John Agnew 1922-2010

[Troy Tempest]

Exploits behind enemy lines inspired Dirty Dozen

John "Jack"Agnew was one of the original members of a US Army unit that operated behind enemy lines in WWII and is often credited with having loosely inspired the novel and movie The Dirty Dozen. Agnew belonged to the Filthy Thirteen, an unofficial unit in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. On D-Day, the Filthy Thirteen parachuted into France to take a bridge. It was a mission that cost most of the men their lives.

Before the Battle of the Bulge, Agnew and other members of the unit were required for pathfinder duty and parachuted into Bastogne, which was besieged by German forces. Agnew operated a beacon to help guide in supply planes. Tales of the unit's exploits and a photograph in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes are said to have inspired the novel The Dirty Dozen by E M Nathanson, not because any of the unit's members were convicts like the novel's characters but because of their reputation for brawling and being put in the stockade.

In interviews, Agnew, who was a private first class during the war, said that came directly from the unit's leader, Jake McNiece. "We weren't murderers or anything, we just didn't do everything we were supposed to do in some ways and did a whole lot more than they wanted us to do in other ways," he said recently. Agnew was among those interviewed in a documentary, The Filthy Thirteen: Real Stories From Behind the Lines, that was included in a 2006 special edition DVD of the 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen.

Agnew, who has died of heart disease aged 88, was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1922 and at the age of five migrated with his family to the US. After WWII he worked for Western Electric in Pennsylvania. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, two daughters, five grandchildren, tow great-grandchildren and a brother.