Retired Brigadier General Emil Eschenburg, one of the few remaining members of an elite World War II force that inspired the 1968 film “The Devil’s Brigade,” died Friday in Helena, Mont. He was 88.

A farm boy from Michigan, Eschenburg was selected to join the U.S.-Canadian First Special Service Force when it was activated in 1942.

The commando-style secret force initially was deployed to fight the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands, but is best known for capturing German forces in the mountains of Italy. The Germans called the 1,800-man force “Black Devils” because of their faces, which were blackened with shoe polish before nightly raids.

The force’s capture of Monte la Difensa, a German-held mountaintop along a highway that led to Rome, was the basis for Andrew V. McLaglen’s movie “The Devil’s Brigade,” which starred William Holden and Cliff Robertson.

The film was based on a novel about the brigade written by the late Robert H. Adleman.

Eschenburg rose to the rank of brigadier general during his service with the Devil’s Brigade, also serving in Vietnam as assistant commander of the 101st Airborne Division and later a commanding general.

He received 115 military decorations, including the Purple Heart, before retiring in 1970, but remained active in the military community.

Eschenburg helped establish the Montana Military Museum in 1997 and was instrumental in the development of a Purple Heart monument dedicated this fall at Fort Harrison outside Helena.

“He never stopped being a soldier,” said Ray Read, a retired colonel and Montana Military Museum director.

Eschenburg also worked for several years as a real estate agent, and was a member of the local and state chambers of commerce and a trustee for the Helena YMCA.