The Art of Manliness - #586： The Story of the Skiing Soldiers of WWII

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in the winter of

00:00:11.460 1940 a group of civilian skiers was sitting by a fire in a ski lodge in vermont shooting the

00:00:15.940 breeze about how the u.s army needed an alpine division like the militaries in europe had that

00:00:20.060 conversation transformed into a concerted effort to turn their idea into reality in the creation

00:00:24.460 of the army's 10th mountain division a unit which played a vital role fighting in the mountains of

00:00:28.680 italy during world war ii my guest today has written a book on these skiing snowborn soldiers

00:00:32.780 his name is morris iserman he's a professor of history and the author of the winter army the

00:00:36.640 world war ii odyssey of the 10th mountain division america's elite alpine warriors we begin a

00:00:40.800 conversation discussing why the u.s army didn't have an alpine division before world war ii and

00:00:44.580 how a group of civilian skiers led by a man named mini dull spearheaded the movement to create one

00:00:48.900 morris then shares why the 10th mountain division heavily recruited from top tier colleges and how

00:00:52.560 the unusual makeup of the division influenced its unique culture we then discuss how the military

00:00:56.600 figured out what new equipment this new mountain division needed and the vigorous training its

00:00:59.980 members undertook high in the mountains of colorado morris then digs into the 10th involvement in the

00:01:04.020 war whether they actually got to use the skills they trained for years to hone and we end our

00:01:07.400 conversation discussing the legacy of the 10th mountain division including their role in america's

00:01:11.280 post-war boom and recreational scheme after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:14.800 aom.is mountain division all right morris iserman welcome to the show thanks glad to be here so

00:01:32.860 you just got a book out called the winter army the world war ii odyssey of the 10th mountain division

00:01:37.340 america's elite alpine warriors how did you come across this story of the 10th mountain division

00:01:43.100 well in a very personal way when i came to hamilton college where i teach history

00:01:47.980 some 30 years ago one of my colleagues in a different department geology was named don potter

00:01:55.040 and he was kind of a mentor to junior faculty and he was an avid outdoorsman and so we shared that a

00:02:04.080 skier and in the course of getting to know him he would tell me stories about training with the 10th

00:02:10.520 mountain division in colorado skiing in the rockies and then going to italy and he never talked about

00:02:17.540 the the actual fighting but after the immediately after the war in may of 1945 he got leave and he went

00:02:25.080 up to mont blanc and in france he climbed from chamonix to the summit and skied down i mean wonderful

00:02:31.260 stories about his wartime experiences and so he kind of planted a seed with me to this was a very

00:02:39.280 interesting unit with a unique history and over the years i've written several books about

00:02:45.740 mountaineering in the himalayas and in north america and i kept bumping into guys who were veterans of the

00:02:53.260 10th who trained in colorado who fought in italy and would have little paragraphs describing their

00:03:01.060 experiences and then it just seemed to me there was a bigger story to tell there and so i discovered

00:03:08.380 that the archives of the 10th mountain division were in denver at the denver public library and they have

00:03:15.360 hundreds of collections of wartime letters and diaries and other documents from the veterans and i

00:03:22.460 explored the archive and found this this really rich and impressive history and why do you think so

00:03:28.280 few americans know about their creation and role during world war ii well it depends where you are

00:03:34.280 in colorado you can get license plates that say dedicated to the memory of the 10th mountain division

00:03:40.760 and there are roads named for them and memorials for them and in my corner of the northeast where many of

00:03:49.460 the original 10th soldiers were recruited because they were recruiting skiers and people with mountain

00:03:56.280 experience dartmouth college alone from cheta ski team sent over a hundred of their alums into the 10th

00:04:05.520 so they're they're pretty well remembered here but in the country as a whole you know compared to

00:04:11.100 say the 101st airborne division they're less well known someday somebody will make a movie about them

00:04:17.540 and then you know they'll they'll like band brothers or whatever and i think they'll get their due

00:04:23.160 acknowledgement well let's talk about the creation so we got to talk about the fact that before world

