March 23, 2025 • 37 mins
They weren’t like other soldiers.
While others were marching or jumping into battle, they skied to war. Carried rifles and ropes. Climbed cliffs in the dark. Slept in snow. And when the time came, they scaled mountains most thought were impossible to negotiate.
In our latest Front to the Films episode, Colonel Tom Rendall (USA, Ret.) sat down with Lance Blyth, a quiet-spoken historian who’s spent years tracing the footsteps of the 10th Mountain Division. What came from their conversation wasn’t just a military history—it was a reminder of what it means to endure, to adapt, and to lead.
The 10th Mountain Division wasn’t born in a traditional barracks. It began in the Rockies, the Cascades, and the Alps—in places where men already knew how to survive when the weather turned and the air got thin. The Army called them up in wartime and sent them to the mountains of Italy in 1945, where they faced a hardened enemy and even harder terrain.
They didn’t flinch.
With ropes on their backs and skis strapped to their packs, they trained in snowstorms, learned to shoot with frozen fingers, and climbed vertical rock faces by moonlight. When they reached the front, they did what they were trained to do—advance. The assault on Riva Ridge was the kind of operation most commanders wouldn’t have attempted. But they did. And they won.
Lance Blyth’s book, Ski, Climb, Fight, tells the full story. But this interview adds a layer of voice, of breath, of memory. You can hear in his words the weight of those mountains and the courage it took to move through them.
After the war, many of the men came home and built things. Ski resorts. Equipment companies. Mountain rescue programs. Some stayed in the service. Some went quiet. But the Division’s legacy never faded.
Now, as we mark the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War II, we remember what they gave—and what they gave up.
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum helped us bring this story to the airwaves. You’ll find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Apple. Spotify. Amazon. It’s an hour worth your time.
Because some men fought their war one step, one climb, one peak at a time.
And they climbed to glory.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Lance!
(00:03):
Wed 2004 (3)[00:00:00] Good evening everyone, and welcome back to Front to the Films, the official podcast of the World War II Foundation.
I'm Colonel Tom Rendell, your host, and tonight we're taking a deep dive into one of the most fascin ating and specialized units of World War ii, the 1 0th Mountain Division.
These were the elite ski and mountain troops who trained for high altitude warfare and ultimately he lped turn the tide in the rugged mountains of Ital y.
Joining us to discuss this incredible story is Dr.
Lance r Blythe, the command historian of both the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US No rthern Command.
He's the author of Ski Climbed Fight, the 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare.
His book examines how this unique division came to be.
(00:24):
Its impact in World War II and its lasting influence on military strategy and the outdoor recreation industry.
This is going to be fantastic.
Lance, welcome to the show.
Tom, thanks so much for having me here.
Definitely, stoked to be here.
And I would also like to say at the start that all [00:01:00] opinions I express here on my own don' t belong to NORAD or US northcom.
Lance, let's start with the origins of 10th Mountain Division.
(00:45):
What was the military's motivation behind creating a unit specifically trained for mountain warfare?
Tom, traditionally we look at, one very interesting character by the name of Minnie Dole, who we wil l get to, but really the idea to create a mountain division can be traced to a meeting at the Americ an Alpine Club in December of 1940.
A senior officer.
From the war department, met with members of the American K two Expedition of 1938.
This was one of the first American expeditions to the Himalayas.
These individuals led by Robert Bates, I.
Laid out all the specialized gear they had taken.
(01:06):
The, peons, the carabiners, the ice axes, the crampons, the ropes, the tents, the sleeping bags, all the layers of clothing, the socks each layer [00: 02:00] designated by, a different set of colors.
So you knew which one to put on first and which to put on top of that.
And as they laid it all out, they clearly explained how much experience and.
Training it took to use all this stuff and that absolutely none of it had been made in the United St ates.
So the report of that meeting makes its way to the, war department, to Army G three A, Colonel Briga dier Gillette select, by the name of, Harry Twaddl e, took this and he immediately, within a few days , begins to argue that the United States needs to develop a mountain division and build a mountain c amp to train that division.
Now, this is December, 1940.
It's a year before the United States is in the war.
(01:27):
Over the next few months, the Army G three developed a table of organization and equipment for a mou ntain division.
They had that ready by the spring of 41.
They laid it out to be about 15,000 men and 8,000 mules in horses.
Now, there was no money to [00:03:00] build a mountain camp.
There were, not enough soldiers to actually create a mountain division.
And so he twaddle has to fight his way.
Do a little, action officer gorilla, activity there.
(01:48):
I suspect, you're familiar with having done that on a staff and he finally gets the army to agree so metime in September, October of 1941 that there sh ould be a experimental force of battalion reinforc ed to go begin to figure out how to do this.
So November, 1941, the first battalion of the 87th Mountain Infantry is activated at Fort Lewis, and this is the first in the line of experimental mou ntain units experimental.
As the army kept saying, we don't have a theater identified where we're gonna need mountain troops y et, to which people like twaddle would reply yes, but it takes time to get these units trained.
We need to get started now.
The first of the 87th spent, the winter of 1942 on Mount Rainier.
They skied and they experimented [00:04:00] with a variety of how to move an entire battalion on ski s, for example, the 87th was expanded into entire regiment that summer.
And reported to the Mountain Training Center here at Camp Hill, Colorado.
(02:09):
That was built in 1942 in December of that year.
Now, the Mountain Training Center is the second experimental unit.
It was a proto division.
It had the divisional headquarters.
It had all the enablers, your communications, your medical, your engineers.
It had the artillery.
And it received the 87th Mountain Infantry and raised the 86th Mountain Infantry.
(02:30):
That, starting in, December of 1942 into, about, February of 1943, the idea was this unit would acti ve the Mountain Training Center.
Would turn into a De Mountain division in the spring of 43.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, we get our third experimental unit, the 10th light division Alpine that [00:05:00] was acti vated in 1943 at Hale, as part of an Army experime nt to see if you could get a division's worth of c ombat power out of only 9,000 men.
Though they did have 2000 mules as well.
The 10th division, as they called themselves, trained up here in Colorado.
They did that.
(02:51):
They did about a week of mountaineering training.
Each battalion, did four weeks of training.
this culminates in the, infamous dseries of maneuvers.
At the end of this, nearly year long experiment, about April, May, 1944, it was determined that the division was too light.
So General Leslie McNair, the commander of Army Ground Forces, wanted to organize it as a standard i nfantry division.
General George Marshall, chief of Staff of the Army directed him to turn it into a mountain division as Marshall wanted to keep faith with the men tha t had volunteered to be in the mountain troops Jun e of 1944, Marshall heads overseas to offer this m ountain division to his commanders.
Only Italy will take [00:06:00] it.
(03:12):
Europe, they didn't want all the mules according to one report.
The division is sent down to from Colorado to Camp Swift, Texas.
They were supposed to participate in a Louisiana maneuver, a big divisional on Division Maneuver tha t was canceled, but it's there.
They got those tentative tables of organization equipment drawing upon what was done back in 1941 an d reorganized, and they added another 5,000 men an d another 4,000 mules to give the division about 1 4,000 men and 6,000 animals.
And then November 6th.
Is 10th Mountain Division Day here in Colorado, 1944.
They were Redesignated the 10th Mountain Division.
(03:33):
This unit was unique in that it recruited skiers, mountaineers, and outdoor adventurers, many of who m had little to no military experience.
How did that shape their training and effectiveness?
