Distinctly Montana Magazine

20 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 4 and closed the door behind him. The explosion took out the bath- room—and the room below it—but thankfully, no one was badly hurt. The soldier and his lady friend, for their part, disappeared. These were the exceptions that proved the rule; save for a handful of notable brawls between servicemen and miners at the Gold Bar (one thing the film more or less got right), Helena and the Devil's Brigade regarded each other with respect and affec- tion, despite nuisances like demolitions training. According to Ableman and Walton, "The Forcemen... often either blew up targets not on the training schedule or used twice as much dynamite as was required. These habits frequently had the result of blowing out many of the town's plate-glass win- dows." The mayor adopted the enlightened stance that Helena owed the Forcemen and, consequently, "[b]roken windows were considered one of Helena's contributions to the war effort." Perhaps the tender ministrations of Helena's women were another contribution. Some 200 of Helena's eligible women married members of the Devil's Brigade before they shipped out, despite, as Ableman and Walton put it, "the uncertain future that lay before such unions." And, of course, in addition to the marriages were the more businesslike liaisons; Ableman's book quotes one sol- dier as saying, "I liked Helena and its people... [but] my acquaintance with her daughters was scant unless you counted the ones in Ida's Rooms, etc," he reported. Once he found that the town's women generally preferred the Canadians, he decided that "keeping sex strictly at the animal (or super- market) level" was best. A soldier named Arthur Vantour painted a more picturesque portrait of love in wartime Helena: "To me the town of Helena was a wonder with all its neon lights. I could walk up and down the street at night just to be under the lights and think how the boys back home would envy me if they could see me now." One night at the USO, enjoying coffee and donuts, he "saw a young little girl jitterbugging, as we called it in the olden days, with one of my fellow Canadian soldiers. I started doing the same and," after marrying her, "have been dancing with her ever since." During their training, the men of the 1st Special Service Force didn't know their eventual destination, although there were plenty of rumors. They knew that it involved a parachute drop, and some began to speculate that they were going to be air- dropped into Hitler's castle stronghold. What no one foresaw was that the plan to drop them in Nor- way had been abandoned, and the force was to be repurposed in the Pacific Theater, to aid in the invasion of the Aleutian Islands. In the spring of 1943, the future Devil's Brigade was mobilized, first to Norfolk, Virginia, to finish their training, and then to the Pacific. The townsfolk of Helena were heartbroken. On April 6, Adle- man and Walton wrote, "the 2,300 men of the Force gathered themselves in full array and parad- ed through Helena, where they were reviewed by the Governor of Mon- tana. The Helenans, who lined the street, looked as if they were watching their own sons march away." Then they left. Their sudden absence "[left] a trail of hasty marriages and choked farewells in its wake." ROBERT RATH

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