00:04:28.620 war ii the u.s military didn't have a mountain division why didn't they have a mountain division

00:04:34.060 well before world war ii the u.s army never fought on a snowy mountain there were a couple of mountain

00:04:40.940 battles during the civil war but they were in tennessee and so they were they weren't fighting in the

00:04:45.800 snow they didn't have any specially trained troops unlike in europe where of course a lot of the

00:04:51.680 national borders are run along mountain chains the pyrenees the alps and and so forth so it came

00:05:01.240 naturally to europeans to think we need specially trained troops alpine troops so germany had a long

00:05:09.180 tradition of mountain troops so did austria so did france so did italy but the u.s experience was

00:05:16.660 quite different one of the founders of the 10th mountain division a civilian who came up with the

00:05:21.460 idea charles minot dole or mini dole referred to the american army but right up to before the second

00:05:29.080 world war as a tropical army because mostly it was stationed in places like hawaii or the southern states

00:05:36.540 or the caribbean they had small contingent in alaska but they they just didn't think in terms

00:05:43.320 of mountain warfare so let's talk about this dole guy because the idea of a mountain a mountain division

00:05:49.800 a mountain an alpine troop it didn't start within the military it actually started with a bunch of

00:05:54.620 civilian skiers sitting by a fire at a ski lodge in vermont kind of shooting the breeze and saying hey

00:06:00.380 you know the u.s needs an alpine division yeah absolutely that was in the late winter of

00:06:06.800 1940 and europe was at war the united states was not yet a belligerent but as you say these civilian

00:06:14.080 skiers who had no military experience their background but they were really good skiers a

00:06:18.480 couple of them were olympic skiers had competed in the 1936 winter olympics and one of them was this

00:06:24.780 guy minnie dole minnie dole was an insurance executive from greenwich connecticut he had started

00:06:31.520 skiing in the early 1930s when skiing was really in its infancy in in the united states there weren't

00:06:38.220 many ski resorts there weren't any ski lifts it was it was a european sport that some americans were

00:06:45.760 beginning to practice and minnie dole was a kind of entrepreneurial guy he he was a take charge guy and

00:06:53.820 and after suffering a ski accident himself on a slope in vermont he conceived the idea in the mid-1930s

00:07:00.940 of creating a rescue unit of civilian volunteers which became the national ski patrol system which

00:07:08.580 still exists and aids injured skiers on resorts all across the country so when he got hold of an idea

00:07:15.860 he was he was pretty tenacious and in that conversation in 1940 these four skiers all civilians

00:07:24.340 said you know we're going to get into this war and if we fight in europe we're going to come up against

00:07:29.560 experienced and well-trained german italian alpine troops and we don't have anything comparable we need

00:07:37.860 to come up with a comparable unit and so minnie dole you know started at the top and he wrote to

00:07:43.300 president roosevelt uh who actually responded he he got in touch with with the army with general

00:07:50.680 marshall the army chief of staff and he got rebuffed several times i mean who is this civilian but in

00:07:58.780 the end he prevailed and persuaded the army to create the 87th mountain infantry regiment which was

00:08:06.320 the colonel of what grew into the u.s army's 10th mountain division and they began training in

00:08:13.660 november 1941 at fort lewis in washington state so just a very few days before pearl harbor and so what

00:08:24.000 was i mean so they this was completely new to the military how did they figure out like okay how what

00:08:28.960 skills does an alpine soldier need how do we train these guys like how do they develop the criteria for

00:08:34.680 the curriculum for that well they again they relied largely on civilian advice on minnie dole on the

00:08:41.240 national ski patrol system one of the extraordinary things about the 10th mountain division unique

00:08:46.660 really in the history of the u.s military is that a civilian agency the national ski patrol system

00:08:54.560 was in charge of recruiting for it minnie dole's belief was that it was easier to make soldiers out of

00:09:02.160 skiers than to make skiers out of soldiers that is to say you wanted to recruit guys who already had

00:09:08.840 the basic skills who knew their way around outdoors in cold weather who were skiers or mountaineers or