Yes, that was certainly the idea of Minnie Dole, who I mentioned before, the director of the Nationa l Ski Patrol.
He believed it would be easier to train skiers to be soldiers.
[00:07:00] The problem is that didn't turn out to be, completely true.
There were certainly several thousand men in the division who had skied before joining the army.
But the vast majority actually had not, skiing was not a common activity in the 1930s for most Ameri cans.
(03:54):
By one count there were only about 300 men, at Camp Hale that were enough skiers to be Ski instructo rs and that's because the kind of skiing the army had in mind was far more akin to today's backcount ry skiing.
We had to move through the mountains under your own power, selecting your path, dealing with differe nt snow conditions than it was skiing on a prepare d ski slope.
If there are only a few skiers, there are actually only a few mountaineers.
Mountaineering was in fact a, very upper class, activity.
Though rock climbing was becoming a bit more common.
So most of those mountaineers who were not too old to serve, in fact, ended up as officers in the Ar my Air Forces or the, Navy.
Bob Bates, who I mentioned, ends up in the officer of the quartermaster general where he, [00:08:00] designs and tests and helps procure mountaineerin g gear.
(04:15):
About 20 minute hail were competent climbers and they trained about another a hundred to be instruct ors, but they had great success at Camp Hail.
With those outdoor adventures, some of whom had the skills, most did not, but they volunteered via t he national Ski Patrol, at least 8,000 of the, div isions.
Ultimately, 14,000 men had volunteered to be there.
They wanted to be in the mountain troops, they wanted to be in the mountains, and those turned out t o be the best trainees to do that.
One way this definitely shaped the character of the division is that the army quickly found that the y needed officers who could supervise mountain tra ining.
So most of the officers who end up in the, 10th Mountain Division, at least the company, great offic ers, that's your lieutenants and your captains, ha d actually been enlisted men in the mountain troop s.
The Camp Hale, the Mountain Training Center in the 10th division had a special deal with the Army wh ere they could [00:09:00] send enlisted troops to OCS to officers candidate school.
(04:36):
Then return them as lieutenants back to the same division.
This was normally not done, and though they tried to reassign them to other units, most of these men , still had friends in the enlisted ranks and had to be reminded from time to time.
They weren't supposed to hang out with their enlisted buddies and drink beer.
But this does give the division a unique shared bond from that shared experience and that shared lov e of the mountains.
That's great.
And I've had a lot of experience in the mountains and as, we mentioned earlier, I was in 2 8 7 infan try starting out, what were the key training locat ions and how did the soldiers prepare for combat i n extreme cold and high altitude conditions?
The initial, of course, was up there on Mount Rainier, but that was a national park.
(04:57):
It didn't have a lot of space to put an entire division.
They couldn't do any live fire.
Fort Lewis was too far away, up there in the Pacific Northwest from the mountains.
So they settle upon the Pando Valley in Colorado, north of the town of Leadville, [00:10:00] really up on the continental divide.
And that had what the army wanted.
It had ample space to house a division.
They were planning, 15,000 men at one point had a road and a railroad running through it.
(05:18):
They had access to water and coal.
There were lots of mountains around it for training, including artillery ranges, and it was cold wit h snow on the ground from November to June as it w as at, over 9,000 feet elevation.
The only thing it was really lacking was a suitable social outlet nearby Leadville.
As a town was held to have relatively low morals and prostitution was still pretty well practiced in that town as a mining town at the time.
But what the army board that approved this didn't realize was that it sits in a bull.
And so you would get this, severe temperature inversions, cold air would get trapped down with all t he smoke and the smog in the base of the valley.
This elevation plus the smog led to this pando hack, this severe continuous coughing that was really many ways solved by getting out [00:11:00] of cam p up to the training areas.
(05:39):
And there were a number of training areas to the north was home State Creek, where they climbed, to the east were the areas up, resolution creek above , that led up to Vail Pass, machine, gun Ridge.
Some people know about.
To the south.
There was an area below Homestake Peak, and then there of course, on the continental of Iowa was Coo per Hill.
Their ski training.
So what they did is they went into these training areas, typically on a Monday morning and stayed ou t until Friday.
They planned on having 30 nights of winter camping.
(06:00):
That was their goal for that, including several of those above treeline.
As one soldier would, they remembered they became expert biv Whackers in February of 1944 is one of their culminating exercises.
They did battalion life fire attacks in two feet of snow.
On skis at elevations over 10,000 feet, and then they conducted a ski patrol race the 10 miles back to hail.
And by being in the mountains in the cold and the snow at elevation, the men learned to [00:12:00] s urvive to use their kit, to use their shelter, to take physical care of themselves, including taking care of their feet, but also eating and drinking.
They learned to be mobile using their skis or their snowshoes going across rugged terrain.
Walking off trail uphill with a pack is a skill, and I think unit staffs learned what it took to sup ply and sustain men under such conditions that wou ld prove very valuable when they went to Italy.
(06:21):
That's a wonderful synopsis.
Thank you very much.
So now we'll move into their combat experience.
After months of intense training, the division was sent to the Italian Alps in late 44.
Would you please walk us through their first major combat operation and what made their role so sign ificant?
Yeah, the division departs the United States in December, 1944.
One regiment.
(06:42):
The 86 goes in December.
The rest of the division follows up the first couple days of January, 1945.
The first units from the 86 Mountain Infantry go into the line in the Apennines on January 8th of [0 0:13:00] the whole division, taking up positions b y February 2nd.
Now the 10th Mountain Divisions into the sector and supported by the also newly arrived Brazilian Ex peditionary Force on their right flank.
They were ordered to conduct a limited objective attack to clear the Monte Belvedere, Monte de la To ia, and Monte de Los Spay Ridge that overlooked Hi ghway 64.
That was to be Highway 64, was to be the intended attack axis of attack for the upcoming spring offe nsive that year.
But to carry out Operation Encore, as it was called to advance up and along the ridge, however, requ ired the seizure of German positions on Riva Ridge , which would be to the rear of the advancing Amer ican Forces one Battalion i.
(07:03):
Which we can talk about.
The first 86 was assigned the task reinforced by another rifle company, and this force takes the rid ge on the night of February 18th, and the main att ack kicked off the night of February 19th.
This attack takes Bel Dairy on the 20th, so [00:14:00] within one day and after seizing the middle m ountain, Della Toia on February 24th, the division actually paused, regrouped, and then continued th e attack on March 3rd.
They get to D Spay two days later, and indeed the attack is brought to a halt, because it had been s o successful.
It was pulling in German reinforcements.
This is something the fifth Army commander at that time, general Lucian Truscott, wanted to avoid.
He wanted the Germans to still kinda lightly hold the sector.
(07:24):
Now, Encore, the first.
Combat action is significant because it showed that the division knew what they needed to do.
They knew they needed to get on that ridge and attack along it.
They knew they didn't want to get sucked up into draws, trying to climb up that way where you would be hit on all sides.
But they also had some other things they had learned as well.
They knew how hard it was to evacuate, wounded in the mountains.
So their battalion aid stations were kept closer to the front than doctrine at that time, allowed.
(07:45):
They knew how to get supplies forward, moving it from trucks to [00:15:00] Jeeps, to maybe, over sno w vehicles, to mules, and then onto the back of me n to keep the advance going.
So those Colorado experiences pay dividends here.
Great.
So how about taking us then through the assault on Reba Ridge in February 45, during nighttime climb and attack, caught the Germans completely off gua rd.
