"On August 9th of 2019, Canadian World War II veteran Ralph Mayville passed away at the age of ninety three. His short obituary in the Windsor Star of Windsor, Ontario in Canada doesn’t mention all of the heroic actions he performed while fighting with the Essex Scottish Regiment and the Royal Canadian Regiment in the European Theater during the war. Mayville joined the Essex Scottish Regiment in 1940, one year after Britain and its territories declared war on Germany due to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. He had tried to enlist earlier but was turned away because he was only seventeen. As the sole breadwinner for his mother and three sisters he needed to earn money and the best way he saw to do so was by joining the military. At the age of eighteen he joined the Essex Scottish Regiment but because of the need for troop replenishment he transferred to Royal Canadian Forces who were preparing to go to Italy. Upon reaching Europe he was recruited by the First Special Service Force, a joint effort of Canadian and United States soldiers who were some of the toughest, most skilful and daring commandos of the war. According the Windsor Star, “Schwarzer Teufel” or “Black Devils”, as they were called by the Germans, employed ninja-like tactics dressing in black, painting their weapons and faces black and furtively slipping into German camps at night. They cut throats and placed calling cards with the unit’s insignia of a red arrowhead on the German soldiers’ bodies as a warning of what was to come-seriously undermining German morale. They adopted the name of the “Devil’s Brigade” and operated between the years of 1942 through 1944 with usually about one thousand eight hundred men." Windsor's Ralph Mayville, one of Canada's 'Black Devil' commandos, dies at 97 | Windsor Star