00:09:15.760 park rangers or lumberjacks or you know a range of occupations but many of them were recruited out of

00:09:23.520 the very few schools in the country colleges and universities that had ski teams at the time

00:09:29.600 so dartmouth as i mentioned and williams college university of oregon university of washington

00:09:36.060 colorado university they provided a steady stream of recruits some of them graduates many of them just

00:09:44.280 19 or 20 dropping out of college to join this new elite unit because they wanted to apply the the skills

00:09:52.940 the abilities that they learned as civilians in recreational pursuit to their duties as as soldiers

00:10:00.060 as you know in the book because a lot of the the people the guys who wouldn't join this 87th were

00:10:08.360 from college because the colleges had ski teams like the 87th had one of the most educated group of soldiers

00:10:15.580 out of all the military in the united states yeah it was an unusual unit and and the subsequent regiments the 86th and the

00:10:22.400 85th which made up the division the same thing was true the army gave every incoming recruit a basic

00:10:28.280 intelligence test and i forget what the numbers were but if you scored above a certain number you could

00:10:34.800 apply for officer candidate school and typically in a regular division something like 10 percent of the

00:10:41.760 recruits would would be able to do so but in the 10th mountain division it ran to more like 40 percent or

00:10:49.120 50 percent who could have gone off to fort benning or one of the other places where they trained

00:10:54.000 officers but most of them chose not to do so they didn't apply for officer candidate school because

00:11:00.340 they knew if they all went off not too many of them would be able to come back to the 10th mountain

00:11:05.240 division because how many second lieutenants can you use so they would essentially be transferring

00:11:10.580 themselves out of the mountain troops so instead they stayed put and as a result you had many

00:11:16.400 very qualified corporals and and sergeants uh in in the ranks of the 10th mountain division

00:11:22.420 and so what was the culture like because this is sort of like the airborne division where it was

00:11:27.640 sort of sort of seen as an elite unit but also like you said they're really educated from

00:11:31.800 mostly from ivy league schools uh outdoorsy type guys so i imagine that the regiments in the division

00:11:39.000 developed a unique culture in the u.s military yeah i think it did have a unique culture as you say

00:11:44.020 for one thing so the the recruits knew how to ski and they'd spent a lot of time finding their way

00:11:50.340 you know across mountains in in very cold weather but their officers that was less true of or their

00:11:56.680 their ncos the what the army calls cadre the experienced soldiers who were shipped into a new

00:12:02.680 unit around which you develop the unit had to be instructed in skiing and and other basics and the

00:12:09.680 people doing the instruction were often you know 19 year old privates so you have a 19 year old private

00:12:15.340 instructing a 30 year old major how to ski the power dynamics are are kind of different there was a great

00:12:23.160 deal of self-confidence in this unit they had a lot of unit cohesion a lot of initiative precisely

00:12:32.120 because of those dynamics and they were all volunteers you didn't get drafted into the 10th mountain

00:12:38.700 division later on during the fighting there would be soldiers transferred in who had no special

00:12:44.160 mountain training but the guys who trained in colorado and then were sent to to italy by and large

00:12:50.700 were already experienced before they joined the army in their basic skills they were training in the

00:12:56.940 mountains and so a lot of what army training consisted of you know basic drill and out going to the firing

00:13:04.040 range and so forth you couldn't do in january so these these new recruits would show up at camp hale

00:13:10.000 in colorado near leadville and they'd start skiing immediately they'd start their specialized training

00:13:16.260 before they did their basic training i mean they were trained they trained how to salute and so forth

00:13:22.480 but the basic training often had to wait until warm weather returned yeah a lot of some of the letters

00:13:29.240 that you quote in the book a lot of the guys talk about it's kind of like i'm on vacation it's kind

00:13:33.240 of nice just get to go yeah i'm getting paid to go skiing eight hours a day i mean they they cycled

00:13:39.580 through their ski training they did beginning ski training and more advanced ski training but when they

00:13:44.500 when they trained and they're up you know at 12 000 feet and on deep powder snow they were skiing

