Thomas George Prince, MM (October 25, 1915 – November 25, 1977) was an Indigenous Canadian war hero and the most decorated soldier in the First Special Service Force or Devil's Brigade, an elite American-Canadian commando unit, during World War II. He is Canada's most decorated First Nations soldier, serving in World War II and the Korean War. Prince was one of only three Canadians to receive both the Canadian Military Medal and the American Silver Star during World War II. Prince's military deeds as a scout and as a forward combatant were unique and of major strategic importance. He has been described as "perhaps Canada's greatest soldier".
Prince was descended from chiefs of the Peguis First Nation (Saulteux or Ojibwe). Prince's grandfather had negotiated treaty rights in Manitoba with representatives of The Crown. Prince himself would also represent First Nations concerns in Ottawa as Chairman of both the Manitoba Indian Association (currently Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs) and the First Nations of Canada national delegation. He advocated for the abolition of the governing Indian Act in Canada and proposed respect for the traditional Crown treaties as the basis of First Nations rights. Prince's position, although considered radical at the time, has been vindicated in subsequent decades by Supreme Court of Canada rulings in support of the Crown treaties and is now accepted as government policy.
Early life
Prince was born on 25 October 1915 in Petersfield, Manitoba. His family moved to the Brokenhead Ojibwe Nation, near present-day Scanterbury, Manitoba, in 1921. He was the son of Henry George Prince (1877-1944), a chief of the Saulteaux Peguis First Nation, and Arabella Louisa Chief (1883-1978), and was one of eleven children in the family.
Prince was a great-grandson of the Saulteaux leader Peguis, who, as a very young chief, in 1797 led his people on a long migration from the Sault Ste. Marie region west toward the Red River and Lake Winnipeg area. pledged loyalty to the British Crown during the War of 1812. In 1817 he signed the first treaty (Selkirk Treaty) with Lord Selkirk, who was a principal owner of the Hudson's Bay Company, granting land along the Red River to the Selkirk settlers.
Prince's grandfather, Chief Henry Prince, also known as Mis-koo-kenew ("Red Eagle"), was a son of Peguis and served as a principal negotiator and signatory of Treaty 1 at Lower Fort Garry in 1871.
Prince attended the Elkhorn Residential School in Elkhorn, Manitoba, where he completed Grade 8 and studied agricultural science and machinery. The school was part of Canada's residential school system, a network of government-funded, church-run institutions.
In the early 1930s, during the height of the Great Depression, Prince aspired to become a lawyer, but his family experienced serious financial hardship. At the age of sixteen he left school and began working, taking a variety of manual labour jobs, most often working as a tree feller. During the First World War, other members of the Prince family served overseas with Canadian forces in France.
Prince learned many of these skills early in life. Growing up at Brokenhead Ojibway Nation near the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg, he spent much of his childhood hunting and travelling through the forests and wetlands surrounding the community. These experiences helped him develop strong abilities in tracking, stealth, and survival.
His father also taught him marksmanship. Prince later recalled that he could place five bullets through a target the size of a playing card at a distance of about 100 m (330 ft).
Some of Prince's actions during the war were later compared to the traditional practice of counting coup, in which a warrior demonstrated bravery by approaching or touching an enemy without causing harm. Such actions were intended to shake up and frighten an enemy and avoid serious combat. Fellow soldiers later described occasions when Prince entered enemy positions at night and left messages or removed equipment to show that he had been there undetected.
When the Second World War began on 1 September 1939, thousands of First Nations men volunteered for service in the Canadian armed forces. Historians estimate that more than 3,000 Status First Nations men served during the war. Given that the total Status First Nations population in Canada at the time was fewer than 100,000 people, this represented a significant proportion of the adult male population.
Prince attempted to enlist in the Canadian Army several times but was rejected during the recruitment process. Indigenous applicants sometimes faced barriers to enlistment, including discrimination from recruiters, and they were not subject to any conscription or required to serve in a military capacity.
Prince persisted and was eventually accepted into the Canadian Army in June 1940, at a crisis point in the war when the British and Canadian forces had suffered catastrophic defeat in the Fall of France. Prince was twenty-four years old.
After basic training Prince quickly distinguished himself for his physical ability and field skills. His background in hunting, tracking, and wilderness travel proved especially valuable during military training. Men were recruited in Canada and in the overseas Canadian Army in Britain for this unit.
Prince reported to the parachute training school at RAF Ringway near Manchester, UK, one of the main airborne training centres used by Allied forces.
