The Lighthearted Soldier: A Canadian's Exploits with the Black Devils in WW II

Dean F. Oliver teaches history at York University.

Herb Peppard served in the First Special Service Force, a unique
military formation. Formed in 1942, it was a small, elite
Canadian-American outfit specially trained for commando-style operations
in Romania, northern Italy, and Norway, all intended—like the Dieppe
fiasco—to relieve German pressure on Russia. Fortunately, such daring
raids never occurred, and from August 1943 until December 1944, when the
unit was disbanded, it fought with great distinction, mainly as a
regular infantry regiment in Italy and the south of France.

Success did not come easily. Peppard, a reluctant Nova Scotia
volunteer, recalls his baptism of fire as a confused, disastrous night
attack under heavy, accurate German artillery bombardment. In the
battles to come, the First Special Service Force was, more often than
not, victorious, but the cost of tactical excellence was high. By
December 1944, most of Peppard’s original cohort of friends in the
unit were either dead, wounded, or missing.

This memoir is a welcome testimony to their loss. And though not
destined to become a war classic, it is ably written, humorous, and, at
times, surprisingly honest. How many commandos would admit to having
been shamed into enlisting? Or to the intense fear and physical
discomfort that accompanied impending combat? Especially noteworthy in a
work of this sort is the author’s profuse affection for his wartime
love interest, and subsequent wife, Greta.

Peppard proves Charles P. Stacey’s 50-year-old assertion that the
international experiment represented by the First Special Service Force
was, in terms of unit cohesion and morale, an unqualified success.
Peppard’s closest friends were a Capraesque smorgasbord of Canadian
and American stereotypes whose initial suspicions of one another
gradually gave way to mutual admiration and, more importantly,
professional respect. Problems documented by other scholars (differing
pay scales, for example, and incompatibilities in the awarding of combat
decorations) are not explored by Peppard, and one can only assume they
were, for him at least, unimportant. “Most veterans prefer to recall
the humour of those dark days,” Peppard recalls. “Number me amongst
them.”