Interesting stuff about The Devil's Brigade, a precursor to JTF2 as well as the Navy SEALS, Green Berets and others. (from Wikipedia)

At Monte la Difensa they immediately earned a reputation for being able to take impenetrable objectives when no one else could. Here, in the dead of winter, the Special Force wiped out a strategic enemy defensive position sitting high atop a mountain surrounded by steep cliffs. Previously, American and British forces had suffered many casualties in futile attempts to take the important target. This incident was the basis for the 1968 motion picture titled "The Devil's Brigade." During the mountain campaign the Force suffered 77% casualties.

It was at Anzio that the enemy dubbed the 1st Special Service Force as the "Devil's Brigade." The diary of a dead German soldier contained a passage that said, "The black devils (Die schwarze Teufeln) are all around us every time we come into the line." The soldier was referring to them as "black" because the brigade's members smeared their faces with black boot polish for their covert operations in the dark of the night. During Anzio, the Force fought for 99 days without relief, at the start of the campaign the Germans were only 100 yds away, two months later the Force pushed the Germans back 2 miles. It was also at Anzio that the Force used their trademark stickers, during night patrols Force men would carry stickers with the Force logo on it and beside it was written in German "Das Dicke Ende Kommt Noch" which roughly translates to "The Worst is yet to Come", they would put these stickers on German corpses and doors.

During the war the 1800-man unit accounted for some 12,000 German casualties, captured some 7,000 prisoners, and sustained an attrition rate of over 600%.