,
06:12and pray the enemy never tested it.
06:14They chose the opposite.
06:16They chose to go out into the dark every single night,
06:20into ground held by an enemy 50 times their size
06:24and make themselves the thing that was being investigated.
06:28The first patrols went out on the 2nd of February.
06:32What those Canadians brought back
06:33over the following 10 nights
06:35told their commanders something
06:37about the German army on the other bank
06:39that changed the way the entire flank was fought,
06:42and it had nothing to do with how many Germans there were.
06:45What the first patrols brought back
06:47was not a map of German positions.
06:50It was a schedule.
06:52Go out on that ground 4 or 5 nights running,
06:54and you stop noticing the terrain
06:56and start noticing the clock.
06:59The ration party came up the same farm track
07:01at roughly the same hour.
07:03The sentries changed at fixed times.
07:06The machine gun in the corner of the orchard
07:08fired a short burst at nothing in particular
07:10at about the same point every night,
07:13the way a nervous man clears his throat.
07:16The wire had been laid the way the manual said to lay wire.
07:19The mines had been sown where a trained engineer would sew them,
07:23which meant a trained soldier could work out where they were.
07:27None of that is stupidity.
07:28It is the opposite.
07:30It is a professional army doing its job properly,
07:33holding a defined line with defined arcs of fire
07:36and a defined routine,
07:38exactly the way it had held lines from Poland to the Caucasus.
07:42The Hermann Göring division was not a collection of amateurs.
07:46It was a formation with a reputation,
07:48sitting on prepared ground,
07:50with artillery behind it and numbers on its side.
07:53And it was completely legible.
07:56That word matters, so let me put it plainly.
07:59Anything with a routine can be read.
08:02Once the Canadians on that canal understood
08:04that the enemy in front of them was readable,
08:07one thought followed immediately,
08:09and it was the thought the whole rest of this story runs on.
08:12If they can be read,
08:14we must never be readable.
08:17Everything the force did over the next three months
08:19came out of that single idea.
08:21Not the knives,
08:23not the boot polish.
08:24Those are the details people remember.
08:26The idea underneath was colder than that.
08:29Make yourself impossible to hold still in another man's mind.
08:34The problem was that they had to do it
08:36while being pitifully weak,
08:37and while they could not afford to have the enemy discover it.
08:41So the first move was theater.
08:43Trucks were put on the roads behind the canal
08:45and driven in loops,
08:47the same vehicles over and over along different stretches,
08:51at hours when German observers were watching.
08:54From a distance, at night,
08:56with the sound of engines carrying across flat,
08:59drained farmland,
09:001,200 men can be made to sound
09:02like a division moving into position.
09:06Somewhere on that beachhead,
09:07there was a Canadian driver
09:09making the same run for the sixth time before dawn,
09:12in a truck carrying nothing at all,
09:14and he was doing more damage
09:16to the German picture of that flank
09:18than a battery of guns would have done.
09:20Hold on to that image,
09:22because it tells you what kind of battle this was.
09:24On the Mussolini Canal,
09:26the target was not the German soldier.
09:29The target was the German staff officer's map.
09:33The second move was the harder one.
09:36Frederick's standing order
09:37was that patrols went out every night.
09:39Not most nights,
09:41not when conditions were good,
09:43every night along the whole eight miles,
09:45in squads and half-platoons,
09:47into ground that belonged
09:49to an enemy who outnumbered them
09:51beyond any sane ratio.
09:53And the patrols stopped coming home empty.
09:56They began taking prisoners,
09:58pulling men out of forward posts alive
10:00and walking them back
10:01across the canal in the dark.
10:04Understand what a prisoner is worth
10:06in that situation.
10:07He is not a trophy.
10:09He is an answer.
10:10Every man brought back
10:12tells you which regiment is opposite you,
10:14whether it has been reinforced,
10:16how much it is being fed,
10:18whether the men in it
10:19have been told anything
10:20about who they are facing.
10:22The force got so practiced at this
10:24that on some nights
10:25they came back not with one man
10:27but with whole groups,
10:29patrols and posts collected entire.
10:32Now put yourself on the other bank.
10:34You are a German soldier
10:36holding a forward position
10:38along a canal in flat farmland.
10:40You are told the enemy opposite you is weak.
10:43Then men start disappearing.
10:45Not in firefights.
10:47That you would understand.
10:48There is no firing.
10:50There is a post with four men in it at midnight
10:52and no men in it at two in the morning
10:55and no cartridge cases on the ground
10:58and no blood
10:59and no bodies.
11:01In the morning,
11:02the position is simply empty.
11:04That happens once
11:05and it is a mystery.
11:07It happens five nights running
11:09along an eight-mile front
11:10and it stops being a mystery
11:12and becomes a decision you have to make
11:15about where to put your body tonight.
11:17The Germans reacted
11:19and this is where it turns into a contest
11:21rather than a story about one clever unit.
11:24They put up flares.
11:26They doubled the sentries in the forward posts.
11:29They laid more wire.
11:31They shifted machine guns off the positions
11:33the Canadians had already logged.
11:35They started sending out their own patrols
11:38to meet the raiders in the open ground
11:39before the raiders reached the line.
11:42Which is the textbook answer
11:43and it is the right answer
11:45and it is what any competent commander does.
11:48The Canadians read every one of those changes
11:50within nights
11:51because they were on that ground constantly
11:53and the Germans were not.
11:55So they changed.
11:56They went out earlier
11:57in the awkward hour
11:59when the relief was still moving
12:00and the new sentries had not adjusted their eyes.
12:03They crossed at points
12:04where the bank offered no cover at all
12:06on the reasoning
12:07that a place nobody would choose
12:09is a place nobody watches.
12:11They went deeper
12:12reconnaissance parties
12:13working four, 500 yards
12:15past the forward positions
12:16into the ground
12:17where a German soldier
12:18walking between two posts
12:20assumes he is safely in his own rear area
12:22and behaves like it.
12:24That was the shift that mattered.
12:26Once the Canadians
12:26were routinely operating
12:28behind the forward line
12:29rather than in front of it
12:30the German definition of
12:32the front
12:32stopped meaning anything.
12:34There was no longer a place
12:35on that flank
12:36where a man was definitely safe.
12:38There was only ground
12:39that had not been visited yet tonight.
12:41And in the middle of February
12:42on top of everything else
12:44they were carrying
12:45the taped equipment
12:46the knives
12:47the boot polish
12:48the men going across the canal
12:50began carrying something else
12:51in their pockets.