00:13:51.460 skiing five days a week eight hours a day with some of the best ski instructors in the world ski

00:13:59.540 champions the coach of the dartman ski team walter prager among others if if you wanted to become an

00:14:06.920 expert skier the best place to do it in 1943 was as a soldier at camp hale and then on the weekends i mean

00:14:15.700 look where they are they're near aspen for example they'd they'd go off and they'd go skiing

00:14:20.680 recreationally so they'd continue their training even when they weren't training the comparison

00:14:26.700 with airborne is interesting another elite unit all volunteers specialized uniforms and and so forth

00:14:34.100 but no members of the 101st airborne or i doubt very many members of the 101st airborne had ever

00:14:41.720 jumped out of an airplane before they became paratroopers they became you know well-trained

00:14:46.920 paratroopers but that was once they joined the army as opposed to the 10th mountain guys who are

00:14:52.080 already coming in many of them with superior skills in in their in their military specialty

00:14:58.260 when they go back to this idea of being self-reliant this idea of improvisation the i think mini dole

00:15:05.440 talked about the finnish army that he was impressed by their like that's what he liked about the alpine

00:15:09.880 soldiers there you know fighting off the russians their ability to improvise their grit their self-reliance and

00:15:15.540 he wanted that same sort of culture within an alpine division the united states yeah we don't really

00:15:21.080 remember the finnish war anymore but uh before nazi germany invaded the soviet union soviet union went to

00:15:28.680 war with neighboring finland trying to acquire territory sort of to the west of leningrad for a buffer zone

00:15:36.660 and uh the red army would outnumbered the fins and was better equipped than the fins but it was tied

00:15:44.020 to the roads and so you'd have these big lumbering columns of red army soldiers with their tanks and

00:15:49.500 their trucks and whatnot and these finnish troops would come out of the woods and they would ski in

00:15:56.080 an ambush these and then they'd ski off and they couldn't be pursued so mini dole was quite impressed by

00:16:01.440 that yeah and now the other thing i i thought was interesting about the 10th mountain division

00:16:07.000 talking about the united states this is their first time ever dealing with alpine soldiers

00:16:10.420 they had to develop new equipment right for these guys they didn't because like you said they were

00:16:16.060 the military at that time was sort of geared towards the tropics so what sort of uh innovations

00:16:20.580 the military make to get these guys uh outfitted and equipped right they developed white camouflaged

00:16:27.160 uniforms of course you you want to blend in with the snow they developed skis with metal edges for

00:16:34.740 better control new kinds of boots that could double as climbing boots and as ski boots with a new

00:16:41.900 new sole which if you buy a pair of hiking boots today it'll have a vibram sole as opposed to the old

00:16:47.680 hobnailed boots so a lot of the equipment that would later be dumped as army surplus and would equip

00:16:53.860 the next generation of skiers and climbers was developed during the war nylon ropes up until

00:16:59.440 world war ii climbing ropes had been made out of uh hemp manila and they were heavy they picked up

00:17:06.500 snow they you know you fell while climbing with one wrapped around your your rib cage we're going to

00:17:11.600 bruise your ribs they have no give so there were all of these uh technological innovations that were

00:17:18.320 important both for the 10th during the war but were important after the war in terms of the outdoor

00:17:24.740 winter recreational industry and besides skiing what else did these guys train in well they skied all

00:17:31.980 winter and then they climbed all summer camp hail is in a high alpine valley in the rockies it's about

00:17:38.920 9 000 feet it's surrounded by walls where you can learn basic rock climbing abilities and they went on

00:17:47.480 maneuvers of course in the mountains both in the winter and in in the summer and had to learn how

00:17:54.940 to keep especially in the winter had to learn how to avoid frostbite how to pitch a tent in the snow or

00:18:00.820 build an igloo which they preferred to do because it was actually warmer how to prepare your food how to

00:18:06.920 get supplies up by mules you couldn't bring jeeps or trucks up into the hills so it was a really

00:18:13.080 different approach to fighting and and the army was was suspicious of them even after they created

00:18:20.080 the 10th um they didn't know what to do with them general eisenhower turned down the the 10th he was