What made this operation so remarkable?
Yeah.
And it is an important to, for us to remember that the attack on Riva Ridge was a city.
(08:06):
It's a supporting attack to a shaping attack, but the conditions that you point out, it has made it the face of the 10th Mountain Division.
Now, at this time, February, there was still snow on the ground, especially at Elevation.
Riva Ridge was a bit over 5,000 feet in most places.
It was still cold, but it's not bad as it had been earlier in the month.
At one point, the battalion thought it would have to approach the ridge on skis or snowshoes.
But there was a melt.
And so they were able to get up now through a lot of patrolling.
(08:27):
The first, the 86 located five routes up onto the five hive points on the ridge.
Two of [00:16:00] those would ultimately need some fixed ropes, to ascend in a few spots.
A fixed by assault climbers who led the way hammering in peons with, hammers wrapped in cloth to try to deaden them.
Now it wasn't a vertical climb the whole way.
There was, the train was complex, with a lot of cover.
So the division had dominated the battle space by patrolling.
So the Germans really were taken by surprise by this attack.
(08:48):
Now, the Germans only had a thin line of outpost on the ridge.
Their side was much lower angle slope, and so their plan was to get warning of an attack and then co unter attack up the slope assuming any attacker co uld not bring enough firepower with them or resupp ly with enough ammunition to hold the ridge.
And this is what had happened on at least one or two other attempts to take Riva Ridge.
Months prior, the Germans did what the Germans did during World War ii.
They CounterTack, they launched five CounterTack over five days.
The first, in the afternoon of the 19th of February, the battalion fights off all five.
They were able to bring up four 50 caliber machine [00:17:00] guns on porters broken down, and they even brought a 75 millimeter pack Howitzer, up on Italian mules.
(09:09):
Now, Italian mules are smaller than American, and these were really heavy loads, and I guess that on e, the meal that had to carry the barrel, died, wh en he got to the top of the ridge.
The battalion had a hundred men assigned as porters, and these guys made three round trips a day tak ing ammunition up and bringing wounded back down o n the 20th.
So two days after the attack, an engineering company built a tram way up.
So now they had a cable car going up and this lessened the time it took to bring casualties down.
Ultimately, the.
Riva Ridge Mules, men and tram moved 10 and a half tons of ammunition up and brought the 38 wounded and 17 dead back down.
But in five days of fighting in the cold and the snow, the battalion suffered no, exposure.
(09:30):
Casualties that had to be evacuated.
They had learned in the Rockies, had to take care of themselves, and it paid dividends up there on R iva Ridge.
That's really impressive, and [00:18:00] I've lucky enough to have, commanded two mountain and winte r units myself, one in fifth Special Forces Group, and then the second battalion of 10 Special Force s Group, and we drilled in that.
And the interesting thing that occurs to me though is how did their training stack up against the Ge rmans?
Not only the Germans training, but their preparation for fighting in that environment.
Did they have an advantage?
How did the Germans handle the 10th mountain?
(09:51):
There were a number of German units, in the mountains.
One of the battalions up there, in that sector was in fact had been drawn from the German training c enter at mit.
Ald.
Germans had at least five or six pretty good mountain divisions, one German and two Austrian at the beginning of the war.
Then they raised a few more.
The problem was, is those divisions were not in Italy.
They were up in the Arctic.
(10:12):
They were outside linen grad.
They were down holding the line in southern Russia.
And on the steps, the Germans could never get, most of their competent troops, centered there.
Only one mountain division the fifth.
German mountain Division made it [00:19:00] into Italy.
And so by this time, by 1945, the American units having not been in combat previously, were definite ly better trained and probably better prepared tha n, most of the German forces they faced.
That's amazing.
(10:33):
And I wonder, did Germans have the ability to reinforce and did the division.
Have any trouble conquering the Germans while they were entrenched?
That's a very difficult thing to train for trench warfare or fighting through trenches in level grou nd in the mountains.
It must be hell over to you.
They did work quite often up here at Hale working on those kind of problems on how to attack in the mountains and so forth.
And one of the things they discovered is that, and you've been in the mountains, even if you're up o n a ridge, it's typically not narrow.
It's wide, and there's lots of complex terrain.
(10:54):
There's ridges and draws running off of this.
So the guys on 10th found, and you can see some of [00:20:00] this during the dseries maneuvers that you could move along a ridge and if the enemy is mainly on one side, you could cross to the other a nd use that for cover and you could get their atte ntion.
Pin them from the front and then work units around the sides and the back to attack from the flanks and the rear.
If you were confident in the terrain, and that's what they were, if you had presented these units wi th a quick scramble up a piece of rock, they would 've done it without even thinking.
Because they had trained in this.
It was not an obstacle to them.
It was a way to maneuver.
(11:15):
They were able to do quite well.
And again, they had a by surprise, the Germans didn't expect they would be able to hang on up there.
Units before hadn't, and they didn't expect them and this was later.
German generals would later say they were taken by surprise by the amount of combat power that the 1 0th Mountain Division could actually develop in th e mountains.
That's a great insight.
Thank you so much.
Audience you're listening to Front To the Films, the official podcast of the World War II Foundation , and tonight's [00:21:00] guest is Dr.
(11:36):
Lance Blythe, author of Ski Climb, fight, the 10th Mountain Division and the rise of mountain warfar e.
We're discussing the history, training, and impact of this legendary World War II unit that is still in the army today.
Before we continue, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge our partner in this podcast, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War ii, they are dedicated to preserving the stories of our veterans and sharing their lega cies with future generations.
Alright, audience, welcome back to our session this evening, front to the films where we're speaking about the 10th Mountain Division with Dr.
Lance Blythe.
So Dr.
(11:57):
Blythe, beyond the war, the 10th Mountain Division had a lasting impact, particularly in the rise of America's outdoor recreation industry.
How did veterans of this unit help shape skiing, mountaineering, and even modern outdoor gear?
Over to you, doctor?
Yeah, it.
As I noted earlier that skiing and rock climbing and mountaineering were really [00:22:00] niche act ivities prior to the war, but I think it's fair to say that the experience of the 10th Mountain Divi sion and the several other divisions that underwen t cold weather and low mountain training, democrat ized outdoor sports after the war, as several tens of thousands of men had been exposed to these spo rts that they knew nothing about before.
In my Wyoming, hometown, there was a old cowboy who was actually the exo of the calvary reconnaissan ce troop for the division.
And when he came back, he taught his whole family to ski.
(12:18):
I was told, and to this day, they still ski.
So we see it even at that level.
10th Mountain alumni.
Veterans of the unit developed a skiing stream many ways, focusing on ultimate the ski areas.
They ultimately would manage some 62 of those areas by one count.
They provided over 2000 ski instructors by another.
They spread rock climbing, across the country, out of it, initial areas in California and back east.
(12:39):
But equally important was all the surplus mountain gear that had been left in the United States.
[00:23:00] I've seen numbers as high.
As a hundred thousand sets of mountaineering gear were, had been, procured and left in warehouses in the states.
This was sold on pennies, up to the dollar to of the brand new army surplus business, so you could o utfit yourself with skis, with clothes, with boots , with bindings, with poles for just a few bucks a t the time.
The nylon ropes, all those peons and carabiners, these fueled the rise of dirt bag climbers.
Climbers who just basically lived and survived in order to climb.
But as that surplus began to run out, really by about 1950 or so, there was a realization that there was a market for all this stuff, people would buy it.
(13:00):
Howard Head, skied initially on wood surplus skis and thought there has to be a better way.
he.
Decided he could do better and he laminates metal and other materials into his head skis.
a few years after that, fiberglass became the chosen, material for lamination, and it still is now.
These new skis [00:24:00] that had and others made benefited from, some of the skiing techniques dev eloped up at Hale, which fed into all those ski sc hools with all those instructors I.
And this gave rise to alpine skiing, which we know today.
It makes it possible to ski steeper terrain, but far more safely than have been, possible on all the old kit, those nylon ropes that they developed fo r the division Would ultimately become developed i nto dynamic ropes.
(13:21):
This would allow bigger, more daring, multi-pitch rock climbing, as a lead climber could now fall, r ecover, and then climb again.
They, one of those dirt bag climbers by the name of Yvan Chouinard, took a look at all those crude h eavy iron pecans from the war, decided he could do better.
He started making his own out of modern metal blends, starting a company that would ultimately be kn own one day as Patagonia.
Once again, that is just a truly amazing story.
And it's really funny to me that I [00:25:00] had my first opportunity to do some real skiing in Mar ch of 1976, when.
We flew from Illinois out to Colorado and I joined a friend at Vail and we skied for about a week th ere.
And I noticed in reading the bio of Minnie Dole, that's the month he passed away.
(13:42):
And of course, when we were in the fifth Special Forces group putting together our first mountain, w inter, and desert units in, 1984.
The Army chose to issue us.
Its first round of the Goretex material and the blue undergarments were all Patagonia at that time.
And we became very familiar with, Yvonne Sard as we assembled our peons and ju Mars and Friends and all the other evolutions of mountaineering equipme nt that became available to us at that time.
All because of this wonderful interface you're describing with 10th Mountain Division and these amaz ing men who were part of it.
That is truly wonderful.
So the division was deactivated after World War ii, but was [00:26:00] later reactivated, and we kno w it very well, and I have a job that lets me see this division and even travel to their home locati on about once every other year.
(14:03):
How has its mission evolved and what roles does it play in today's military?
While the division deactivated at the end of 1945, November, 1945, many of the officers and men.
Stayed in the Army and they were sent back out to Camp Carson, to run a mountain school starting in 1947.
And from 1947 to 1957, there was a mountain school here, in Colorado.
And in many ways looking at this has been that final will and testament of the 10th Mountain Divisio n.
All their experience and knowledge really finalized.
They did their summer phase here in Colorado Springs.
(14:24):
They climbed up here in North Chi and Canyon just up the road from my house.
Many of the officers actually purchased homes in my neighborhood from what I've been able to learn.
They did a winter phase up at Cooper Hill and Camp Hale.
They chopped out space for two battalions and tents in what is now [00:27:00] the parking lot for Sk i Cooper.
They ran summer programs for reservists, including a Captain David Brower, a 10th mount division vet eran himself, who was soon to be president of the Sierra Club, whose views on wilderness had actuall y been decisively shaped by his time in Europe.
They employed American skiers and mountaineers who had been drafted such as Jim Whitaker.
Who was a mountain warfare instructor in 1953 and 1954, he would become the first American on Everes t.
(14:45):
And the first president of REII will allow you the listeners to determine which one is more importan t.
And they continued to train units in cold weather and mountain environments.
A Lieutenant James Earl Jones, trained here at Hale with his regiment in the winter of 1954.
And from his memoir, he absolutely loved it.
But the army shifted, in the late fifties, mountain training was ended here.
It was sent up to Alaska, that in 1963 became only for units based in Alaska.
So mountain training had actually disappeared from the Army from about 1963 into the [00:28:00] 1980 s.
(15:06):
So when the division was reactivated on February 13th, 1985, it really was not a mountain division.
Rather, the chief of staff of the Army stated that he would designate it as a 10th Mountain Division light infantry.
After all, he pointed out that the hundred first Airborne was still called the hundred first Airborn e and it hadn't jumped out of a plane for decades.
He did so in deference to unit history and soldier pride, and I think anyone who has interacted with the 10th Mountain Division sees that has been a g reat success, but it would have neither the capabi lity nor the mission is a mountain division, but m ountain units were returning in the 1980s.
In the early 1980s, the National Guard thought about activating a mountain brigade.
The Vermont Army National Guard activated a mountain company and a mountain battalion, and then a mo untain school to train them in 1983.
And this school drew heavily upon the experiences of the 10th Mountain Division and that winter, mou ntain warfare school out here in Colorado.
(15:27):
This, of course, today is the Army's Mountain Warfare School.
[00:29:00] So there's a direct connection between those two.
And there are still guard battalions that are mountain units back east.
There is one here in Colorado that tries to train regularly up at Camp Hail.
But it's important to point out that the 10th Mountain Division is working on getting back to its al pine roots.
From 2023, they added more billets to require military mountaineering qualification.
They looked to try to get extended tours for non-commission officers who had undergone this training to keep that cadre around.
(15:48):
They create a mountain training group for in-house expertise and training.
And there is an alpine club with the division that's dedicated to getting soldiers out into the moun tains to ski.
To hike, to hunt, to climb, to fish, to much like their forebearers did here in Colorado.
And I think those guys, would, highly approve.
I'm sure they would.
And as I say it's a wonderful division and I enjoy working with it.
And not only is it nice that I was in, one of its battalions that had been parceled out to the rest of the army after it was deactivated, but our unit and I [00:30:00] have been led by two commanders of that battalion.
(16:09):
And so it's just a wonderful thing to see that thing running throughout my 50 years.
I think also as we look to the increasing importance of the Arctic and the discussions of, Alaska, G reenland, and Canada, those are areas that are not only cold, they're very mountainous.
And so I see a big future for units like this.
Moving forward, not only in their own, but you need more people trained in this and I think they'll have a beautiful picture ahead.
So as we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War ii, what do you think is the most importa nt lesson we can learn from 10th Mountain Division ?
I think the most important lesson is the need for the nation and the army to be ready and able to mo bilize, not.
Only to turn industry to war production, but to create forces almost from scratch, comprised of citi zen soldiers, warriors of the working day, whose m otivations are [00:31:00] quite different from tho se of volunteer soldiers.
(16:30):
And what General Marshall understood in World War ii.
And what we need to learn, I believe, is that mobilization has to meet society where it is to make m aximum use of the skills, abilities, and interests that citizens already possess.
And this, I believe, was what made the 10th Mountain Division so unique and so capable in that most of the men wanted to be there.
They wanted to be in the mountains, to be in the mountain troops to learn and use the skills they tr easured.
I think that's one of the most unique insights we've ever had at this point in any of our podcasts, because we ask questions like this regularly.
But the thing that you've said about the citizen soldier and the need to mobilize and to create new capabilities, not just for mountains, but cyber an d other things occur to me, that's the basis of th e success of the United States as a nation, and I think you've captured that really and it's not wha t one would really expect.
So I hope the audience understands the real depth of what you [00:32:00] had to say, sir.
(16:51):
Lance, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion.
Your research and storytelling and ski climb and fight bring a unique perspective to one of the most remarkable units of World War II and of today.
Before we wrap up, what are your final thoughts you'd like to leave with our audience?
The final thought I would like to leave the point that mountain warfare and mountain operates of the kind that the 10th Mountain Division, carried out .
As you pointed out, arctic and cold weather operations.
Are very hard operations to conduct.
They require, the ability to survive.
(17:12):
They require the ability to be mobile at the individual and unit level.
If you cannot survive and you cannot be mobile, you're not going to maneuver on the enemy.
So you have to have that suite of individual skills that you didn't have to build up into unit capab ilities in order to do that.
And that suite of individual skills and the gear and the kit that goes with [00:33:00] that to enabl e those skills are in fact best found in the civil ian skiing and mountaineering communities.
They have to be adapted to military use, but it is there that they in fact, reside.
And this is a very unique part of mountain warfare, that continues on to this day.
It's wonderful that each time you've answered a question, you've brought to light something that's m ore unique and amazing.
(17:33):
So it's been fascinating to discuss this.
And it's funny because I can.
Now connect an early experience of my own when in that unit.
In fifth group, we designed our mountain, winter and desert training to be able to climb several cli ffs and ascend to the height and then repel into a zone where we would expect to have met.
Enemies that we were headed for in Afghanistan in the mid eighties.
We didn't go, but the training was such that you had to wonder what was it all about?
And characteristically, as we produced this thing, which we thought would be in warm weather, it tur ned out to be in the snow in a place in New Mexico .
(17:54):
And [00:34:00] so we're climbing and repelling and shooting mortars, machine guns, and everything el se at night.
We had practiced all of that, but we never got to assemble it all until the assault itself.
No one wounded, no one injured carried it off and the targets were targets.
But it demonstrated to me after, two years of commanding the unit how difficult it was to put that t ogether.
And now you've described how a unit brought itself to being from no place.
Went off to World War II and dominated an enemy that had been fighting already for years.
And these were many cases, volunteer soldiers.
(18:15):
And they went on to give us and the world, not only the people who would, set the pace for downhill skiing, but a lot of it contributing to Nordic ski ing.
And of course Whitaker and Sheard and others.
I was just at REI co-op last week.
There's Patagonia stuff still all over the place.
And, so just a wonderful way to connect, my own experience to this most remarkable podcast, and, we cannot thank you enough.
So anything you'd like to say in conclusion to what I've said?
No, thank you very much.
(18:36):
The final [00:35:00] thought will say is this, is that I've written this book for a variety of audie nces and I was hoping that military practitioners would be interested in it and much to my.
Gratitude and gratification and in a little bit humbling, large numbers of NCOs and officers who are struggling, just as you point out how to do this, have picked up on it.
And I can only be so honored, that my explanation of the past, of previous experience, appears to be helping many of them, working in the present for the future.
Dr.
Blythe it's really been a pleasure for John and me to host you this evening, and I think audience yo u also ought to check out.
What he does in regards to his being the historian at not only North American Air Defense Command or norad, which routinely every year around December 24th, will track Santa Claus.
I've seen that since I was a boy, but it also tracks a number of other threats and then also of the joint.
(18:57):
Element there, the US Northern Command, those are very interesting assignments.
[00:36:00] And although that's not the focus of a World War II podcast, I think those things bear ch ecking for anyone interested in the future defense of the United States.
So Lance, thank you again for joining us and for your dedication to preserving and sharing this hist ory.
It's just been fantastic.
And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into front of the films.
The official podcast of the World War II Foundation.
If you're interested in learning more about ski, climb and fight, we'll include links to Lance's boo k and website in the show notes.
(19:18):
And please don't forget to check out NORAD and Northcom.
They are very important to the defense of the United States and of the world.
Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep learning from the past to help shape our futu re.
We'll go out again, as we always do to that stirring music from our favorite film, the Great Escape.
This is Rend Out.
Lance!
(00:03):
Wed 2004 (3)[00:00:00] Good evening everyone, and welcome back to Front to the Films, the official podcast of the World War II Foundation.
I'm Colonel Tom Rendell, your host, and tonight we're taking a deep dive into one of the most fascin ating and specialized units of World War ii, the 1 0th Mountain Division.
These were the elite ski and mountain troops who trained for high altitude warfare and ultimately he lped turn the tide in the rugged mountains of Ital y.
Joining us to discuss this incredible story is Dr.
Lance r Blythe, the command historian of both the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US No rthern Command.
He's the author of Ski Climbed Fight, the 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare.
His book examines how this unique division came to be.
(00:24):
Its impact in World War II and its lasting influence on military strategy and the outdoor recreation industry.
This is going to be fantastic.
Lance, welcome to the show.
Tom, thanks so much for having me here.
Definitely, stoked to be here.
And I would also like to say at the start that all [00:01:00] opinions I express here on my own don' t belong to NORAD or US northcom.
Lance, let's start with the origins of 10th Mountain Division.
(00:45):
What was the military's motivation behind creating a unit specifically trained for mountain warfare?
Tom, traditionally we look at, one very interesting character by the name of Minnie Dole, who we wil l get to, but really the idea to create a mountain division can be traced to a meeting at the Americ an Alpine Club in December of 1940.
A senior officer.
From the war department, met with members of the American K two Expedition of 1938.
This was one of the first American expeditions to the Himalayas.
These individuals led by Robert Bates, I.
Laid out all the specialized gear they had taken.
(01:06):
The, peons, the carabiners, the ice axes, the crampons, the ropes, the tents, the sleeping bags, all the layers of clothing, the socks each layer [00: 02:00] designated by, a different set of colors.
So you knew which one to put on first and which to put on top of that.
And as they laid it all out, they clearly explained how much experience and.
Training it took to use all this stuff and that absolutely none of it had been made in the United St ates.
So the report of that meeting makes its way to the, war department, to Army G three A, Colonel Briga dier Gillette select, by the name of, Harry Twaddl e, took this and he immediately, within a few days , begins to argue that the United States needs to develop a mountain division and build a mountain c amp to train that division.
Now, this is December, 1940.
It's a year before the United States is in the war.
(01:27):
Over the next few months, the Army G three developed a table of organization and equipment for a mou ntain division.
They had that ready by the spring of 41.
They laid it out to be about 15,000 men and 8,000 mules in horses.
Now, there was no money to [00:03:00] build a mountain camp.
There were, not enough soldiers to actually create a mountain division.
And so he twaddle has to fight his way.
Do a little, action officer gorilla, activity there.
(01:48):
I suspect, you're familiar with having done that on a staff and he finally gets the army to agree so metime in September, October of 1941 that there sh ould be a experimental force of battalion reinforc ed to go begin to figure out how to do this.
So November, 1941, the first battalion of the 87th Mountain Infantry is activated at Fort Lewis, and this is the first in the line of experimental mou ntain units experimental.
As the army kept saying, we don't have a theater identified where we're gonna need mountain troops y et, to which people like twaddle would reply yes, but it takes time to get these units trained.
We need to get started now.
The first of the 87th spent, the winter of 1942 on Mount Rainier.
They skied and they experimented [00:04:00] with a variety of how to move an entire battalion on ski s, for example, the 87th was expanded into entire regiment that summer.
And reported to the Mountain Training Center here at Camp Hill, Colorado.
(02:09):
That was built in 1942 in December of that year.
Now, the Mountain Training Center is the second experimental unit.
It was a proto division.
It had the divisional headquarters.
It had all the enablers, your communications, your medical, your engineers.
It had the artillery.
And it received the 87th Mountain Infantry and raised the 86th Mountain Infantry.
(02:30):
That, starting in, December of 1942 into, about, February of 1943, the idea was this unit would acti ve the Mountain Training Center.
Would turn into a De Mountain division in the spring of 43.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, we get our third experimental unit, the 10th light division Alpine that [00:05:00] was acti vated in 1943 at Hale, as part of an Army experime nt to see if you could get a division's worth of c ombat power out of only 9,000 men.
Though they did have 2000 mules as well.
The 10th division, as they called themselves, trained up here in Colorado.
They did that.
(02:51):
They did about a week of mountaineering training.
Each battalion, did four weeks of training.
this culminates in the, infamous dseries of maneuvers.
At the end of this, nearly year long experiment, about April, May, 1944, it was determined that the division was too light.
So General Leslie McNair, the commander of Army Ground Forces, wanted to organize it as a standard i nfantry division.
General George Marshall, chief of Staff of the Army directed him to turn it into a mountain division as Marshall wanted to keep faith with the men tha t had volunteered to be in the mountain troops Jun e of 1944, Marshall heads overseas to offer this m ountain division to his commanders.
Only Italy will take [00:06:00] it.
(03:12):
Europe, they didn't want all the mules according to one report.
The division is sent down to from Colorado to Camp Swift, Texas.
They were supposed to participate in a Louisiana maneuver, a big divisional on Division Maneuver tha t was canceled, but it's there.
They got those tentative tables of organization equipment drawing upon what was done back in 1941 an d reorganized, and they added another 5,000 men an d another 4,000 mules to give the division about 1 4,000 men and 6,000 animals.
And then November 6th.
Is 10th Mountain Division Day here in Colorado, 1944.
They were Redesignated the 10th Mountain Division.
(03:33):
This unit was unique in that it recruited skiers, mountaineers, and outdoor adventurers, many of who m had little to no military experience.
How did that shape their training and effectiveness?
Yes, that was certainly the idea of Minnie Dole, who I mentioned before, the director of the Nationa l Ski Patrol.
He believed it would be easier to train skiers to be soldiers.
[00:07:00] The problem is that didn't turn out to be, completely true.
There were certainly several thousand men in the division who had skied before joining the army.
But the vast majority actually had not, skiing was not a common activity in the 1930s for most Ameri cans.
(03:54):
By one count there were only about 300 men, at Camp Hale that were enough skiers to be Ski instructo rs and that's because the kind of skiing the army had in mind was far more akin to today's backcount ry skiing.
We had to move through the mountains under your own power, selecting your path, dealing with differe nt snow conditions than it was skiing on a prepare d ski slope.
If there are only a few skiers, there are actually only a few mountaineers.
Mountaineering was in fact a, very upper class, activity.
Though rock climbing was becoming a bit more common.
So most of those mountaineers who were not too old to serve, in fact, ended up as officers in the Ar my Air Forces or the, Navy.
Bob Bates, who I mentioned, ends up in the officer of the quartermaster general where he, [00:08:00] designs and tests and helps procure mountaineerin g gear.
(04:15):
About 20 minute hail were competent climbers and they trained about another a hundred to be instruct ors, but they had great success at Camp Hail.
With those outdoor adventures, some of whom had the skills, most did not, but they volunteered via t he national Ski Patrol, at least 8,000 of the, div isions.
Ultimately, 14,000 men had volunteered to be there.
They wanted to be in the mountain troops, they wanted to be in the mountains, and those turned out t o be the best trainees to do that.
One way this definitely shaped the character of the division is that the army quickly found that the y needed officers who could supervise mountain tra ining.
So most of the officers who end up in the, 10th Mountain Division, at least the company, great offic ers, that's your lieutenants and your captains, ha d actually been enlisted men in the mountain troop s.
The Camp Hale, the Mountain Training Center in the 10th division had a special deal with the Army wh ere they could [00:09:00] send enlisted troops to OCS to officers candidate school.
(04:36):
Then return them as lieutenants back to the same division.
This was normally not done, and though they tried to reassign them to other units, most of these men , still had friends in the enlisted ranks and had to be reminded from time to time.
They weren't supposed to hang out with their enlisted buddies and drink beer.
But this does give the division a unique shared bond from that shared experience and that shared lov e of the mountains.
That's great.
And I've had a lot of experience in the mountains and as, we mentioned earlier, I was in 2 8 7 infan try starting out, what were the key training locat ions and how did the soldiers prepare for combat i n extreme cold and high altitude conditions?
The initial, of course, was up there on Mount Rainier, but that was a national park.
(04:57):
It didn't have a lot of space to put an entire division.
They couldn't do any live fire.
Fort Lewis was too far away, up there in the Pacific Northwest from the mountains.
So they settle upon the Pando Valley in Colorado, north of the town of Leadville, [00:10:00] really up on the continental divide.
And that had what the army wanted.
It had ample space to house a division.
They were planning, 15,000 men at one point had a road and a railroad running through it.
(05:18):
They had access to water and coal.
There were lots of mountains around it for training, including artillery ranges, and it was cold wit h snow on the ground from November to June as it w as at, over 9,000 feet elevation.
The only thing it was really lacking was a suitable social outlet nearby Leadville.
As a town was held to have relatively low morals and prostitution was still pretty well practiced in that town as a mining town at the time.
But what the army board that approved this didn't realize was that it sits in a bull.
And so you would get this, severe temperature inversions, cold air would get trapped down with all t he smoke and the smog in the base of the valley.
This elevation plus the smog led to this pando hack, this severe continuous coughing that was really many ways solved by getting out [00:11:00] of cam p up to the training areas.
(05:39):
And there were a number of training areas to the north was home State Creek, where they climbed, to the east were the areas up, resolution creek above , that led up to Vail Pass, machine, gun Ridge.
Some people know about.
To the south.
There was an area below Homestake Peak, and then there of course, on the continental of Iowa was Coo per Hill.
Their ski training.
So what they did is they went into these training areas, typically on a Monday morning and stayed ou t until Friday.
They planned on having 30 nights of winter camping.
(06:00):
That was their goal for that, including several of those above treeline.
As one soldier would, they remembered they became expert biv Whackers in February of 1944 is one of their culminating exercises.
They did battalion life fire attacks in two feet of snow.
On skis at elevations over 10,000 feet, and then they conducted a ski patrol race the 10 miles back to hail.
And by being in the mountains in the cold and the snow at elevation, the men learned to [00:12:00] s urvive to use their kit, to use their shelter, to take physical care of themselves, including taking care of their feet, but also eating and drinking.
They learned to be mobile using their skis or their snowshoes going across rugged terrain.
Walking off trail uphill with a pack is a skill, and I think unit staffs learned what it took to sup ply and sustain men under such conditions that wou ld prove very valuable when they went to Italy.
(06:21):
That's a wonderful synopsis.
Thank you very much.
So now we'll move into their combat experience.
After months of intense training, the division was sent to the Italian Alps in late 44.
Would you please walk us through their first major combat operation and what made their role so sign ificant?
Yeah, the division departs the United States in December, 1944.
One regiment.
(06:42):
The 86 goes in December.
The rest of the division follows up the first couple days of January, 1945.
The first units from the 86 Mountain Infantry go into the line in the Apennines on January 8th of [0 0:13:00] the whole division, taking up positions b y February 2nd.
Now the 10th Mountain Divisions into the sector and supported by the also newly arrived Brazilian Ex peditionary Force on their right flank.
They were ordered to conduct a limited objective attack to clear the Monte Belvedere, Monte de la To ia, and Monte de Los Spay Ridge that overlooked Hi ghway 64.