12:52A small stack of squares
12:54of gummed paper
12:55printed in Canada's war
12:56in German
12:57for German eyes.
12:59They were not weapons
13:00not one of them
13:02ever killed anybody
13:03and within weeks
13:04an intelligence officer
13:05would find one of the consequences
13:07of those paper squares
13:08written out in an order
13:09in a dead man's pocket.
13:11The squares of paper
13:12were about the size
13:13of a playing card.
13:14Printed on each one
13:15was the shoulder patch
13:16of the force
13:17a red spearhead
13:19with two words on it
13:20one above the other.
13:23USA
13:24Canada
13:25and underneath
13:26a line of German text
13:28Das dicke Ende
13:30kommt noch.
13:31It does not translate cleanly
13:34and the fact that it does not
13:35translate cleanly
13:36is the point.
13:38Literally it says
13:39the thick end
13:40is still to come.
13:41As Germans actually use it
13:43it means something closer to
13:45the bad part hasn't happened yet.
13:48It is not a threat
13:49a foreigner would compose.
13:51It is the kind of thing
13:52a German says
13:53to another German
13:54and whoever chose it
13:55knew exactly
13:56which nerve it sat on.
13:58Here is what a man
13:59had to do
14:00to deliver one.
14:01He is lying
14:02in irrigated farmland
14:04in the dark.
14:05He has just killed
14:06the sentry
14:07silently
14:08close enough
14:09to feel him.
14:10There is another German post
14:12somewhere with an earshot
14:1350
14:1480 yards
14:15he cannot be sure.
14:17Every instinct in his body
14:18is telling him to move
14:19now
14:20back the way he came
14:21because the only
14:22currency he has
14:23is the seconds
14:24before anyone notices.
14:26And instead of leaving
14:27he kneels down
14:28beside the body
14:29peels the backing
14:30off a gummed square
14:31of paper
14:32with fingers
14:33that have been in cold water
14:34and presses it
14:35onto the dead man's helmet.
14:37Then he goes home.
14:39Think about the discipline
14:40in that.
14:41Not the courage
14:42the discipline.
14:43Somebody in that unit
14:45understood that
14:45killing a German sentry
14:47achieves almost nothing
14:48and that killing a German sentry
14:50and leaving a signature
14:51achieves something
14:52an artillery regiment
14:53cannot buy.
14:55They stuck them
14:56on the dead.
14:57They stuck them
14:57on fortifications
14:58on positions
14:59they had walked into
15:00and walked out of again
15:02without firing at all
15:03so that a German section
15:05would arrive at their own
15:06bunker in the morning
15:07and find a Canadian
15:08printer's work
15:08on the wall of it.
15:10And now read the message again
15:12with the real arithmetic
15:13in your head.
15:14The thick end
15:14is still to come.
15:16A bigger thing
15:16is on its way.
15:17Get ready for
15:18what is behind us.
15:20There was nothing
15:21behind them.
15:22There were twelve hundred
15:23men strung along
15:24eight miles of drained
15:25marshland
15:26with gaps between
15:27their posts
15:27you could march
15:28a battalion through.
15:29The sentence on that sticker
15:31was the precise inverse
15:32of the truth.
15:33It was not a boast.
15:34It was a lie
15:35constructed to be believed
15:37by exactly the man
15:38who would find it
15:39at exactly the hour
15:40he would find it
15:41standing over a friend
15:42who had died
15:43without making a sound.
15:45And then
15:45in the middle of February
15:47the force did something
15:48that took the whole idea
15:49and made it geography.
15:51Forward of the canal
15:52in the reclamation country
15:53the Italians had built
15:54in the 1920s
15:56stood a farming village
15:57called Borgo Sabotino.
15:59Small, evacuated,
16:00close enough
16:01to the German positions
16:02that no sensible
16:03staff officer
16:04would have put troops in it.
16:05The force put troops in it.
16:07A first lieutenant
16:08named Gus Heilman
16:09moved in with his men,
16:11looked around the place
16:12and declared himself
16:13the mayor.
16:14He renamed it
16:15Gusville.
16:16I am aware of how
16:17that sounds.
16:18Stay with it
16:19because it is not a joke.
16:21Or rather,
16:21it is a joke
16:22doing serious work.
16:24The men in Gusville
16:25found local livestock
16:26still wandering the fields
16:28and started eating meat
16:29instead of ration tins.
16:31They acquired wine,
16:32most of it from
16:33German supply arrangements
16:34that suddenly stopped
16:35arriving where they
16:36were supposed to arrive.
16:37They started a newspaper,
16:39an actual newspaper,
16:41mimeographed,
16:42called the Gusville
16:43Herald Tribune
16:44with a masthead
16:45and columns
16:46and jokes in it.
16:47War correspondents
16:49came out to the flank,
16:50sat in a village
16:51with an easy shelling range
16:52of a German division
16:53and filed their stories
16:54under the dateline
16:55Gusville, Italy.
16:57That dateline
16:58went into newspapers,
17:00which means that
17:00in the spring of 1944,
17:03a reader in Toronto
17:04or Chicago
17:05could open a paper
17:06and read a report
17:07from a town
17:08that had not existed
17:09three weeks earlier,
17:10run by an infantry lieutenant,
17:12inside ground
17:13a German map
17:14showed as German.
17:16For the rest of the beachhead,
17:17penned in,
17:18shelled daily,
17:19waiting to be pushed
17:20into the sea,
17:21the effect was enormous.
17:24Allied soldiers
17:24all over Anzio
17:25heard about Gusville.
17:27The refusal of those men
17:28to treat their own situation
17:30as a crisis
17:30made every other unit's
17:32situation feel smaller.
17:34But look at what it did
17:35on the other side of the wire,
17:37because that is the half
17:38that decided things.
17:39A German commander
17:40is trying to build
17:41a picture of the enemy
17:43on his eastern flank.
17:44His patrols find nothing
17:46or find nobody.
17:47His forward posts
17:49lose men without a shot.
17:51His own bunkers
17:52are being decorated
17:52by people who came
17:53and left without engaging.
17:56Engines move all night
17:57behind the canal.
17:58And now there is a village
17:59out in front of his line,
18:01in his own operational area,
18:03where the enemy
18:03is apparently living permanently,
18:05running a newspaper,
18:06and inviting journalists.
18:08None of that fits the report
18:10that says the flank
18:11is held by a weak,
18:12cut-down force.
18:14So he does what a responsible
18:16commander does
18:16with a picture that will not resolve.
18:19He stops trusting the estimate,
18:20and he starts spending
18:22against the worst case.