00:18:26.500 being offered different divisions for use in western europe and you know he looked at their table of

00:18:30.760 organization and saw all those mules and and their weapons were lighter because you couldn't carry

00:18:36.460 the heaviest artillery up into the mountains and he didn't want any part of them which is funny

00:18:42.380 because the first fighting in europe took place in italy and italy's very mountainous they could

00:18:47.240 have used them at monte casino for example in the winter of 1943 1944 but they were just too strange

00:18:55.040 and and it was a long time before they got into combat which bothered them because they weren't just

00:19:01.080 there to ski in colorado they were there to fight in the war and their brothers were already in combat

00:19:07.220 and they wanted to join them and so over the course of 1942 1943 1944 many of them transferred out some

00:19:17.520 transferred into uh airborne some transferred into military intelligence they wanted to get into the

00:19:23.800 fight but the army didn't give them a chance to do so we're gonna take a quick break for your words

00:19:29.120 from our sponsors and now back to the show and while they weren't being you know put into battle like

00:19:35.300 they still they captured the imagination of the american public they just thought it was i mean i

00:19:39.380 still i mean i think today people still think it's cool like a soldier who skis right is a really cool

00:19:44.060 idea yeah there were movies made of them feature film documentary movies uh magazine articles uh

00:19:51.680 celebrating them as a real he-man i remember one of the uh titles of a magazine article said you know

00:19:58.080 real he-man in the mountains they looked great they would um they would do this kind of synchronized

00:20:03.800 skiing which was useless in combat but when you filmed it it looked terrific as they were especially

00:20:09.300 because they're skiing in the colorado mountains and they're cutting through that deep powder snow and

00:20:13.700 uh it was a very glamorous image but they weren't in the war right and but they were still training as

00:20:22.100 you said they went on these maneuvers while they were in camp hill in colorado which is basically this

00:20:26.220 camp that they the military built pretty much overnight yeah really fast and these maneuvers yeah

00:20:31.940 i was skiing but these were really tough tough maneuvers tough training yeah because you're up there in

00:20:38.300 the mountains it's easy to get lost you might not get resupplied you have to deal with extreme cold

00:20:43.800 it's it's um it's a challenge and there was one particular set of maneuvers the entire division

00:20:51.880 went on not just one of the regiments it was called d series or division series in the spring of

00:20:57.960 1944 and hundreds of men were hospitalized for frostbite and thereafter the joke in the 10th

00:21:07.340 mountain division even when they were in heavy combat in italy in the spring of 1945 was well this

00:21:14.100 isn't great but it's better than d series right and that was kind of interesting kind of point you

00:21:18.940 made throughout the book was the training they received in camp hell was a lot more extreme

00:21:22.720 than the the climbs and the elevations they would actually experience in italy right i mean when

00:21:29.260 you're doing mountain warfare what you're fighting for is control of the passes not the summits the

00:21:35.040 summit doesn't count you want the high ground but if you can control the passes you can control all

00:21:40.460 movement through the mountains and the passes in italy for example the brenner pass that leads from

00:21:46.280 italy to austria is less than 5 000 feet high and they're training at twice that altitude so into

00:21:55.280 all the other difficulties you have to add in altitude sickness they acclimatize to it but by the

00:22:02.160 time you're going to be shipped out and you're taking a train across the country and then you have

00:22:07.040 10 days in a boat by the time you're going to get to the battlefield and to the mountains you're going

00:22:11.340 to have lost that acclimatization so in retrospect and we're all brilliant in retrospect it would have

00:22:17.520 made more sense to train at a lower elevation than than they actually did so before they got to italy

00:22:24.600 some members of the division got a taste for battle this was i didn't know about this battle this was

00:22:30.400 this is the one of the few battles that happened on american soil it was in alaska kiska uh what happened

00:22:36.680 to the mountain troops there well the japanese around the time of the battle of midway occupied

00:22:41.640 two small volcanic islands unoccupied and no no population there called atu and kiska and some

00:22:52.580 people felt or feared that this was going to be the prelude to a japanese invasion of alaska or even

