Oct. 12, 2003

Two new books tell the history of the 10th Mountain Division

Reviewed by Bob Parker, veteran of the 10th Mountain Division

Although reams of paper have been devoted to books about America's famous “Ski Troops,” the 10th Mountain Division, the following books are perhaps the most definitive and, in many ways, the most personally felt and narrated of any that have gone before. The authors have sought out knowledgeable veterans of the 10th, and used their memories to describe their difficult training and brief but bloody combat experience. It will be left to their readers to decide which best captures the essence of the 10th Mountain Division.

The Last Ridge By McKay Jenkins.

The serious student of World War II will appreciate Jenkins' efforts to place the 10th Mountain Division squarely within the context of the larger war in Europe, and especially within the long and bloody Italian campaign. This is a serious, sometimes ponderous but honest effort to present the history of one of the U.S. Army's most interesting combat units.

Beginning with 10th founder Minot “Minnie” Dole’s ski accident, which led to his creation of the National Ski Patrol, and highlighting the dramatic impact on Washington officials of Finland's winter war against the Russians in 1939, Jenkins traces Dole's sometimes amusing, always frustrating battle to convince Washington's brass that the Army needed a mountain division. Jenkins successfully recreates the fearful and confused atmosphere that beset America and its military leaders in those difficult months and years leading up to Pearl Harbor. For it was only a few weeks after the “day that shall live in infamy” that the first battalion of the 87th Mountain Infantry, the l0th's first regiment, was created by orders from General George C. Marshall.

By presenting detailed asides throughout the book, Jenkins manages to educate the reader about the events of the Second World War that resulted in the formation and final disposition of the U.S. Army's only mountain division. This historical perspective will help the reader understand, as nothing else can, how the 10th fit into the bigger picture of WWII. Jenkins accurately recounts the recruiting of skiers, mountain climbers and other outdoorsmen to the 10th, but in this writer’s view he devotes too much space to their training at Mount Rainier and Camp Hale, as well as the fulsome publicity generated by their colorful ski and climbing activities, in both Hollywood movies and articles in the printed press.

With the eventual assignment of the division, after the 87th Regiment's Kiska Island misadventure, and three years of training, to the European theater, Jenkins handles the 10th's four months in combat effectively. He outlines the dramatic but slow and bloody advance of the Allied armies up the boot of Italy, and how it led to the l0th's assignment to take Riva Ridge and Mount Belvedere, after the Fifth Army twice failed to capture these key objectives. This section illustrates a principal strength of Jenkins' book, his ability to interweave the broader history of the war with the activities of the 10th. The combat story begins with the dramatic capture by the l0th of Riva Ridge and the Belvedere massif, the origin of the book's title “The Last Ridge.” Told graphically in veterans’ own words, the narrative brings home vividly the harsh realities of mountain warfare.

After recounting the l0th's triumphant dash across the Po Valley, and the bloody fighting on the banks of Lake Garda, Jenkins' depiction of the breakup of the division after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent civilian experiences of 10th veterans is, however, exceedingly brief. In the minds of many, the contributions of the 10th to the post-war worlds of skiing, mountaineering, and the environment are an essential element in the history of the division.

Caveat: The recounting of the 10th’s eventful four years may leave some readers with a negative impression. Future generations may conclude that the l0th's adventures, colorful as they were, were ill-advised and mostly in vain. Many veterans of this unique military organization will doubtless take issue with the author’s conclusion.

Climb to Conquer By Peter Shelton

From its initial prologue to its final chapter, this retelling of the history of the 10th Mountain Division story is engaging, sometimes amusing, and always informative. Told almost entirely through the eyes of the men who, 60 years before, had taken part in the formation, training and combat experience of the division, it nonetheless reads like a brisk and believable novel. The reader is immediately intrigued by the initial cast of characters—men like founder Minnie Dole, future environmentalist Dave Brower, ski coach and world champion Walter Prager, and first ski trooper Charlie McLane.

The early adventures of such characters are unique in military annals. Shelton recalls the “three letters of recommendation” at first required for admission into the 10th, and quotes some of the earnest but unbelievably naive letters candidates submitted to Dole and the U.S. Army. One such letter reads “I think you are fit for the mountain troops. You always were a good boy and a hard worker —Your Mother.” Another from a man already in the Army: “Shoot the application out here, and if I get in the mountains, I'll think of some way of telling my wife!”

Shelton's descriptions of the training of the division on Mount Rainier, Washington, and at Camp Hale, Colorado, are for the most part interesting and accurate. He recounts the unlikely involvement of Hollywood mogul Darryl Zanuck in the filming of the division's first training film, and future ski film impresario John Jay’s creation of the most definitive film and photographic images of the 10th on skis.

For a chapter called “The Homestake Fiasco,” however, the author apparently listened to a somewhat biased set of participants. The February 1943 Homestake maneuver by early units of the 10th, held on the slopes of 13,200-foot Homestake Peak, was the first high-altitude winter exercise ever mounted by the U. S. Army. To describe it as a “fiasco” is to discount completely the maneuver’s real effectiveness. A myriad of important lessons about winter warfare conditions were learned at Homestake. How men could live in extreme snow and cold. How well the division's winter equipment functioned. Significantly, could the unit's artillery trigger a snow avalanche as a potential mountain weapon? It was true that some men suffered fatigue, frostbite, and failure. But the majority proved, for the first time in U.S. Army history, that young American soldiers could function effectively in mid-winter, on skis and snowshoes, in one of the world's most difficult environments.

Shelton's versions of the 87th’s Kiska experience, training at Camp Hale and Camp Swift, and the division's introduction to combat on Riva Ridge and Belvedere are well told. It was on Riva Ridge that the division famously lived up to its motto, and the book's title, “Climb to Conquer.” The account of the two months of combat, during which the 10th took its heaviest casualties, unfortunately fails, despite many grim anecdotes, to reflect the bloody realities of the period. One thinks of Tony Hillerman, in “Seldom Disappointed,” recounting his experiences as a G.I. in the Battle of the Bulge, and Steven Ambrose's tales of desperate battles in “Citizen Soldiers.” Shelton might well have found guidance from the stark pages of these two authors before attempting to narrate the final days of the 10th's Apennines war.

The book's final chapters, however, are an excellent recounting of the division's last weeks in Italy, and the extraordinary post-war impact of many its men on mountain sports and the environment. Admittedly, many 10th veterans returned, like Ambrose's citizen soldiers, to ordinary lives. But a surprising number, after finishing their college or practical educations, became the nation's leaders in skiing, mountaineering and the burgeoning science and practice of ecology and the environment. As the author writes, “Tenth veterans jump-started a boom that was unprecedented in the history of outdoor recreation." Ex-10th pioneers like Pete Seibert, Friedl Pfeifer, Fritz Benedict, Paul Petzoldt, and Bill Bowerman created in Vail, Aspen, the Tenth Mountain Trail, the National Outdoor Leadership School, and the Nike Company sports and outdoor icons that will forever commemorate the division they served so well. And Dave Brower and Morley Nelson, in leading the nation in protecting the environment and its wild creatures, have established a comparable legacy that will probably long outlive the wartime exploits of the 10th. In writing “Climb to Conquer,” Shelton has made his own contribution toward keeping the legacies of the10th Mountain Division alive, and relevant.