18:24Kesselring committed more men
18:26and more material
18:27to that sector
18:28than his own plan called for.
18:30The Hermann-Gurring division
18:32pulled its forward line
18:33back roughly 1,000 meters,
18:35surrendering prepared ground
18:37to by distance
18:37from something
18:38it could not identify.
18:40And around the beachhead,
18:42in German paperwork,
18:43this eight-mile stretch
18:44of drained marsh
18:45began to acquire
18:46the reputation of a place
18:48where you did not want
18:49to be posted.
18:501,200 men had made
18:52a division flinch
18:53without mounting
18:54a single attack.
18:55But paper and a newspaper
18:57and truck engines
18:58do not on their own
18:59kill anybody,
19:00and the Germans
19:01were not being frightened
19:02by rumors alone.
19:04Something else was happening
19:06on that flank in February.
19:08German assembly areas,
19:10the places where a battalion
19:12forms up before it moves,
19:13well behind the line,
19:15out of sight,
19:15were being hit
19:16by accurate artillery,
19:18sometimes within minutes
19:19of forming.
19:21The gunners doing it
19:22were miles away
19:23and could not see a thing.
19:25To make that possible,
19:27somebody had to be
19:28inside the German position,
19:29watching,
19:30for days at a time.
19:32On the 8th of February,
19:34a 28-year-old sergeant
19:35from Manitoba
19:36walked out to do
19:37exactly that.
19:38And what he ended up doing
19:40to keep that fire falling
19:42is the strangest thing
19:43any Canadian did
19:44on that canal.
19:45Go back to the 8th of February.
19:47Six days into the campaign,
19:49before the newspaper
19:50and the mayor
19:51and most of what I have described,
19:53on a stretch of the same flank
19:54near the town of the Toria.
19:56The problem that morning
19:58was a simple one,
19:59and it is the oldest problem
20:00in gunnery.
20:01Artillery can destroy
20:02almost anything it can see.
20:04On the Pontine Plain,
20:06from behind the canal,
20:07it could see almost nothing.
20:08The ground is flat,
20:10drained farmland,
20:11laid out in rectangles.
20:13German assembly areas
20:14and gun positions
20:15sat behind buildings
20:16and tree lines
20:17a few kilometers out,
20:18and from the Allied side,
20:19they might as well have been
20:20on the far side of the moon.
20:22You can fire at a map reference,
20:24you cannot correct onto it,
20:26and uncorrected artillery
20:27on flat ground is noise.
20:29What the guns needed
20:30was a man with eyes
20:31on the target and a telephone.
20:33The man who volunteered
20:34was a sergeant named Thomas Prince.
20:37He was 28,
20:38from the Broken Head Ojibwe Nation
20:40in Manitoba,
20:41one of 11 children
20:42raised on the reserve
20:43northeast of Winnipeg,
20:45and before the war,
20:46he had spent more of his life
20:47outdoors and quiet
20:49than most soldiers
20:50in that army had spent awake.
20:52He had enlisted in 1940,
20:54gone to the parachute battalion,
20:56and ended up here.
20:57That is all the introduction
20:58he needs,
20:59because what matters
21:00about Tommy Prince
21:01is not where he came from,
21:03it is what he was willing to do
21:05with a spool of wire.
21:06He went out before light,
21:08and he laid the wire himself
21:10as he moved,
21:111,400 meters of it.
21:13Think about what that means physically.
21:15Nearly a mile of telephone cable
21:17paid out by hand
21:18across open irrigated fields,
21:20in the dark,
21:21by one man
21:22who has to keep it low,
21:23keep it hidden,
21:24and keep moving
21:25toward the German army
21:26the entire time.
21:28And understand what that wire was.
21:30It was his only value
21:32and his only weakness
21:33in the same object.
21:34Without it,
21:35he was a man hiding in a field.
21:37With it,
21:38he was the eyes
21:39of every gun on that flank.
21:41But a wire lies on the ground,
21:43and a wire points.
21:45Follow it in one direction,
21:47and you find the guns.
21:48Follow it in the other,
21:50and you find him.
21:51He stopped at an abandoned farmhouse.
21:54The distance from that farmhouse
21:55to the German assembly area
21:57has been recorded
21:58as roughly 200 meters.
22:01200.
22:02That is not observation range.
22:04That is close enough
22:06to see faces.
22:07Close enough to hear engines start,
22:09and men called by name.
22:11He got inside,
22:13found a position
22:14where he could see out
22:15without being framed in an opening,
22:16connected his telephone,
22:18and began to talk.
22:19Then the shells came down.
22:22That is the whole thing, really,
22:24and it happened over and over
22:25for three days.
22:27A quiet voice
22:28in a ruined farmhouse
22:29describing what it can see.
22:31A pause.
22:32And then,
22:34kilometers behind him,
22:35guns firing at a place
22:37their crews would never lay eyes on,
22:39and the ground erupting
22:41exactly where he had said it should.
22:43Put yourself in the German assembly area.
22:45You are forming up a unit
22:47in a rear position,
22:48behind your own front line,
22:50in a spot chosen precisely
22:51because the enemy cannot observe it.
22:53And the shelling arrives on top of you
22:56with a precision
22:56that does not happen by accident.
22:59Not roving fire.
23:01Not harassment.
23:02Corrected fire.
23:04Walking onto you,
23:05adjusting as you move.
23:07So you do what any competent officer does.
23:09You conclude there is an observer,
23:11and you go and find him.
23:13They searched.
23:14German troops moved through that area
23:16for three days,
23:18past the outbuildings,
23:19along the tracks,
23:20around the fields.
23:22A farmhouse 200 meters
23:24from your own assembly area
23:25is not a subtle place to hide.
23:27It is the first place you would look,
23:29which may be exactly why it kept working.
23:32And Prince stayed in it.
23:34I want to be careful here,
23:36because this is the part
23:37that gets flattened
23:38into a single sentence
23:39in most tellings.
23:41Three days in a fixed position
23:43inside an enemy area
23:44is not three days of heroics.
23:47It is three days of not moving.
23:49No fire.
23:50No cooking.
23:51No stretching in a doorway.
23:53No walking off to relieve yourself
23:54where you can be seen.
23:56It is holding still
23:57while men who are hunting you
23:59walk close enough
24:00that you can hear what they are saying,
24:01and continuing to whisper corrections
24:03into a handset while they do it.
24:05Everything he had,
24:07the field craft,
24:08the patience,
24:09the ability to be in a landscape
24:11without disturbing it,
24:13was being spent on the single task
24:15of remaining a piece of furniture
24:16in a broken building.
