Hey guys i saw a movie a few years back and have been trying to find the name of it. the story is something along the lines of a ragtag group of US soldiers and an elite group of i believe Canadian soldiers are formed into one unit they have to major battles that i remember one was wading through a river to a town and capturing almost every enemy the other one was scaling the back side of a cliff to take out an enemy artillery position. that's all i can rember but also if you guys could suggest any other movies similar to this one that would be much appreciated Thanks for any help Mike
The Devil's Brigade. Based on an actual unit, the 1st Special Service Force, although of course Hollywoodized a bit, especially the premise that the American element was composed of criminals. I recall a TIME magazine review saying "Last year it was the Dirty Dozen, now it's the Filthy Fifteen Hundred."
The First Special Service Forces were not made up of men from the criminal "element" as portrayed in the Hollywood movie Carronade mentioned. The Devil's Brigade movie was "loosely" based upon the actual unit, and very loosely at that. But only in the make up of the unit, a considerable amount of the training scenes, and actions portrayed were more closely based on reality. It was made up of 2/3 American and 1/3 Canadian volunteers if memory serves, and members of the FSSF were somewhat disappointed with the movie as presented after the "hollywood" treatment. Of course one must remember that it was released around the same time as the box-office smash; The Dirty Dozen, and the studio tried to climb onto that popularity wagon with one of their own.
Personally, it ranks as one of my favourites, because its one of the rare movies in which Hollywood acknowledged that Canada even fought in World War II!!
I read something somewhere that said that both current airworthy Lancasters belonged in England. What nonsense!! Anyone with any knowledge of Bomber Command cannot disregard the Canadian contribution to all our forces, and l for one had to answer the statement and tell the individual to check their history. Canada deserves to enjoy and love their lanc as we here love ours. RAF & RCAF are Blood Brothers!! Even if Hollywood cant be bothered to make the distinction.
The 1SSF was an unusual unit, orginally created for Arctic/mountain warfare. Supposedly at one point it was intended to use weasels or similar tracked vehicles, but it ended up basically a light infantry force. It was sometimes referred to as a division equivalent since it comprised three "regiments", but these had only two battalions, and at platoon level there were only two squads totalling about twenty men. So in total it had 108 squads compared to 81 in a standard infantry regiment. It also lacked heavy weapons platoons or companies, so overall numbers and firepower were comparable to a regiment. One of my pet peeves is units with only two subunits; the multiplication of headquarters seems particularly odd in what was supposed to be a "lean and mean" organization.