00:22:59.360 the pacific northwest now there was no way in the world that would ever happen but they couldn't take

00:23:04.040 that chance and so the army sent in flatland troops to take back atu and it was a bloody battle

00:23:11.000 not on the scale of iwo jima but still a lot of soldiers died but a lot of soldiers were knocked

00:23:16.980 out of action because they didn't know how to take care of their feet they got trench foot it was wet it

00:23:22.160 was cold they got frostbite but they captured atu but when it came time to turn their attention to

00:23:28.640 the next and remaining island kiska uh the army said oh well we do have these mountain troops let's

00:23:35.020 let's try them so the 87th one of the three regiments was shipped from camp hail to california

00:23:40.960 for amphibious training which had not obviously not been part of their training while they were in the

00:23:45.220 mountains and then shipped off to alaska and they you know classic world war ii landing scene on an

00:23:53.520 occupied island they get off the landing craft very apprehensively onto the beaches and nothing's

00:24:00.320 happening nobody's shooting at them now of course the the japanese could simply have retreated to the

00:24:06.220 interior and waited for the americans to come to them and so uh the soldiers of the 10th and there

00:24:12.240 were other units and there was canadian soldiers there as well they advanced their way up to the the

00:24:18.640 ridgeline of this volcanic island it gets dark the weather in the bering strait is the worst in the

00:24:24.760 world clouds swirl in visibility is is cut to zero and these these green troops who are on the alert

00:24:34.420 hyper alert imagine that they see movement or maybe they they see movement but it's not a japanese moving

00:24:41.560 and they start to shoot one person starts to shoot and then a whole platoon starts to shoot and

00:24:47.740 and nobody can see where the enemy's coming from but they're they're convinced they're under attack

00:24:52.460 and in the morning when the sun comes up there are no japanese bodies but there are two dozen

00:24:59.880 american and canadian bodies and uh uh almost all of them are from the 10th mountain division

00:25:06.200 so the unit is bloodied they're no longer green soldiers but in the worst possible way they they killed

00:25:14.020 their brothers in in a in friendly fire and what happened when they went back to camp hail well they

00:25:20.420 they felt they had something to prove um and i mean young men are cruel can be cruel and other soldiers

00:25:28.380 um mocked them and they called them buddy killers and similar names and a lot of them transferred out of

00:25:35.160 the the 10th mountain they were so demoralized not only were they not being used you know where they

00:25:40.960 should have been used in the fighting in europe but they were sent off on on this tragic fool's errand

00:25:47.280 into uh the bering strait so the 10th finally gets called up to europe when did that happen and where

00:25:55.000 do they get sent to right they had transferred from camp hail in the rockies to camp swift which is in

00:26:02.580 texas near austin and some of them feared that they were going to be converted into a flatland division

00:26:08.200 that the you know their their mountain training was going to come to nothing because why else send

00:26:12.980 them to texas but the there was a change of heart in italy among allied commanders about the usefulness

00:26:19.920 of having specially trained mountain troops and so finally in november they get the summons to they

00:26:28.380 don't know where they're being shipped but they know they're going to be transferred to a war zone

00:26:31.740 and they get a new commander major general hayes a medal of honor winner from the first world war

00:26:37.380 who is a very aggressive and creative commander the perfect man to lead an inexperienced still

00:26:44.580 inexperienced division into battle and so at the end of december and the beginning of january so

00:26:51.440 december 44 january 45 75 years ago there they are shipped to newport news in virginia where they

00:26:59.860 board troop ships and spend a week or 10 days crossing the atlantic and then the mediterranean

00:27:05.600 and disembark in naples and from there they're they're trucked up to the front line the last

00:27:14.620 mountainous line of german resistance the germans had been putting up a stout defense for a year plus

00:27:21.680 in italy from one mountain redoubt to to the next and they were at their last mountain redoubt which is

00:27:28.540 called the gothic line and runs through the northern epennines so florence which had been captured by

00:27:34.500 the allies the previous fall is to the south and bologna which is still in german hands is is to the