24:18Meanwhile,
24:19his reports were doing something larger
24:21than killing men in an assembly area.
24:23Every accurate concentration
24:25that landed
24:26where no Allied observer
24:27could possibly see
24:28made the German position
24:30on that flank
24:31feel a little less
24:32like a defended line
24:33and a little more
24:34like a fishbowl.
24:35Remember the question
24:36we started with.
24:38Remember the division
24:39that walked its front line
24:40backwards a thousand meters
24:42without being attacked.
24:43This is part of the answer arriving.
24:46It is very hard
24:47to hold ground confidently
24:48when your own rear areas
24:50are being hit accurately
24:51by an enemy who,
24:52according to every report you have,
24:55cannot see you
24:55and is too weak to be there.
24:58Eventually,
24:59the Germans located
24:59Allied guns and fired back,
25:01and an artillery duel
25:03developed across
25:03that stretch of the plain,
25:05the batteries Prince
25:06had reported being engaged,
25:08German batteries answering.
25:10And somewhere in that exchange,
25:11a shell landed on his wire
25:13and cut it.
25:15Sit with that for a second.
25:17He is 200 meters
25:18from a German assembly area.
25:20He has been awake
25:21for the better part
25:22of three days.
25:23The one thing
25:24that makes his presence there
25:25worth anything
25:26is a length of cable
25:28running back nearly a mile
25:29through open fields,
25:31and it is now in two pieces
25:33somewhere out in that farmland,
25:35and he has no idea where.
25:37He had a clean option.
25:39The line was dead,
25:40the mission was over
25:41through no fault of his,
25:43and any officer in the army
25:44would have accepted it.
25:46He could wait for dark
25:47and come home.
25:48The break was out in the fields.
25:50Finding it meant
25:51walking that wire in the open,
25:53in daylight,
25:54across ground
25:55under direct German observation,
25:57while German troops
25:58were actively looking
25:59for the observer
26:00they knew was somewhere
26:01in that area.
26:03What Tommy Prince did next
26:04was not in any manual,
26:06and when the citation was written,
26:08it was described in language
26:09so flat
26:10that you can almost hear
26:11the clerk deciding
26:12it was easier not to dwell on it.
26:14He found civilian clothes
26:15in the farmhouse.
26:16Then, Sergeant Tommy Prince
26:18of the Broken Head Ojibwe Nation
26:20walked out of the front
26:21of that building
26:22in broad daylight,
26:23in the middle of a battlefield,
26:25200 meters from a German assembly area,
26:27and started weeding the field.
26:29Not crawling,
26:30not sprinting between cover.
26:32Walking upright,
26:33into open farmland,
26:35in view of an enemy
26:36who had spent three days
26:37looking for him,
26:38bending over the rows
26:39and pulling weeds,
26:41like a man whose family
26:42had farmed that plot
26:43for 40 years.
26:45The logic is worth
26:46slowing down for,
26:47because it is the entire idea
26:49of this campaign
26:50compressed into one man
26:51in a field.
26:53The Germans were hunting
26:54a soldier.
26:55They knew a soldier was there.
26:57They had a rough area,
26:58they had troops in it,
26:59and they had every reason
27:00to shoot anything
27:01that behaved like a man hiding.
27:03What they did not have
27:05was any category
27:06for a middle-aged peasant
27:07working his crops.
27:09This was an agricultural district.
27:11The reclamation villages
27:12were full of Italian farmers
27:14who had not gone anywhere,
27:16because farmers rarely do.
27:18A civilian in a field in February
27:20is not a target,
27:21and it is not intelligence.
27:23It is furniture.
27:24It is weather.
27:26Prince did not conceal himself
27:28from the German army.
27:29He presented himself to it
27:30as something not worth
27:31a second look.
27:33He worked his way slowly
27:35along the line
27:35of his own buried wire,
27:37weeding as he went,
27:38until he found the break.
27:40Then he knelt down in the dirt
27:42as though he were tying
27:43a boot lace,
27:44took the two dead ends
27:45in his hands,
27:46and spliced them back together.
27:49Accounts of that afternoon
27:50have him doing one more thing
27:51before he went back inside.
27:53Still playing the farmer,
27:55he is said to have turned
27:56and shaken his fist
27:57at the German positions,
27:59and then turned the other way
28:00and shaken his fist
28:01at the Allied lines.
28:03The universal performance
28:04of an old man
28:05whose field is being ruined
28:07by two armies
28:07who will not take their war
28:09somewhere else.
28:10Then he went back
28:11into the house,
28:12picked up the telephone,
28:13and the guns came back to life.
28:16For his conduct
28:17over those three days,
28:18he was awarded
28:19the Military Medal.
28:20The citation says
28:22that his courage
28:22and utter disregard
28:24for personal safety
28:25were an inspiration
28:26to his fellows
28:27and a marked credit
28:28to his unit.
28:30That is the language
28:31the army had available.
28:32It does not contain
28:33the words
28:34farmer
28:34or weeds
28:36or boot lace.
28:37And I suspect
28:38the officer writing it
28:39decided that the plain facts
28:41would look like an invention.
28:43Now hold that image
28:45against the question
28:46this whole story
28:47is built on.
28:48Everything the Canadians
28:49on that canal were doing
28:51came down to one principle,
28:53and Prince executed
28:54the purest version of it.
28:56It was never
28:57about being invisible.
28:59Invisible is impossible
29:00on flat farmland
29:02with an enemy division
29:03sitting on it.
29:04It was about being visible
29:06and being misfiled.
29:08A truck that sounds
29:09like a division,
29:10a village that looks
29:11like a permanent
29:12Allied position,
29:13a dead sentry
29:14with a message
29:14on his helmet
29:15that describes a reserve
29:16which does not exist.
29:19And a man standing
29:20in plain sight
29:21in the middle
29:21of the enemy's
29:22own rear area
29:23being looked at
29:24directly by German soldiers
29:26and being sorted
29:27by their eyes
29:28into the wrong box.
29:30You cannot defend
29:31against an enemy
29:32your own senses
29:33keep classifying
29:34as scenery.
29:36Now,
29:37the Germans
29:38on the other bank
29:39were not fools,
29:40and this is where
29:41the contest turns again,
29:43because they worked out
29:44something important.
29:45They could not find
29:46these men in the dark,
29:47and they could not
29:48reliably identify them
29:50by sight.
29:50So they stopped
29:51trying to solve it
29:52with sentries
29:53and started trying
29:54to solve it
29:54with paperwork
29:55and incentive.
29:57At some point
29:58that spring,
29:59force intelligence
29:59went through the pockets
30:00of a captured German
30:01and found an order.
30:03It had been written
30:04for German troops
30:05going into that sector
30:06to tell them
30:07what they were about
30:08to be facing.
30:09Listen to the wording,
30:10because for a formation
30:11the size of a brigade,
30:13it is one of the
30:13more remarkable things
30:15an enemy ever wrote
30:16about Canadians
30:17in that war.
30:18You are fighting
30:19an elite Canadian-American force.
30:22They are treacherous,
30:23unmerciful,
30:24and clever.
30:25You cannot afford
30:26to relax.
30:28And then,
30:29at the end,
30:30the practical part.
30:31The first soldier,
30:32or group of soldiers,
30:34capturing one of these men
30:35would be given
30:36ten days furlough.
30:37Take that apart,
30:38because there are
30:39three separate admissions
30:40buried in it,
30:41and each one is worth
30:42more than the sentence
30:43it sits in.
30:44The first is identification.
30:47Somewhere in the
30:48German intelligence chain,
30:49they had got
30:50the nationality right.
30:52Canadian-American.
30:541,200 men
30:55on eight miles of marsh
30:56had failed to hide
30:57who they were.
30:58But note what the order
30:59does not say.
31:00It does not say
31:02how many.
31:02It does not say
31:04weak.
31:04It describes equality
31:06and offers no quantity,
31:08which is precisely
31:09the shape of a picture
31:10built out of raiding,
31:11corpses,
31:12stickers,
31:13and rumor.
31:14The second admission
31:15is the adjective.
31:16Not fanatical,
31:18not barbaric,
31:19clever.
31:20That is not
31:21propaganda language.
31:22Propaganda does not
31:23compliment the enemy's
31:24intelligence.
31:25That is a warning
31:26written by somebody
31:27who had read
31:28the incident reports
31:29and understood
31:30that his own men
31:31were being outthought
31:31on ground
31:32his own men owned.
31:34The third admission
31:35is the furlough
31:36and it is the loudest
31:37of the three.
31:38Think about what
31:39a bounty is.
31:40An army does not
31:41offer a reward
31:42for doing something
31:43its soldiers
31:43are already doing.
31:45It offers a reward
31:46when normal orders
31:47have stopped
31:47producing results.
31:49Ten days leave
31:50in 1944
31:51for a German soldier
31:53in Italy.
31:53Ten days out of the line,
31:55out of the shelling,
31:56possibly home,
31:57was an enormous prize.
31:59That is the price
32:00German command
32:01was prepared to pay
32:02for one prisoner
32:03from this unit.
32:04Which tells you
32:05two things at once.
32:06It tells you
32:07how badly they wanted
32:08to know what was
32:09on that flank.
32:10And it tells you
32:11that their own men
32:12on the canal
32:12had been quietly deciding
32:14night after night
32:15that going out to look
32:16was not worth it.
32:18But a bounty
32:19changes behavior.
32:21That order
32:22turned the ground
32:23between the lines
32:24from a place
32:24Germans avoided
32:26into a place
32:27where an alert section
32:28had a reason
32:29to lie in wait.
32:30because now
32:31there was something
32:32in it for them.
32:34On the night
32:35of the 14th of March,
32:36an officer of the force
32:38took four men
32:38across the canal
32:39to set an ambush.
32:41Partway out,
32:42he stopped
32:43because he had heard
32:44something he wanted
32:45to check.
32:46He was about
32:47to become the prize
32:48that order
32:49had been written to buy.
32:50His name was
32:50Mark Radcliffe.
32:51He was a first lieutenant
32:53commanding a company
32:54in the force
32:54and on the night
32:55of the 14th of March,
32:57he took four men
32:58across the Mussolini Canal
32:59to set an ambush
33:00in the usual way
33:01on the usual ground
33:02for the usual reasons.
33:05Partway out,
33:06he heard something
33:07and stopped
33:07to investigate it.
33:09His patrol went on
33:10without him,
33:10unaware that anything
33:11had happened.
33:12Four or five
33:13German soldiers
33:14took him in the dark,
33:16bound him
33:16and gagged him,
33:17and the force's
33:18own technique,
33:19silence,
33:20speed,
33:20a man removed
33:21from a landscape
33:22without a shot,
33:23was used
33:24on one of its officers.
33:25Somebody on that flank
33:27had just earned
33:28ten days at home.
33:29They took him back
33:30to Latouria,
33:31to a house
33:32that had been damaged
33:33by shellfire,
33:34and there he was
33:35interrogated by a captain
33:36of the Hermann-Goring
33:37division named Erlich.
33:39Now think about
33:40what that room
33:40was actually for.
33:42For six weeks,
33:43the German command
33:43on that sector
33:44had been trying
33:45to answer one question,
33:47and every method
33:48it had was failing.
33:49Aerial reconnaissance
33:50gave them nothing useful
33:51over drained farmland.
33:53Their own patrols
33:54were coming back empty,
33:55or not coming back.
33:57Their forward posts
33:58were losing men
33:59who left no evidence behind.
34:01They had trucks
34:03moving all night,
34:04a village they could
34:05not explain,
34:06and a village newspaper
34:07being quoted
34:08in the world's press.
34:10They had an order
34:11circulating
34:12that told their soldiers
34:13the enemy opposite
34:14was elite,
34:15clever,
34:15and not to be relaxed around,
34:17an order that was
34:19very precise
34:19about character,
34:20and completely silent
34:22about numbers.
34:23And now they had
34:25one of them,
34:25alive,
34:26sitting in a chair.
34:28The question
34:29underneath everything
34:30Erlich asked
34:31was the one
34:31their entire
34:32operational picture
34:33depended on.
34:34How many of you
34:36are there?
34:37Radcliffe gave his name,
34:39his rank,
34:40and his service number.
34:41Then he gave them again.
34:43Then he gave them again.
34:45Twenty minutes of that,
34:46and the captain
34:47lost his temper
34:48and struck him
34:49across the throat
34:50with a rubber truncheon.
34:51It paralyzed
34:52his vocal cords.
34:53He would not be able
34:55to speak properly
34:55for four weeks.
34:57I want you to notice
34:59the shape of that moment
35:00rather than just
35:01the brutality of it.
35:03An officer
35:04of a first-class
35:05German division,
35:06holding the exact prisoner
35:07his command
35:08had put a bounty on,
35:09got twenty minutes
35:10into the interview
35:11and reached for a truncheon.
