The Winter Army

The Winter Army, The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors, by Maurice Isserman, Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin, 2019

                        There's nothing left for me - I'll never learn to ski,

                         I fell and broke my knee and tore off both my ears.

                         The thing I tried to do was follow after you - 

                         The things that I've been through

                         Will leave me scarred for years.

                                            - sung to the music of "Among My Souvenirs," 10th Mountain drinking song

These guys were special.  They came from the backwoods of New Hampshire (Malcolm Jennings), from the high ground out West, there were even a few flatlanders.  But they all had one thing in common - they liked riding thin flat pieces of hardwood down snow-encrusted trails.  And they loved America.  Their training was unlike that of other military forces, and although they prepared through tough conditions for extreme challenges, their big battle assignments did not appear until later in the war.  

From letters written home and live interviews with survivors and their descendants. Maurice Isserman has gathered a human and personal telling of their tale.  We hear about how they trained on Mount Rainier with new equipment to buttress their anticipated mountain campaigns - the infamous "ninety pound rucksack", for one, and the camp food, plus the M29 "Weasel" cargo carrier to supplement those ninety-pounders. From there the division solidified in 1943 in a new arena, Colorado's Camp Hale. Not all men, however, were happy with the workings of this new military operation.  Some felt there was too much red tape, bound by an organization structure that put the men in danger - - "the solution to the mountain troops' problems was for the army to stop being so rank happy, with rank at the top and brains at the bottom."  

When troops were dispatched to Kiska, Alaska to stand against Japanese, tragedy ensued - sadly, some were killed by their own men and other misfortunes followed.  Of the 3897 members of the 87th who were sent north until the troops left for their second overseas assignment one year later, 2148 Kiska veterans left, 55% of the original troops.  By the end of 1944, men described their next assignments as "playing for keeps," heading off across the Atlantic to Italy, described in the hometown media as "the forgotten front."  Still fourteen thousand mountain men headed to hold the Winter Line, starting out in Naples, moving up to Livorno and Pisa, points north in Tuscany.  Hoping that the Germans were not preparing for an Italian "Battle of the Bulge," the Mountain Men were there and ready.  .     

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com