That was to be Highway 64, was to be the intended attack axis of attack for the upcoming spring offe nsive that year.
But to carry out Operation Encore, as it was called to advance up and along the ridge, however, requ ired the seizure of German positions on Riva Ridge , which would be to the rear of the advancing Amer ican Forces one Battalion i.
(07:03):
Which we can talk about.
The first 86 was assigned the task reinforced by another rifle company, and this force takes the rid ge on the night of February 18th, and the main att ack kicked off the night of February 19th.
This attack takes Bel Dairy on the 20th, so [00:14:00] within one day and after seizing the middle m ountain, Della Toia on February 24th, the division actually paused, regrouped, and then continued th e attack on March 3rd.
They get to D Spay two days later, and indeed the attack is brought to a halt, because it had been s o successful.
It was pulling in German reinforcements.
This is something the fifth Army commander at that time, general Lucian Truscott, wanted to avoid.
He wanted the Germans to still kinda lightly hold the sector.
(07:24):
Now, Encore, the first.
Combat action is significant because it showed that the division knew what they needed to do.
They knew they needed to get on that ridge and attack along it.
They knew they didn't want to get sucked up into draws, trying to climb up that way where you would be hit on all sides.
But they also had some other things they had learned as well.
They knew how hard it was to evacuate, wounded in the mountains.
So their battalion aid stations were kept closer to the front than doctrine at that time, allowed.
(07:45):
They knew how to get supplies forward, moving it from trucks to [00:15:00] Jeeps, to maybe, over sno w vehicles, to mules, and then onto the back of me n to keep the advance going.
So those Colorado experiences pay dividends here.
Great.
So how about taking us then through the assault on Reba Ridge in February 45, during nighttime climb and attack, caught the Germans completely off gua rd.
What made this operation so remarkable?
Yeah.
And it is an important to, for us to remember that the attack on Riva Ridge was a city.
(08:06):
It's a supporting attack to a shaping attack, but the conditions that you point out, it has made it the face of the 10th Mountain Division.
Now, at this time, February, there was still snow on the ground, especially at Elevation.
Riva Ridge was a bit over 5,000 feet in most places.
It was still cold, but it's not bad as it had been earlier in the month.
At one point, the battalion thought it would have to approach the ridge on skis or snowshoes.
But there was a melt.
And so they were able to get up now through a lot of patrolling.
(08:27):
The first, the 86 located five routes up onto the five hive points on the ridge.
Two of [00:16:00] those would ultimately need some fixed ropes, to ascend in a few spots.
A fixed by assault climbers who led the way hammering in peons with, hammers wrapped in cloth to try to deaden them.
Now it wasn't a vertical climb the whole way.
There was, the train was complex, with a lot of cover.
So the division had dominated the battle space by patrolling.
So the Germans really were taken by surprise by this attack.
(08:48):
Now, the Germans only had a thin line of outpost on the ridge.
Their side was much lower angle slope, and so their plan was to get warning of an attack and then co unter attack up the slope assuming any attacker co uld not bring enough firepower with them or resupp ly with enough ammunition to hold the ridge.
And this is what had happened on at least one or two other attempts to take Riva Ridge.
Months prior, the Germans did what the Germans did during World War ii.
They CounterTack, they launched five CounterTack over five days.
The first, in the afternoon of the 19th of February, the battalion fights off all five.
They were able to bring up four 50 caliber machine [00:17:00] guns on porters broken down, and they even brought a 75 millimeter pack Howitzer, up on Italian mules.
(09:09):
Now, Italian mules are smaller than American, and these were really heavy loads, and I guess that on e, the meal that had to carry the barrel, died, wh en he got to the top of the ridge.
The battalion had a hundred men assigned as porters, and these guys made three round trips a day tak ing ammunition up and bringing wounded back down o n the 20th.
So two days after the attack, an engineering company built a tram way up.
So now they had a cable car going up and this lessened the time it took to bring casualties down.
Ultimately, the.
Riva Ridge Mules, men and tram moved 10 and a half tons of ammunition up and brought the 38 wounded and 17 dead back down.
But in five days of fighting in the cold and the snow, the battalion suffered no, exposure.
(09:30):
Casualties that had to be evacuated.
They had learned in the Rockies, had to take care of themselves, and it paid dividends up there on R iva Ridge.
That's really impressive, and [00:18:00] I've lucky enough to have, commanded two mountain and winte r units myself, one in fifth Special Forces Group, and then the second battalion of 10 Special Force s Group, and we drilled in that.
And the interesting thing that occurs to me though is how did their training stack up against the Ge rmans?
Not only the Germans training, but their preparation for fighting in that environment.
Did they have an advantage?
How did the Germans handle the 10th mountain?
(09:51):
There were a number of German units, in the mountains.
One of the battalions up there, in that sector was in fact had been drawn from the German training c enter at mit.
Ald.
Germans had at least five or six pretty good mountain divisions, one German and two Austrian at the beginning of the war.
Then they raised a few more.
The problem was, is those divisions were not in Italy.
They were up in the Arctic.
(10:12):
They were outside linen grad.
They were down holding the line in southern Russia.
And on the steps, the Germans could never get, most of their competent troops, centered there.
Only one mountain division the fifth.
German mountain Division made it [00:19:00] into Italy.
And so by this time, by 1945, the American units having not been in combat previously, were definite ly better trained and probably better prepared tha n, most of the German forces they faced.
That's amazing.
(10:33):
And I wonder, did Germans have the ability to reinforce and did the division.
Have any trouble conquering the Germans while they were entrenched?
That's a very difficult thing to train for trench warfare or fighting through trenches in level grou nd in the mountains.
It must be hell over to you.
They did work quite often up here at Hale working on those kind of problems on how to attack in the mountains and so forth.
And one of the things they discovered is that, and you've been in the mountains, even if you're up o n a ridge, it's typically not narrow.
It's wide, and there's lots of complex terrain.
(10:54):
There's ridges and draws running off of this.
So the guys on 10th found, and you can see some of [00:20:00] this during the dseries maneuvers that you could move along a ridge and if the enemy is mainly on one side, you could cross to the other a nd use that for cover and you could get their atte ntion.
Pin them from the front and then work units around the sides and the back to attack from the flanks and the rear.
If you were confident in the terrain, and that's what they were, if you had presented these units wi th a quick scramble up a piece of rock, they would 've done it without even thinking.
Because they had trained in this.
It was not an obstacle to them.
It was a way to maneuver.
(11:15):
They were able to do quite well.
And again, they had a by surprise, the Germans didn't expect they would be able to hang on up there.
Units before hadn't, and they didn't expect them and this was later.
German generals would later say they were taken by surprise by the amount of combat power that the 1 0th Mountain Division could actually develop in th e mountains.
That's a great insight.
Thank you so much.
Audience you're listening to Front To the Films, the official podcast of the World War II Foundation , and tonight's [00:21:00] guest is Dr.
(11:36):
Lance Blythe, author of Ski Climb, fight, the 10th Mountain Division and the rise of mountain warfar e.
We're discussing the history, training, and impact of this legendary World War II unit that is still in the army today.
Before we continue, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge our partner in this podcast, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War ii, they are dedicated to preserving the stories of our veterans and sharing their lega cies with future generations.
Alright, audience, welcome back to our session this evening, front to the films where we're speaking about the 10th Mountain Division with Dr.