35:13That is not
35:14an interrogation technique,
35:16that is frustration.
35:18Everything the Germans
35:19on that canal
35:19had been feeling
35:20for six weeks,
35:21the men vanishing,
35:23the paper
35:23on the bunker walls,
35:24the accurate shells
35:26landing on positions
35:27nobody could see,
35:28arrived in that room
35:29and came out
35:30through a length of rubber,
35:31and it still
35:32did not produce a number.
35:34Then allied artillery
35:36began falling
35:36on the Toria.
35:38The Germans in the house
35:39went looking for cover,
35:40which left one guard
35:41on the prisoner.
35:42Radcliffe got hold
35:43of a piece of wood,
35:44hit the guard hard enough
35:45to put him down,
35:46and then did something
35:47that tells you
35:48what kind of officer
35:49he was.
35:50Instead of running
35:51immediately,
35:52he freed two other prisoners
35:53being held in the building,
35:54one British and one French,
35:56and took them with him.
35:58They went out
35:59into the shelling.
36:00When the search parties
36:01came looking,
36:02the three of them
36:02climbed up into
36:03an evergreen tree
36:04and stayed in it
36:05while Germans moved
36:06through the ground below.
36:07And then Radcliffe
36:08walked home
36:09through the German rear,
36:10three days moving at night,
36:12avoiding patrols,
36:14working his way
36:14back east toward a canal
36:16he could not see.
36:17And here is the irony
36:18that ought to stay with you.
36:20The reason he could do it
36:21is that his unit
36:22had spent six weeks
36:23making the German rear area
36:25their own working environment.
36:27He knew how those positions
36:28were laid out,
36:29how the sentries were posted,
36:31what hours the tracks were used,
36:33how a German rear area
36:34sounds at two in the morning
36:35when everyone assumes
36:37the war is somewhere
36:38in front of them.
36:39The Canadians and Americans
36:41of that force
36:41had been going deeper
36:43into that ground every week
36:44specifically so that
36:45no part of it
36:46would be unfamiliar.
36:47It turned out to be
36:49the thing that carried
36:50one of their own officers home.
36:52He was mortared on the way.
36:54Fragments went into
36:55his left foot
36:56and more of them
36:57into his face
36:58close to his eyes.
36:59He kept going.
37:01On the third day,
37:02a force patrol
37:03under a sergeant
37:04they called
37:04Big Swede Erikson
37:06found him.
37:07There was no ceremony
37:08about it.
37:09Erikson took hold
37:10of Radcliffe's ears,
37:11looked at the state of him,
37:13and said,
37:14You little son of a bitch,
37:15where you been?
37:16He could barely answer.
37:18His throat was still wrecked.
37:20But he had spent
37:21three days being moved around
37:23behind the German line
37:24with his eyes open,
37:25and he had memorized
37:26what he saw.
37:27Positions,
37:28routes,
37:29ammunition dumps.
37:30He got that back
37:31to the guns,
37:32and the guns used it.
37:33So let us total
37:34the transaction,
37:35because it is the
37:36cleanest measure
37:37of how that contest
37:38was going.
37:39German command offered
37:40ten days furlough
37:41for one prisoner
37:42from this unit.
37:43They got their prisoner.
37:44Within a day,
37:45he was gone.
37:46He gave them nothing,
37:48cost them a guard,
37:49took two allied prisoners
37:50out of their hands
37:51on the way,
37:52walked three days
37:53through their own
37:53rear area
37:54using knowledge
37:55his unit had built up
37:56by living in it,
37:57and delivered
37:58a targeting list
37:59that brought artillery
38:00down on their supplies.
38:01The bounty was paid.
38:03The picture of the flank
38:04did not improve.
38:06And out on the canal,
38:07nothing paused.
38:09The battalions
38:10of that force,
38:11five of the six
38:12commanded by Canadian officers,
38:14kept writing patrol orders
38:16every day
38:16for the same eight miles,
38:18and the men kept crossing
38:19every night
38:20through March
38:21into April.
38:22By the spring,
38:23the way German troops
38:24talked about that sector
38:25had stopped resembling
38:26military assessment.
38:28It had become
38:29something closer
38:29to folklore.
38:31Men going into the line
38:32there were being told
38:33what was waiting for them
38:34before they arrived.
38:35And what they were told
38:37was not a strength estimate.
38:39It was a description
38:40of something that came
38:41in the dark
38:41and could not be heard.
38:43And out of that spring
38:44comes the single
38:45most famous sentence
38:46any German is supposed
38:47to have written
38:48about these men.
38:49You have probably heard it.
38:51It is on plaques
38:52and in film scripts
38:53and in the opening paragraph
38:54of almost every article
38:56ever written about this unit.
38:58There is a serious problem
38:59with it.
38:59And the problem is not
39:01that the sentence is false.
39:02The sentence is this.
39:04The black devils
39:06are all around us
39:07every time we come
39:08into the line.
39:10We never hear them come.
39:13It is supposed to have come
39:14from a diary
39:15taken off a dead
39:16German officer at Anzio.
39:18It is the reason
39:19the unit is called
39:20the black devils at all
39:21and it has been repeated
39:22for 80 years
39:24in books,
39:25in documentaries,
39:26on memorial plaques,
39:28in the first paragraph
39:29of practically everything
39:30written about these men.
39:32Nobody has ever produced
39:34the diary.
39:35There is no photograph
39:37of the page,
39:38no translation filed
39:39with a report,
39:40no captured document reference,
39:43no name for the officer.
39:45Historians who have gone
39:46looking for it
39:47have come back
39:48with nothing
39:48and the men of the force
39:50themselves could not say
39:51where it came from.
39:53The evidence points
39:54somewhere uncomfortable
39:55and rather wonderful.
39:57That the black devils
39:58were named
39:58not by a frightened
39:59German lieutenant
40:00but by the force's
40:02own intelligence officers
40:03and that the most famous
40:05German quotation
40:06of the Italian campaign
40:07was written
40:08by the people
40:09it describes.
40:11Now,
40:11before you decide
40:13that deflates the story,
40:14look at what it actually means
40:16because it is the last piece
40:17of the machine
40:18and it is the biggest one.
40:20Everything else on that flank
40:21was aimed at a German.
40:23The taped equipment
40:24and the blackened face
40:25were aimed at a sentry's ears.
40:27The looping trucks
40:28were aimed
40:29at an observer's report.
40:30The sticker on the helmet
40:31was aimed at the man
40:32who found the body.
40:34Gusville was aimed
40:35at a staff officer's map.
40:37If the diary quotation
40:38is a fabrication
40:39of the force's
40:40intelligence section,
40:41then it was the same weapon
40:42aimed at a target
40:43none of the others
40:44could reach.
40:45The story the German army
40:47told itself
40:47about that sector
40:49and beyond it,
40:50the newspapers of the world.
40:51It is a piece of information
40:53manufactured to travel.
40:55And it traveled so well
40:56that it is still traveling
40:58in 2026,
40:59which makes it,
41:00measured honestly,
41:01the single most successful thing
41:03that unit ever fired.
41:05So let us separate
41:07what is legend
41:07from what is document,
41:09because the documents
41:10are the part
41:10that decided the campaign,
41:12and they are not in doubt.
41:13The order taken
41:15off a captured German
41:16is real.
41:17Elite,
41:18treacherous,
41:18unmerciful,
41:19clever.
41:20Ten days furlough
41:21for one prisoner.
41:23The withdrawal is real.
41:25The Hermann-Goring division
41:26moved its forward line
41:27back roughly a thousand meters
41:29from that canal,
41:30unattacked.
41:31The over-insurance is real.
41:34Kesselring put more men
41:35and more material
41:36into that sector
41:37than his own planning
41:38called for,
41:39and every one of those men
41:40was a man not available
41:41to crush the beachhead
41:42somewhere else,
41:43which was,
41:44in the end,
41:45the whole point of Anzio.
41:47And whatever the origin
41:49of the phrase,
41:49it got into German mouths.
41:51A sergeant of the force
41:52named Victor Keisner
41:54reported hearing
41:55a German soldier,
41:56in contact,
41:57in the dark,
41:58whisper the words,
41:59Schwarze Teufel.
42:01You do not whisper
42:02a name like that
42:03about an enemy
42:03you can locate.
42:05Which brings us
42:06to the answer
42:06to the question
42:07we started with,
42:08and it is not the one
42:09most people give.
42:10The usual answer
42:11is that these were
42:12exceptionally good
42:13night fighters.
42:14They were.
42:16That is not
42:16why the German position
42:18came apart.
42:19An army knows things
42:20through a chain.
42:21A sentry hears.
42:22A section commander reports.
42:24A company builds a picture.
42:26A battalion sends it up.
42:28A divisional intelligence officer
42:30turns a hundred reports
42:31into an estimate,
42:32and a corps commander
42:33spends divisions
42:34based on that estimate.
42:36Every link is a place
42:38where raw sensation
42:39gets sorted into a category.
42:41The Canadians on that canal
42:42attacked every link
42:44of that chain
42:44at the same time.
42:46The sentry's ears
42:47got silence.
42:48The section commander
42:50got an empty post
42:51with no cartridge cases in it.
42:53The company got a sticker
42:54on a bunker wall
42:55promising a reserve
42:56that did not exist.
42:58The battalion
42:59got engine noise
43:00all night.
43:01Division got a permanently
43:03occupied enemy village
43:04in its own operational area.
43:06Accurate artillery
43:07falling on positions
43:08no observer could see,
43:10and men vanishing
43:11along eight miles of front.
43:13And the whole army
43:15got a rumor.
43:16Feed every layer
43:17of a system
43:18something false,
43:19and the system
43:20does not simply
43:21make a mistake.
43:22It stops producing
43:23usable answers at all.
43:25A German soldier
43:26standing on that canal
43:27in April
43:28was not confused
43:29about one fact.
43:30He had lost the ability
43:32to sort anything
43:33he perceived
43:34into friend,
43:35enemy,
43:36or nothing,
43:36which is why
43:37a man in a field
43:38pulling weeds
43:39200 meters away
43:40was allowed
43:41to go on
43:42pulling weeds.
43:44And now the part
43:45that changes
43:45the whole picture.
43:46None of that
43:47was flare.
43:49Look again
43:49at the arithmetic
43:50and it stops
43:51looking like audacity
43:52and starts looking
43:54like the only door
43:55in the room.
43:561,200 men,
43:588 miles,
43:594 German divisions.
44:01There was no line
44:02to hold,
44:03no reserve
44:03to counterattack with,
44:05and no possibility
44:06of winning a fight
44:07the Germans chose.
44:09Deception was not
44:09something the force
44:10added on top
44:11of its combat power.
44:13Deception was
44:14the combat power.
44:15If the picture
44:17ever resolved,
44:18if one German battalion
44:20ever walked forward
44:21in daylight
44:21and discovered
44:22what was really there,
44:23the flank
44:24of the entire
44:25Anzio beachhead
44:26was gone,
44:26and with it,
44:27the beachhead.
44:29The commanders
44:30on that canal
44:30five of the six
44:32of them Canadian
44:32knew that
44:33every single day
44:34for three months.
44:36They held it
44:36for 99 days
44:38without relief.
44:39Not one rotation,
44:41not one week
44:42out of the line.
44:43By the 20th of April,
44:45when a lieutenant
44:46from Toronto
44:46named Henry Rayner
44:48stood in front
44:48of his platoon
44:49and briefed them
44:50for another night's work,
44:51the men listening
44:52had been doing this
44:53without a break
44:54since the 1st of February.
44:55They knew the ground
44:57on the far bank
44:57better than the Germans
44:58living on it.
44:59They also knew
45:00exactly what the odds
45:01were of getting
45:02a full section back
45:03every time.
45:05On the 23rd of May,
45:07the beachhead
45:07finally broke out
45:08and the force
45:09went over the canal
45:10for the last time,
45:12forward,
45:12in daylight,
45:13as ordinary attacking infantry,
45:16into Artina
45:16and beyond.
45:18On the 4th of June,
45:19a force patrol
45:20was the first allied unit
45:22through the walls of Rome.
45:24They had won their argument
45:25with the German army
45:26completely,
45:27and within six months
45:29the unit would be destroyed,
45:30not by the Germans
45:32who never managed it,
45:33but by a decision
45:34taken thousands of miles away
45:36in Ottawa.
45:37The bill for the Mussolini Canal
45:38came to 384 men killed,
45:41wounded or missing,
45:43over those 99 days.
45:45117 of them
45:47were Canadians.
45:48That number needs
45:49the right frame.
45:50A Canadian infantry battalion
45:52in 1944
45:53had something over 800 men.
45:56The Canadian share
45:57of the force at Anzio
45:58was roughly 400.
46:00They lost around
46:01a quarter of it
46:02holding a line
46:03that was never really a line
46:04in a campaign
46:05with no battles in it
46:07that anyone bothered to name.
46:09And that is what killed
46:10the unit in the end.