00:27:42.800 north and for the allies to complete clearing of italy from german control they're going to have to break

00:27:51.340 out of the mountains and break into the po valley po valley a big open area includes milan and leads up

00:28:00.100 to the the alps and the brenner pass once you're in the po valley all the allied advantages of armor

00:28:07.420 and air power can be brought to bear which as they can't in the mountains you can't fight a tank battle

00:28:12.760 in the mountains so it's going to be the tenth's job as the spearhead of the entire allied offensive

00:28:19.080 in the winter spring of 1945 to clear the way to break through out of the northern epennines

00:28:25.780 into the po valley and that's precisely what they do and what were the major engagements they had

00:28:30.940 during that during that stint well we're coming up to again the 75th anniversary of the kind of

00:28:37.120 signature battles of the 10th mountain division which was seizing the the high ground on two mountain

00:28:45.040 eminences one called river ridge and the other called mount belvedere mount belvedere and several

00:28:51.800 mountains linked to it and first they went up river ridge at night in february in the dark untested

00:28:59.380 troops over steep icy trails where their rock climbing skills that they honed in colorado really came

00:29:06.120 into use and the germans were so confident that it was a steep cliff that that they couldn't be attacked

00:29:12.700 from that side of the mountain that they didn't post any guards they didn't bother laying any mines

00:29:17.560 they didn't put down any barbed wire and so these 750 or so soldiers in the assault team from the

00:29:25.060 10th mountain division achieved complete surprise against the germans they captured the ridge line

00:29:30.300 at the cost of one man wounded drove the germans from the high ground the germans counter intact which

00:29:36.320 is what they always did and there were more casualties in the days to come but in their very first time

00:29:42.860 in battle all of that training and all of that sense of initiative and and unit cohesion really played

00:29:50.460 out well and it was a very significant achievement because it removed the germans from a place where

00:29:57.560 they could observe the attack on neighboring mount belvedere and so the next night on february 20th

00:30:03.000 the rest of the division went in and this time they were the germans knew they were coming and they had

00:30:08.180 prepared the ground well with mine fields and and uh artillery and machine guns zeroed in on on the main routes

00:30:16.860 up the mountain and so it was a more costly attack but still in five days they seized three mountaintops

00:30:25.200 military planners had assumed it was going to take two weeks to clear the germans off and again that's that same

00:30:30.780 combination of of training and elan and unit cohesion served the 10th very well and and set up uh the

00:30:40.440 advance that was going to take place a month later breaking out of the appennines and into the poe did

00:30:46.200 they actually do any skiing during that time very little um i mean here you have ski troops and somebody

00:30:53.760 decided they didn't need the skis the skis all went to a warehouse in boston where they were later sold

00:30:58.600 as army surplus they scrounged some skis and they sent out some patrols to scout out german positions

00:31:05.360 or try to take a prisoner in those weeks before reaver ridge and mount belvedere but the thing about

00:31:11.020 skiing in the appennines it's you're not skiing in deep powder snow in the rockies you can ski pretty

00:31:18.640 quietly the powder masks the sound you go but when you're skiing through corn snow that is snow this is a

00:31:27.300 much lower elevation this is three or four thousand feet elevation corn snow freezes and melts and freezes

00:31:34.060 and you have ice crystals in it and it goes scratch scratch scratch so they found in the dark of night

00:31:40.660 they're approaching a german outpost and there their skis are giving their position away and the germans are

00:31:45.800 firing they don't have to see them they're firing in the direction of the sound uh and so after one or two

00:31:50.760 experiences like that they abandoned the skis altogether they weren't practical for the kind

00:31:57.200 of terrain and the kind of fighting that they were going to do so the ski troopers didn't ski but the

00:32:02.740 skiing was important because again that sense of a lawn that came from being specialized troops elite

00:32:09.680 troops and also because they were tremendously fit well and speaking of the idea that the skis that they had

00:32:15.660 that the military bought for the soldiers that didn't get shipped there like a lot of the winter

00:32:19.880 equipment that the military developed for these guys didn't get shipped over there either that's

