For Jim Summersides, 90, the memories of 75 years ago regularly flood back as he prepares for a trip to Washington, D.C.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, he will join other veterans of the 1st Special Services Force, known as the Devil’s Brigade or Black Devils.
The unit will officially receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award in the United States.
In 2013, Congress voted unanimously to award the medal to the joint Canadian-American commando unit from the Second World War.
The Gold Medal was first awarded in 1776 to George Washington. Other recipients included Thomas Edison, Sir Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Neil Armstrong and Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.
The 1st Special Services Force joins other Second World War units such as the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen as Gold Medal recipients.
The presentation ceremony will take place just over 75 years after the unit disbanded in December 1944 in France.
It was formed with Canadian and American volunteers in 1942 in Helena, Montana, where its veterans association now has a museum.
“The gold medal will probably go to the museum and we will receive brass medals. It would take a lot of gold for each of us to receive one,” Summersides said with a wink.
The 3 p.m. ceremony will be broadcast live over the Internet, at www.speaker.gov, the website of John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
A notice at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 613 hall, where Summersides is a member, promotes the ceremony.
Summersides doesn’t know if he will meet American president Barak Obama.
“Guess that depends on the state of the world at the time,” he said.
Receiving the Gold Medal, however, is a tremendous honour for the unit, he said.
It came after lobbying by its American members to include their Canadian comrades.
The 1st Special Services Force never had more than 2,400 members, Summersides said, and had a casualty rate of 134% with members wounded two and three times.
About one-third of its members were Canadians.
“You didn’t know who was an American or a Canadian,” he said about the way the group blended, “until they spoke.”
The force saw heavy action as commandos in front and behind enemy lines on the beaches and in the mountains of Italy and France.
The memories of those he fought beside, especially of those who didn’t come through, inspired Summersides to ensure their memory stayed alive.
He became a regular speaker and organizer of Remembrance Day programs for Pelham and area schools.
Summersides said was 19 when he volunteered to join the force from the Canadian Army in Italy in 1943.
He and a friend broke the soldier’s unwritten rule of not volunteering because they hoped the rations would be better.
He was in heavy fighting during the Allied breakout from Anzio in Italy and later in northern Italy and France.
Unlike most of the unit’s members, he avoided getting wounded.
“I like to say I was too small.”
Roughly 150 members of the unit remain alive “including 46 Canadians, 21 from Ontario,” said Summersides, a recent president of the unit’s veterans association.
He did not know how many will make it to Washington.
“At 90 and a half, I am one of the younger ones.”
Accompanying him will be members of his family, who, when they made their travel arrangements, had to keep the reason for their trip secret.
Congress wanted to be the first to announce the ceremony.
The 1st Special Services Force is the forerunner of the American Special Forces (Green Berets) and the Canadian Special Operations Regiment.
