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Andy Kerstetter, andy@buffalobulletin.com

It was a couple of hours past midnight on the morning of Dec. 3, 1943, and Cecil L. Deen of Buffalo, a sergeant in the 2nd Regiment of the First Special Service Force, was resting on a rain-slicked ledge on a mountain in Italy.

Checking his V-42 stiletto combat knife and M1941 Johnson light machine gun, Deen took a breather with the rest of the 2nd regiment’s third company after a grueling climb up a series of cliffs. He was carrying 80 pounds of gear in relentless rain.
He and the others waited for the signal to attack a Nazi stronghold just over the next ridge — so close that they could smell food and hear German soldiers talking.
The signal came, and all hell broke loose. After a few hours of furious fighting, the force completed their goal of capturing the mountain stronghold at Monte la Difensa, the first victory toward penetrating the Nazis’ Winter Line, which protected fascist Italy from the Allies. The regiment was able to complete the task in a fraction of the time their superiors had predicted.
That was the first of many victories for the 1,800-man regiment, including the Battle of Anzio, which ultimately crushed the Winter Line and enabled the Allied victory over Italy.
But Deen wouldn’t live to see those victories.
Sometime during the night of Dec. 6, 1943, Deen was gunned down by Nazi bullets while his regiment attacked its next target after Monte la Difensa, Monte la Rematanea.
Now buried in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, Italy, Deen and the rest of his comrades in the joint U.S.-Canadian force — from which the modern-day Navy SEALS and Green Berets trace their lineage — will be honored for their heroism.
On Feb. 3 in Washington, D.C., all members of the force, including the 75 living survivors as well as the deceased, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors the White House can bestow, for their service in World War II.
Deen is the first — and only — man from Buffalo to receive the award.
But with no dog tags ever sent home and no family left in Buffalo by the time he was buried, Deen’s service went largely unremembered in Wyoming, save for a spot on Buffalo’s war memorial at the corner of Fort and Main streets.
Tough beginnings
Deen was born in 1915 on a farm in Gentry, Missouri, to Lewis and Flora Deen. A few years later, his sister, Agnes, was born. Their childhood was difficult, plagued by deaths in the family and several moves.
“Cecil and Agnes didn’t spend much time together,” said Agnes’ daughter Muriel Deen Lohse Goings of East Anchorage, Alaska. “Their mother passed when she was a year old and Cecil was 6.”
After Flora’s death, their grandmother raised them for a few years, but soon she passed away, as well. The children’s aunt Dora then took Agnes back with her to Colorado to raise her until Dora’s death in 1930, while Lewis continued to raise Cecil on the farm.
In the mid 1930s, Cecil and Agnes moved together to the Buffalo area for reasons unknown, perhaps to try making a living in the ranching industry.
“I never heard why they went to Wyoming,” Goings said.
The siblings would return one last time to their hometown of Gentry, Missouri, to bury their father, Lewis, who died Oct. 10, 1938.
At the time, Cecil and Agnes had almost nothing to their names, and they had no money to bury their father, Goings said. It was in this moment when Cecil displayed his raw sense of humor and devil-may-care attitude that later landed him in the First Special Service Force.
“The undertaker was giving Cecil a bad time, and since there was nothing he could do, (Cecil) said, ‘If you don’t bury him, he is going to start stinking,’” Goings said.
After finally securing burial arrangements for Lewis, the pair returned to Buffalo, where Cecil had been working ranch jobs around the area, including a stint at the Joe Hall ranch and with Preston Lohse of Clearmont.
During this time, Agnes and Lohse fell in love and were married in July 1939. Soon after, Cecil enlisted in the U.S. Army, and in 1941 he was stationed with the 9th Engineers at Fort Riley, Kansas.
Within the next couple of years, Agnes and Preston gave birth to their children, Muriel and Fred, before moving to Vancouver, Washington, to work in the shipyards to help the war effort, after which they moved to Anchorage.
But Cecil would never get to meet his niece and nephew.
The Devil’s Brigade
During his time at Fort Riley, Cecil met and fell in love with a woman named Jeanne, and they were married in early 1942.
That summer, though, Cecil was approached by his superiors about volunteering to be part of something called the First Special Service Force, under the command of Lt. Colonel Robert T. Frederick.
The force, which later earned the moniker “The Devil’s Brigade” from their enemies, was a joint effort of Canada and the U.S. to train elite troops for commando operations and unconventional warfare in various theaters of war around the world.
The force was originally intended for use in a military operation called Project Plough, in which the force would be dropped behind Nazi lines in occupied Scandinavia in order to sabotage the Nazi war machine by destroying hydroelectric power plants and other installations.
To that end, the force underwent extreme training for combat in subzero temperatures and high alpine terrain at Fort William Henry Harrison in Helena, Montana. Every member of the force was trained in stealth tactics, amphibious warfare, parachuting, rock climbing, skiing, demolitions, hand-to-hand combat and various small arms, including models used by the enemy.
The force was even issued specialized equipment just for them, including the Johnson light machine gun, the M29 Weasel tank — designed for use in snowy terrain — and the V-42 stiletto combat knife, designed by Frederick himself.
The volunteers who made up the force came from all sectors of the U.S. military and had to be fearless. In his announcement searching for candidates, Frederick wrote that he preferred men who were previously employed as lumberjacks, farmers, ranchers, forest rangers, hunters, game wardens and the like before enlisting in the military.
The force became known for fearless soldiers who had rough-and-tough, carefree attitudes. Cecil would have fit right in, Goings said.