00:32:24.920 correct and um it all gets dumped on the civilian market in late 1945 1946 and it feeds a new interest

00:32:33.620 which the 10th partially helped create in um skiing as a sport and in addition many of the 10th veterans

00:32:41.080 some 2000 all told found employment in the ski industry as as instructors they became retailers of ski

00:32:49.760 equipment and a number of them actually created those modern resorts aspen had been a sleepy little failed

00:32:56.440 mining town it had a ski slope before the war but it was 10th veterans who came and turned it into you know

00:33:02.920 one of the premier ski resorts in the world vale also in colorado was uh founded by 10th mountain

00:33:10.260 veterans in the late 50s and there's a statue of a ski trooper in the center of vale to remind

00:33:19.340 visitors just just who was responsible for this wonderful ski resort the longest ski run at uh at vale

00:33:27.580 and the most difficult is called reva ridge and there's another ski run there that's called minnie's mile

00:33:33.920 after minnie dole the civilian who suggested the creation of the mountain troops and so

00:33:40.120 uh the the 10th had this enormous impact during the war but they would also have an impact in a

00:33:45.360 different field after the war and besides the the big impact they had on american culture making

00:33:50.940 skiing a popular pastime what influenced the 10th leave on the u.s military well the 10th is disbanded

00:33:59.040 in uh november of 1945 and the the army has some very specialized units but not on division level that

00:34:09.480 are trained for for cold weather fighting it's only in 1984 85 that the 10th is reconstituted as 10th

00:34:20.840 mountain division light infantry and they're not ski troops in the sense that the 10th was during the war

00:34:28.280 that's not part of their regular training but they are trained in fighting in cold weather

00:34:33.720 on rough terrain in exactly the kind of fighting that the u.s army has been doing for the last several

00:34:40.240 decades in iraq and in afghanistan the 10th mountain division today which is based at fort drum which is

00:34:48.800 just a few miles down the road from hamilton college where i teach in upstate new york is the most

00:34:54.700 deployed unit in the u.s army and has been for decades in fact i i gave a book talk there in

00:35:01.880 december it was great privilege to do so on base to an audience of 10th mountain soldiers who had

00:35:08.740 just gotten their orders that this particular battalion had gotten their orders for deployment

00:35:13.620 to afghanistan and i imagine by this time most of them have been transferred there and so they have a

00:35:19.200 it's not quite the same unit it was during world war ii but but they have a great interest in their

00:35:27.020 predecessors from that generation and speaking of which uh one of the uh visitors at fort drum that

00:35:34.660 day who came to my talk was himself a 95 year old uh veteran of the 10th and several other talks i gave

00:35:42.380 touring in colorado speaking locally 10th mountain veterans 95 one of them was 101 years old came to

00:35:50.940 my talk which was of course a great honor so usually i'm the one signing books at these talks for others

00:35:57.120 but i had these guys sign my copy of winter army and did these guys did they fight at these these

00:36:03.440 battles you talked about in the book yeah one of them who visited me in boulder colorado lives there

00:36:10.540 in a retirement communities guy named hugh evans he was a sergeant who almost single-handedly

00:36:16.380 captured one of the hilltops in the fighting for mount belvedere for which he was awarded a silver star

00:36:24.340 and he plays a prominent role in the book so again you know like an author couldn't ask for a greater

00:36:31.280 honor than for one of the heroes of his book to actually show up and and take part in the conversation

00:36:37.280 well morris this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book

00:36:41.280 and your work it's on amazon it's uh last time i looked number one bestseller in downhill skiing

00:36:48.680 which is something and you can you know find it any number of outlets barnes and noble and so forth

00:36:56.720 or in colorado in just about any bookstore so yeah check those out well morris iserman thanks for

00:37:03.340 time it's been a pleasure okay my pleasure too my guest today was morris iserman he's the author

00:37:08.420 of the book the winter army it's available amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes

00:37:12.540 at aom.is slash mountain division where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into

00:37:16.900 this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#586： The Story of the Skiing Soldiers of WWII

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