Close calls for Devil's Brigade soldier
[attach]2664[/attach]Morris Lazarus wasn’t sure what his friends had put his name down for when, as an enlisted soldier at Camp Borden, they signed him up to try out for a special new unit. Little did the 20-year-old Lazarus know then he’d be on track to become a member of a legendary Canadian-American commando unit known as the Devil’s Brigade, officially the first Special Service Force.
“They sent us out to Vermont and they said, ‘In two days you’ll be jumping out of planes,” Lazarus says. “When I got into the plane, I wanted to jump out — I had never been in a plane before.”
But after rigorous special training, he got used to planes, as well as boats like the one his brigade took to Italy to fight Axis forces.
There, Lazarus saw action when the brigade was ordered to take Monte La Defensa, a strategic location that had to be captured in order to take Rome. Lazarus says the effort had already cost the allies close to 50,000 regular troops when the Devils were sent in to take a crack at it.
“They had been up there for five years, so they were well guarded,” he recalls.
But the brigade took the mountain by climbing the sheer side, allowing them to surprise axis forces.
“What (regular forces) couldn’t do in months we did in about five to seven days,” Lazarus says.
But there was a high cost. The Devil’s Brigade sustained high casualties and a few days later Lazarus himself was wounded on his right hand by a shell and sent to a hospital in North Africa to recover. But his trip back turned out to be as perilous as the battlefield.
“The (ship) got hit by a mine… The Americans lost about 200 young troops who fell through the hole in the boat.”
But Lazarus survived that too and the ship made it back to Naples where he continued on to rejoin the Devils.
It wouldn’t be the last time fortune would smile on the short but scrappy soldier. Lazarus recalls one night on patrol sometime later when his unit was told to spread out.
“I spread out and I look towards my lines and I see a small patrol coming toward me… When they were about 10 feet from me I realize they’re a German patrol. They come right up to me and they say in German ‘Who are you?’… I answered back in German ‘My name is Hans!’”
But the German soldier didn’t buy it and opened fire. What happened next Lazarus still can’t explain.
“I couldn’t tell if the bullets were going in me, around me or passing me. I didn’t feel any pain. The momentum of the bullets spun me around and I go to the ground.”
In an ensuing firefight, half the platoon was killed, as well as all the German soldiers. But he emerged without a scratch.
“How the hell they missed me is beyond anything I can comprehend.”
After that, Lazarus says he became a fatalist. The rest of his army career included a promotion to sergeant and further stints in Southern France and in England, where he saw the bombing of London. Among the victories counted by the Devils Brigade was their march into Rome in the Fall of 1944. But again it came with a price.
“Casualties—we had lots. But you don’t know. Nobody tells you in advance,” Lazarus says.
After the war he came back home and went into sales. He married, having four daughters and nine grandchildren. Years later after retirement, he ended up becoming real estate partners with former Canadian heavyweight boxing champion Earl Walls.
Today, still sprightly and sharp at age 92, the North Toronto resident says he still enjoys a good game of golf. And having been decorated by no fewer than five countries for his record as a soldier, he has plenty of medals to show when he occasionally speaks to classes of school children.
“My daughters are teachers, so they enlisted me,” he jokes.
Aside from Lazarus’ talks at schools, the tales from the Devils Brigade live on in the 1960’s book and film of the same name. That film in turn is said to have inspired director Quentin Tarantino’s recent film, Inglorious Basterds.
Although there have been other elite units since the Devil’s Brigade, Lazarus says it’ll always be special to have been a part of the original group.
“There are a lot of special service forces now, but ours was the first.”