Because of the secrecy surrounding the project, Prince and the other volunteers were transported by train to a remote training camp near Helena, Montana. The train windows were blacked out so that the soldiers could not see their destination. It was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert T. Frederick, the American officer who had overseen its creation and developed its unconventional operational doctrine. Members of the Force were also trained to operate and disassemble German weapons so that captured equipment could be used during combat if necessary.
Prince and the other soldiers were first sent to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska for possible action against Japanese forces. By the time they arrived, however, the Japanese had already withdrawn, and no combat operations were executed. Soon afterward the unit received a new assignment.
Allied forces fighting in Italy were struggling to break through the German defensive system known as the Winter Line. This chain of fortified mountain positions stretched across central Italy and blocked the Allied advance toward Rome. The terrain was steep, rocky, and heavily defended, and earlier assaults had resulted in heavy casualties with little progress.
In November 1943 the Force was transferred to Italy to assist in attacks on some of the most difficult positions along the line. The rugged mountains south of Monte Cassino were exactly the kind of terrain for which the unit had trained. The Force managed to succeed in the Battle of Monte La Difensa on 3 to 9 December 1943 by scaling a steep cliff at night and attacking the German forces on the summit. The other principal objective planned for early January 1944 was the taking of Monte Majo, which was assigned to Prince's contingent of the Devil's Brigade, and was a formidable challenge. German artillery and machine-gun emplacements had been arranged in layers on the steep slopes. An attack on any one of them would alert the other defenses and also the main German positions on the summit. Any assaulting force would be met with intensive and effective fire.
Gilday, desperate to devise some strategy for the assault, assigned Prince to lead a patrol and move at night in an attempt to create a pathway for an assault on Monte Majo by eliminating the enemy gun emplacements on the lower and middle slopes of Monte Majo blocking the intended route. This would require Prince to execute his orders without making any sound or arousing the other German positions. If Prince's mission succeeded, it would allow an assault by the Force to follow immediately and climb up the steep mountain side. The offensive was planned for 8 January 1944.
The commanding officer for the attack on Monte Majo, Captain Mark Radcliffe, remarked that Prince "moved just like a shadow" as he led his patrol away from the forward outpost into the night. Under cover of darkness, Prince led his patrol partway up the lower slopes to a position where he left his men behind as a supporting group, should they be needed to provide covering fire. Prince then single-handedly approached and entered the successive German gun emplacements one after another, commencing with the gun pits on the lower slopes and then proceeding with the higher emplacements on the middle slopes. He successfully dispatched all of the gunners and soldiers in the artillery and machine gun bunkers with complete silence and without eliciting any enemy alarms or defensive fire. Prince then returned with his patrol to Radcliffe's forward post before dawn and reported that his mission was accomplished. All of the German gun pits located on the intended route of the Force's assault at the base and the middle of Monte Majo had been neutralized, with only the German positions on the summit remaining to defend the mountain.
When the Force commenced their movement up the slopes of Monte Majo, they passed by the now silent German machine gun and artillery bunkers, and Radcliffe became aware that Prince had done "a beautiful job". Radcliffe never learned the exact details of how Prince had managed to accomplish this stunning result, beyond the fact that Prince had entered the gun emplacements and had then eliminated the gun platoons. Radcliffe's company leading the attack was able to ascend to the summit of Monte Majo without firing a single bullet. According to an interview with Radcliffe, “We were...ordered to attack Monte Majo. There was no cover, just a bald hill. I sent scouts forward to take out the German machine gun positions. The Germans didn’t even know we were on them, the attack was that well executed.” By 05:30 the last enemy positions were overrun. Prince's silent mission had enabled the daring assault by the Brigade on Monte Majo to proceed, the enemy taken by complete surprise.
Once in control of the summit, the Force made use of captured German heavy machine guns which had been abandoned during the enemy retreat to repel a long series of fierce German counter-attacks over a period of several days. The distinctive sound of the German heavy guns were identified by the German counter-assault soldiers, who would shout out in confusion to the Force soldiers holding the summit, in German, "Stop shooting at us! We are Germans!" Prince did not receive any individual award or medal for his unparalleled and essential contribution to the successful outcome. Prince's special skills and acts of stealth at Monte Majo would have been regarded as classified information related to a secret mission. The nature of Prince's assignment at Monte Majo could not have been described in a medal nomination or citation without compromising the security of further operations. In recent years, special operations soldiers are often awarded high decorations in secret, but are not awarded the highest decorations to avoid public exposure. The Force, a unit in which heroic acts were commonplace, earned many unit awards which were shared by the entire Brigade, but comparatively infrequently awarded individual medals to its men. Prince's accomplishments at Monte Majo were of singular status which surpassed the range of any existing medal, including the Distinguished Conduct Medal or the Victoria Cross.
