Your mission, should you choose to accept it

With Memorial Day tomorrow and Tom Cruise’s latest ‘Mission: Impossible’ film in theaters, we shift the focus from action heroes to real heroes, including the U.S. and Canadian 1st Special Service Force, which sustained high casualties during World War II.

A special set of skills

In July 1942, the first top-secret unit made up of Americans and Canadians became the 1st Special Service Force. The unit was formed at Fort Harrison near Helena, Montana, and its members trained in skiing, climbing, parachuting and hand-to-hand combat. The American recruitment letters asked for single men age 21–35 with three or more years of grammar school. The occupations preferred were rangers, lumberjacks, woodsmen, hunters, prospectors, explorers and game wardens. Inspection teams also scoured the western military bases for candidates. Those chosen, owing to the secrecy of the mission, were often told they had been selected to undergo training for a parachute unit.

The creator and leaders

The unit was proposed by Englishman Geoffrey Pyke. The goal was to train a small force of highly mobile soldiers that could be inserted into Norway to destroy 14 hydroelectric dams supplying power for Hitler’s nuclear weapons development program. By the time the unit was ready to deploy, Norwegian commandos had destroyed the Nazi heavy water facility.

The commander of the unit was Army Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick, below, who devised training in Montana on grueling terrain like 9,000-foot peaks and rugged cliffs.

Tough duty

The unit first was deployed to the Aleutian Islands in 1943 with the intent of fighting Japanese forces, but Japan’s army had abandoned its positions there due to lack of support from its navy.

By October 1943, the 1st Special Service Force was in Italy, taking on the arduous task of clearing the Nazis from the mountains of the Winter Line. Two of Germany‘s best panzer regiments controlled that section of the Italian mountains. The 1st Special Service Force made difficult ascents under heavy artillery barrages. It entered combat Dec. 3, 1943, with a strength of 1,800 men and completed its mission Jan. 17, 1944, with fewer than 500 men.

After that, the unit headed to the desperate Anzio beachhead, where it was assigned to defend over 8 miles of the right flank with fewer than 1,100 men, facing a full division of 10,000 German soldiers. The unit was given the name “Black Devils” by the Germans because of the soldiers’ habit of blackening their faces, and their stealth in combat.

The unit is credited with being the first to enter Rome on June 4, 1944. Following the city’s liberation, the unit was assigned to lead the landings in Southern France, fighting its way to the France-Italy border. In 251 days of combat, the unit sustained 2,314 casualties, 134% of combat strength; captured over 30,000 prisoners; won five U.S. campaign stars and eight Canadian battle honors; and never failed a mission.After the unit was disbanded in December 1944, some soldiers went to Canadian parachute regiments, some went to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and helped liberate Norway from Nazi occupation, and some joined the 474th Infantry Regiment.

The 474th was featured in the 2014 film “Monuments Men” and was credited with recovering gold and artworks stolen by Germany and stored in a salt mine.

The 1968 film “The Devil’s Brigade” recounts the mission of the 1st Special Service Force. The movie stars William Holden and Cliff Robertson and overstates animosity between the unit’s Canadians and Americans.

You can learn more about the brigade at the Montana Military Museum.

Fallen field agents

The Central Intelligence Agency is not part of the Department of Defense, but many of its agents have died while trying to protect America. The CIA memorial is at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia: a wall in the Original Headquarters Building lobby. There are 140 stars carved into the white Alabama marble wall, each representing an employee who died in the line of duty. Paramilitary operations officers of the Special Activities Center account for the majority of those memorialized.

The wall stands as a silent, simple memorial with the inscription, “In honor of those members of the Central Intelligence Agency who gave their lives in the service of their country.” The CIA has released the names of 106 of the fallen; the names of the remaining 34 remain secret even in death.

The first star

Douglas Mackiernan, who died April 29, 1950, was the first CIA employee to be killed in the line of duty and was memorialized by the first star on the wall. Mackiernan had worked for the State Department in China since 1947. When the People’s Republic of China was established at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, the State Department ordered that the consulate where Mackiernan was stationed as vice consul be closed, and personnel were to leave the country immediately. Mackiernan, however, was ordered to stay behind, destroy cryptographic equipment, monitor the situation and aid anti-communist Nationalists. Mackiernan fled south toward India after most escape routes were cut off, along with Frank Bessac, an American Fulbright Scholar, and three Russians.

Although Mackiernan and his party survived the Taklamakan Desert and Himalayas, Mackiernan was shot by Tibetan border guards April 29, 1950, probably because they mistook the party for communist infiltrators.

Air America

More than 30 pilots and crew of the CIA’s Air America company who were killed during the Vietnam War were not counted as part of the CIA, even though they worked for it.

You can learn more about the memorial and the agents who lost their lives here.

Sources: Central intelligence Agency, National Archives, Montana Military Museum