46:12To keep a formation
46:13like that alive,
46:14you have to keep feeding it,
46:16and both governments
46:17had to feed it equally,
46:18because the whole idea
46:19of the thing
46:20was that it was
46:21half-Canadian.
46:22By 1944,
46:24Canada could not do it.
46:26The Canadian army
46:27was running short
46:28of trained infantry
46:29reinforcements
46:30for Northwest Europe,
46:31a shortage that would grow
46:33into the worst
46:34political crisis
46:35of Canada's war.
46:36And every trained volunteer
46:38sent to a joint unit
46:40in Italy
46:40was a man
46:41not going
46:42to a Canadian battalion
46:43in the Scheldt.
46:45The replacements slowed,
46:47then stopped mattering.
46:49The Canadian share
46:50of the force,
46:51once close to half,
46:52fell to about a third
46:54and kept falling.
46:56A binational unit
46:57that can no longer
46:58stay binational
47:00has lost the argument
47:01for its own existence.
47:03On the 5th of December,
47:051944,
47:06on a field
47:07at Villeneuve-Loubet
47:08in southern France,
47:09the first special service force
47:11was drawn up
47:12for the last time
47:13and its colours
47:14were struck.
47:15The Canadians
47:16were marched off first,
47:18in their own body,
47:19to their own orders,
47:21past the Americans
47:22they had shared
47:22slit trenches with
47:23for two years.
47:25Then the Americans
47:26followed.
47:27One man who was standing
47:29in those ranks
47:29said afterwards
47:30that he watched
47:31some of the toughest men
47:32he had ever known
47:33break down and cry.
47:35Sergeant Tommy Prince
47:37had already gone on
47:38to do it all again.
47:39In the summer of 1944,
47:41in southern France,
47:43he walked 70 kilometres
47:44over roughly 72 hours
47:46across mountainous country
47:48without food
47:49and without water,
47:50located a German encampment
47:52and brought that information back,
47:54an action that fed directly
47:56into the capture
47:57of over a thousand
47:58German soldiers.
47:59The Americans
48:00gave him the Silver Star.
48:02He was discharged
48:03on the 15th of June, 1945,
48:06one of the most decorated
48:07indigenous soldiers
48:08in Canadian history.
48:10He came home to Manitoba,
48:12and Canada took most of it back.
48:14As a status Indian
48:16under the Indian Act,
48:17he could not vote
48:18in a federal election.
48:19The veterans' benefits
48:21that other returning men received,
48:22the land, the loans,
48:24the assistance in building a life,
48:26were administered differently for him,
48:28and he did not get
48:29what his neighbors got.
48:31The man who had lain three days
48:33inside a German assembly area
48:35and stood up in a field
48:37in front of the German army
48:38to splice a wire
48:39could not have walked
48:40into a polling station
48:41in the country
48:42he had done it for.
48:44He did not accept it quietly.
48:46He became a spokesman
48:48for the Manitoba Indian Association
48:49and spent years
48:51pressing for changes
48:52to the Indian Act.
48:54He served again in Korea
48:55with the Princess Patricias.
48:57His health broke down afterwards,
48:59and his later years
49:00were poor and difficult ones.
49:03He died at Deer Lodge Hospital
49:05in Winnipeg
49:06on the 25th of November, 1977,
49:08at the age of 62.
49:11More than 500 people
49:13came to his funeral.
49:15The Princess Patricias carried him,
49:17and they put a Canadian flag
49:19over the coffin.
49:20Herb Pippard of Truro, Nova Scotia,
49:23who crossed that canal
49:24as a sergeant
49:24and came home
49:25with an American silver star
49:27and a bronze star,
49:28went back to Nova Scotia
49:30and lived a long life.
49:31He wrote his memoir
49:33of the whole business in 1994
49:34and called it
49:36The Light-Hearted Soldier,
49:38which tells you something
49:39about the man.
49:40He was 98 when he died,
49:42one of the last of them.
49:44Mark Radcliffe,
49:45whose throat was crushed
49:46in a shelled house
49:47in La Toria in March
49:49because a German captain
49:50could not get a number out of him,
49:52was back with his company
49:53inside a month.
49:55On the 4th of June,
49:56when the first Allied patrol
49:58went through the walls of Rome,
49:59he was at the front of it.
50:01What the force built
50:02on that canal
50:03did not disappear
50:04with the colors.
50:05The lineage runs directly
50:07into the modern special forces
50:09of both countries,
50:10the Canadian Special Operations Regiment
50:12on one side,
50:13the United States Special Forces
50:15on the other.
50:16Both trace themselves back
50:17to a unit
50:18that spent its most important
50:19three months
50:20not assaulting anything at all.
50:22Which brings me back
50:24to a field near La Toria
50:25in February of 1944.
50:28There is a man out in it
50:29in civilian clothes,
50:30bent over the rows,
50:32pulling weeds.
50:33200 meters away,
50:35there are German soldiers
50:36who have been hunting
50:37an Allied observer
50:38for three days,
50:39and several of them
50:40are looking straight at him.
50:41They see a farmer.
50:43They see the landscape.
50:44They go back
50:45to what they were doing.
50:46That is the answer,
50:48and it is bigger
50:49than one sergeant
50:50in a borrowed coat.
50:51German sentries
50:52on the Mussolini Canal
50:53could not tell
50:54Canadian patrols
50:55from their own men
50:56because by the spring of 1944,
50:59they could not reliably tell
51:00anything from anything.
51:02The Canadians
51:03had spent three months
51:04feeding every layer
51:05of the German army's
51:06way of knowing,
51:07from a sentry's ears
51:08to a corps commander's estimate,
51:10something that was not true.
51:12And they did it
51:13because 1,200 men
51:14holding eight miles of marsh
51:16against four divisions
51:17had no other way
51:18to hold the ground.
51:19The illusion
51:20was not a flourish
51:21on top of their strength.
51:23It was their strength.
51:25It never broke,
51:26and neither did they.
51:29Thank you for staying
51:30with this one to the end.
51:31These stories take
51:32a long time to research,
51:33and it means a great deal
51:34that people still
51:35want to hear them.
51:36If you think
51:37what the Canadians did
51:38on that canal
51:38deserves to be remembered,
51:40a like genuinely helps
51:41it reach more people,
51:42and a subscribe
51:43means you will not miss
51:44the next one.
51:46And if your father,
51:47your grandfather,
51:48or your uncle
51:49served in the Second World War,
51:50I would be honored
51:51to hear about him
51:52in the comments.
51:53comments.
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