In November, 2019, a Bravery In Arms documentary was produced of the Force assault on Monte Majo. In the documentary, Prince's accomplishment was described while showing the actual location of the battle.
Anzio
After breaking through the German Bernhard Line, the Force was then moved to Anzio, where a U.S. and Allied landing had been contained and was heavily under attack. The Force, now comprising about 1,200 men, was tasked with holding several miles of perimeter against a full German division.
On 5 February 1944, near Littoria, Prince was sent forward by Gilday to report the location of several German assembly points, including artillery positions. When Prince failed to return the following day, Gilday feared that he had been killed or captured by the Germans. However, Prince suddenly emerged from the darkness into Gilday's post two nights later and reported to Gilday how he had found a deserted farm house close to major German gun positions. With Prince still observing from inside the farmhouse, German patrols had then arrived and occupied the house. Prince had managed to elude the Germans searching the house without being discovered and had then hid in the attic for another day until the Germans left.
The following night after this report, Prince was sent back by Gilday to the same farmhouse bearing thousands of feet of communications wire. From the abandoned farmhouse about from the enemy assembly area, he could report the location of their gun emplacements using of telephone wire. The next day, an artillery duel developed as the Allies attempted to knock out the guns reported by Prince, and one of these rounds cut the telephone wire. Prince discovered some farmer's clothes in a closet in the house, found some tools in the farm shed, and walked out dressed as a farmer weeding the crops. Locating the damaged wires, he rejoined them while pretending to tie his shoelaces. Returning to his lookout spot he continued his reports, and over the next 24 hours four German batteries were knocked out of action. In all he spent three days behind enemy lines.
When Prince returned to the Force positions and made his report, Gilday asked Prince about the identity of the Italian farmer who had been observed near his position. When Prince replied that it was himself in disguise, Gilday pointed out to Prince that if he had been apprehended by the Germans while in the peasant clothes, he would have been executed as a spy.
For this action he was awarded the Military Medal, his citation reading (in part) "Sergeant Prince's courage and utter disregard for personal safety were an inspiration to his fellows and a marked credit to his unit."
During the Anzio campaign, Prince would change his boots and don moccasins which he carried in his backpack whenever requiring silent movement. He would reportedly sneak past German security guards at night and enter enemy sleeping locations, leaving messages or warnings, stealing boots, and sometimes using his knife to dispatch an enemy soldier. These psychological warfare attacks earned the nickname of "Geist" ("ghost" in English) or "Teufel" ("devil" or "demon" in English) from the German soldiers.
Prince would also maintain a regular sniping schedule at Anzio, under his own initiative. He would venture out at night into no-man's land between the opposing armies, choose a hidden vantage point, and target any German who wandered within his sights.
On one occasion he went searching for a German sniper who had been targeting the Force positions. The two ace snipers exchanged fire in a personal duel, with Prince eventually shooting the German who fell dead from a tree.
Before long, the German division opposing the 1st Special Service Force had retreated nearly two and a half miles away from direct contact, apparently shaken by the night activity of the Devil's Brigade.
France
After being the vanguard of the US forces liberating Rome on 4 June 1944, the Force was moved to southern France as part of Operation Dragoon. First they would assault the Hyères Islands before going ashore at Sylvabelle on the French Riviera. There the force was ordered, as part of the 1st Airborne Task Force, to push eastward toward the Franco-Italian border.
On 1 September Prince and a private were sent forward through the German lines to scout the enemy positions near L'Escarène and came across an encampment area of an enemy reserve battalion. Prince conducted a detailed observation of this German battalion at close quarters using natural foliage as a cover. He avoided being detected by the enemy.
On the way back to report this discovery, Prince and the private came upon a battle between some German platoons and a squad of French partisans.
Prince, an expert sniper, and the private started sniping the Germans from behind, killing about 12 of them and wounding many others, and the startled Germans eventually withdrew. Prince made contact with the French leader, who asked Prince where the rest of his company was located. When Prince pointed to the private and said "Here," the French commander exclaimed that he had thought there were about 50 men involved in his relief. The French commander recommended Prince for the Croix de Guerre, but the courier was killed en route and the message never reached the French Commander-in-Chief, Charles de Gaulle.
Prince continued on and penetrated the German lines to rejoin the Force positions. He then led it back to the encampment of the German reserve forces and, together with the French squad of resistance fighters which Prince had rescued, joined in the battle which was on 5 September. As a result, the entire German battalion of about 1,000 men was killed or captured. From start to end Prince had been without food, water or sleep for 72 hours and had walked over 70 km across rugged, mountainous terrain. Afterwards he was recommended for the American Silver Star, his citation reading: