The devil made them do it

WESTVILLE - Saturday may have been the busiest day the Pictou County Military Museum has seen since it opened, as hundreds of Pictou County residents came through the doors, carrying cameras and desperate to shake the hand or get the autograph of some of the special guests in attendance.
No, George Canyon didn't make a surprise appearance. Instead, it was three members of the famed Devil's Brigade who decided to tour the facility.
The Devil's Brigade was the First Special Service Force, a joint Second World War American-Canadian commando unit that was organized in 1942 and trained at Fort William Henry Harrison near Helena, Montana, for seven months before being sent overseas.
Truro resident Herb Peppard is one of the famed members of the commando force. He well remembers training in Fort Benning, Georgia, with the Canadian Parachute Battalion when word circulated that they were looking for volunteers to join a special service force.
"There were 127 on parade that day, and 97 of us volunteered," Peppard recalled.
The men who volunteered for the force were widely known as the best of the best. They went through months of rigorous training in Montana, where they learned skills like parachuting, mountain climbing and skiing. The idea behind the special force was to create an elite group of soldiers capable of fighting behind enemy lines in alpine or winter conditions.
"It was hard training," Peppard said. "And once we trained the hardest, we felt we were the best. When we went into action, we'd do anything for our buddy - it created an amazing espirit de corps."
Then they were sent to the Aleutian Islands to combat the Japanese, but "they'd already left before we got there - and God, I was so happy about that," chuckles Peppard.
The force moved on to Italy in early 1944, where they were dispatched to the beachfront at Anzio, just south of Rome. The mission was to hold and raid the area to aid the Allies in capturing Rome, but when they arrived, Peppard said, they discovered the Germans had the high ground.
"They had us pinned down for three months, but our unit was the first to liberate Rome in June 1944," Peppard recalled.
But not all the memories are of victories. The unit, although much feared for their fighting prowess, also suffered many losses. One of Peppard's most vivid memories of his time with the unit was on Christmas Eve in 1943.
"I lost my best friend that day," Peppard said. "His name was George Smith and he was from California. He was killed by a mortar shell on Christmas Eve. He died instantly."
Nearly a year after that loss, on Dec. 5, 1944, the unit disbanded. It wasn't until June 21, 1945 that Peppard returned home to Canada.
He can still remember vividly standing on the deck of his ship as it pulled into Halifax Harbour. Firefighting ships were sending up spouts of water and a band was playing on the shore.
"When the band started playing O Canada, there wasn't a dry eye on the ship, we were all so happy to be Canadians and be home," he said passionately, adding that when the army song was sung, they all broke out in song as well to join in.
He remembers looking in vain, searching every face on the shore, hoping desperately that his family was there as well.
"They weren't, of course, they had no way of knowing I'd be coming," Peppard said. "But I called them before I left Halifax and they met me at the train station in Truro. I was one of nine children, we had no car, but we all walked home together."
Peppard had nothing but praise for the Military Museum. "I thought the museum was one of the best I've ever saw," he said. "They must've done a lot of work on it. And the people were very friendly - even if they didn't know me, they came up to shake my hand."
Vincent Joyce, museum president and curator, said hundreds of people visited the museum Saturday morning as the Devil's Brigade members toured the site, asking for photos and autographs of the three men.
Joyce said it was an honour to welcome Peppard, Hector MacInnis from Dartmouth and Millard Rector from Truro to the museum.
"What these guys went through in three years was more than any other combat unit did," Joyce said. "To have them come through our little museum - there's just no words."