“I believe his personality was very much like the unit he was serving in,” she said. “He was loyal, fun-loving and didn’t much care if he got into trouble.”
After the plans for Project Plough fell through because of logistical concerns, the force ended up being assigned various missions that other more traditional Allied forces had difficulty with.
After being deployed to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to repel a small invasion from the Japanese, the force was assigned the task of opening a way for the Allies through the Nazi Winter Line in Italy, where Cecil and the rest of the force proved themselves.
Famous last words
Before the force left the U.S., Cecil made sure to visit Agnes and her family a couple of times at their home in Washington. Even after they deployed to Italy, he kept in contact with his sister.
“He sent two V-mails, one on Nov. 9, 1943, and another on Nov. 28, 1943,” Goings said. “He couldn’t relate what was going on because of secrecy, but he seemed to miss her.”
Cecil wrote the messages while the force was preparing for the assault on Monte la Difensa, the first Nazi mountain stronghold in the Winter Line, which had stymied previous Allied attacks for about six months. The cold, torrential rains of that winter, combined with the mountain’s sheer cliffs, made assailing the enemy’s position seem impossible even to natives of the area.
In his Nov. 9, 1943, message to Agnes, Cecil wrote, “How are you and the family? OK, I hope. I would sure like to see you and the kids but am a little too far away for that. There isn’t anything I can write except hello, I’m OK and goodbye. So here’s hoping I hear from you soon.”
He never would hear from Agnes. On Dec. 2 and 3, the force captured Monte la Difensa under cover of a hail of Allied artillery fire — one soldier later wrote that the barrage made it seem like “the whole mountain was on fire” — and later withstood several days and nights of freezing temperatures and drenching rain before beginning the attack on the next Nazi stronghold at Monte la Rematanea.
Cecil perished in the initial wave to take the second stronghold.
A letter sent to Cecil’s wife, Jeanne, by force comrades Hugh Bernard and Hope Tichenor, shed light for her on his final moments.
“Where we went into action it was on top of a mountain after climbing all night after two days and nights we moved out on an attack towards a little ridge several hundred yards away,” the letter said. “Deen was in the first platoon and so was off to the left flank about two hundred yards away. His platoon started up a small hill and I could see the Jerries firing at them from the rear and knew some one was being hit.
“I heard at first that Deen was hit and then that they couldn’t find him and it wasn’t till several months later while in the hospital with a man named Dutchy, who was in his section that I learned the details. It seems he was hit with machine gun slugs several times in the back and as he lay the last words he uttered were ‘The bastards got me.’ I doubt if he suffered any because the shock of being hit usually dulls the pain as anyone who has been shot can tell you.
“The medic that attended him got his tags messed up and when he was buried later with several other men they couldn’t find any record of it. After some time it was straightened out and so everything was made clear to the authorities if not you, to whom it really meant the most.”
Gone but not forgotten
In the few years after Cecil’s death, the U.S. military corresponded with Jeanne, who was then his next of kin, to return his belongings. However, in the mid 1940s, Jeanne moved on by marrying Jewel T. Shearer, a survivor from Cecil’s unit in the force, which over the course of the war saw more than 200 percent casualties.
Agnes was then named Cecil’s next of kin. She had received a letter shortly after he went missing on Dec. 6, 1943, from Frederick, and another on May 12, 1944, confirming his death.
“In my earlier letter I told you how deeply we felt the loss of your brother. Now that we know he was killed and shall not return to us, we feel the loss even more deeply,” Frederick wrote. “In that same letter I wrote that the United States Army could be proud of the gallant service that your brother gave. You, too, may feel very proud of your brother who gave his life for his country.
“Please accept my sincere and heartfelt sympathy for the irreparable loss you have suffered. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man may lay down his life for his friends.’”
As Cecil’s only surviving next of kin, it would have been Agnes’ responsibility to write an official obituary for him — but for some reason, no obituary ever came.
Goings’ only theory about why her mother never wrote the obituary for Cecil is that Agnes never accepted his death.
“She never believed that he was gone. She thought he would have gotten out of it somehow,” Goings said. “She loved him and missed him her whole life.”
The extraordinary accomplishments of Cecil and the rest of the Devil’s Brigade at Monte la Difensa were later immortalized in the 1968 film “The Devil’s Brigade,” starring William Holden.
The force overcame obstacles to achieve victories many of the Allies thought impossible. Even Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, marveled at the force’s achievements when he toured the area in person after the war.
In a book about World War II that Eisenhower later penned, he wondered at the force’s ability to scale the mountain and seize the stronghold so quickly.
“I have never understood how, encumbered by their equipment, they were able to do it,” Eisenhower wrote. “They entered and seized the [German company commander], who ejaculated, ‘You can’t be here. It is impossible to come up those rocks.’”
Goings thinks it’s a fitting and long-due tribute to the force and to Cecil, who always faced life’s challenges head on.
“He did the best with what he was given, and that was all anyone could ask of him,” she said.