Lance Blythe.
So Dr.
(11:57):
Blythe, beyond the war, the 10th Mountain Division had a lasting impact, particularly in the rise of America's outdoor recreation industry.
How did veterans of this unit help shape skiing, mountaineering, and even modern outdoor gear?
Over to you, doctor?
Yeah, it.
As I noted earlier that skiing and rock climbing and mountaineering were really [00:22:00] niche act ivities prior to the war, but I think it's fair to say that the experience of the 10th Mountain Divi sion and the several other divisions that underwen t cold weather and low mountain training, democrat ized outdoor sports after the war, as several tens of thousands of men had been exposed to these spo rts that they knew nothing about before.
In my Wyoming, hometown, there was a old cowboy who was actually the exo of the calvary reconnaissan ce troop for the division.
And when he came back, he taught his whole family to ski.
(12:18):
I was told, and to this day, they still ski.
So we see it even at that level.
10th Mountain alumni.
Veterans of the unit developed a skiing stream many ways, focusing on ultimate the ski areas.
They ultimately would manage some 62 of those areas by one count.
They provided over 2000 ski instructors by another.
They spread rock climbing, across the country, out of it, initial areas in California and back east.
(12:39):
But equally important was all the surplus mountain gear that had been left in the United States.
[00:23:00] I've seen numbers as high.
As a hundred thousand sets of mountaineering gear were, had been, procured and left in warehouses in the states.
This was sold on pennies, up to the dollar to of the brand new army surplus business, so you could o utfit yourself with skis, with clothes, with boots , with bindings, with poles for just a few bucks a t the time.
The nylon ropes, all those peons and carabiners, these fueled the rise of dirt bag climbers.
Climbers who just basically lived and survived in order to climb.
But as that surplus began to run out, really by about 1950 or so, there was a realization that there was a market for all this stuff, people would buy it.
(13:00):
Howard Head, skied initially on wood surplus skis and thought there has to be a better way.
he.
Decided he could do better and he laminates metal and other materials into his head skis.
a few years after that, fiberglass became the chosen, material for lamination, and it still is now.
These new skis [00:24:00] that had and others made benefited from, some of the skiing techniques dev eloped up at Hale, which fed into all those ski sc hools with all those instructors I.
And this gave rise to alpine skiing, which we know today.
It makes it possible to ski steeper terrain, but far more safely than have been, possible on all the old kit, those nylon ropes that they developed fo r the division Would ultimately become developed i nto dynamic ropes.
(13:21):
This would allow bigger, more daring, multi-pitch rock climbing, as a lead climber could now fall, r ecover, and then climb again.
They, one of those dirt bag climbers by the name of Yvan Chouinard, took a look at all those crude h eavy iron pecans from the war, decided he could do better.
He started making his own out of modern metal blends, starting a company that would ultimately be kn own one day as Patagonia.
Once again, that is just a truly amazing story.
And it's really funny to me that I [00:25:00] had my first opportunity to do some real skiing in Mar ch of 1976, when.
We flew from Illinois out to Colorado and I joined a friend at Vail and we skied for about a week th ere.
And I noticed in reading the bio of Minnie Dole, that's the month he passed away.
(13:42):
And of course, when we were in the fifth Special Forces group putting together our first mountain, w inter, and desert units in, 1984.
The Army chose to issue us.
Its first round of the Goretex material and the blue undergarments were all Patagonia at that time.
And we became very familiar with, Yvonne Sard as we assembled our peons and ju Mars and Friends and all the other evolutions of mountaineering equipme nt that became available to us at that time.
All because of this wonderful interface you're describing with 10th Mountain Division and these amaz ing men who were part of it.
That is truly wonderful.
So the division was deactivated after World War ii, but was [00:26:00] later reactivated, and we kno w it very well, and I have a job that lets me see this division and even travel to their home locati on about once every other year.
(14:03):
How has its mission evolved and what roles does it play in today's military?
While the division deactivated at the end of 1945, November, 1945, many of the officers and men.
Stayed in the Army and they were sent back out to Camp Carson, to run a mountain school starting in 1947.
And from 1947 to 1957, there was a mountain school here, in Colorado.
And in many ways looking at this has been that final will and testament of the 10th Mountain Divisio n.
All their experience and knowledge really finalized.
They did their summer phase here in Colorado Springs.
(14:24):
They climbed up here in North Chi and Canyon just up the road from my house.
Many of the officers actually purchased homes in my neighborhood from what I've been able to learn.
They did a winter phase up at Cooper Hill and Camp Hale.
They chopped out space for two battalions and tents in what is now [00:27:00] the parking lot for Sk i Cooper.
They ran summer programs for reservists, including a Captain David Brower, a 10th mount division vet eran himself, who was soon to be president of the Sierra Club, whose views on wilderness had actuall y been decisively shaped by his time in Europe.
They employed American skiers and mountaineers who had been drafted such as Jim Whitaker.
Who was a mountain warfare instructor in 1953 and 1954, he would become the first American on Everes t.
(14:45):
And the first president of REII will allow you the listeners to determine which one is more importan t.
And they continued to train units in cold weather and mountain environments.
A Lieutenant James Earl Jones, trained here at Hale with his regiment in the winter of 1954.
And from his memoir, he absolutely loved it.
But the army shifted, in the late fifties, mountain training was ended here.
It was sent up to Alaska, that in 1963 became only for units based in Alaska.
So mountain training had actually disappeared from the Army from about 1963 into the [00:28:00] 1980 s.
(15:06):
So when the division was reactivated on February 13th, 1985, it really was not a mountain division.
Rather, the chief of staff of the Army stated that he would designate it as a 10th Mountain Division light infantry.
After all, he pointed out that the hundred first Airborne was still called the hundred first Airborn e and it hadn't jumped out of a plane for decades.
He did so in deference to unit history and soldier pride, and I think anyone who has interacted with the 10th Mountain Division sees that has been a g reat success, but it would have neither the capabi lity nor the mission is a mountain division, but m ountain units were returning in the 1980s.
In the early 1980s, the National Guard thought about activating a mountain brigade.
The Vermont Army National Guard activated a mountain company and a mountain battalion, and then a mo untain school to train them in 1983.
And this school drew heavily upon the experiences of the 10th Mountain Division and that winter, mou ntain warfare school out here in Colorado.
(15:27):
This, of course, today is the Army's Mountain Warfare School.
[00:29:00] So there's a direct connection between those two.
And there are still guard battalions that are mountain units back east.
There is one here in Colorado that tries to train regularly up at Camp Hail.
But it's important to point out that the 10th Mountain Division is working on getting back to its al pine roots.
From 2023, they added more billets to require military mountaineering qualification.
They looked to try to get extended tours for non-commission officers who had undergone this training to keep that cadre around.
(15:48):
They create a mountain training group for in-house expertise and training.
And there is an alpine club with the division that's dedicated to getting soldiers out into the moun tains to ski.
To hike, to hunt, to climb, to fish, to much like their forebearers did here in Colorado.
And I think those guys, would, highly approve.
I'm sure they would.
And as I say it's a wonderful division and I enjoy working with it.
And not only is it nice that I was in, one of its battalions that had been parceled out to the rest of the army after it was deactivated, but our unit and I [00:30:00] have been led by two commanders of that battalion.
(16:09):
And so it's just a wonderful thing to see that thing running throughout my 50 years.
I think also as we look to the increasing importance of the Arctic and the discussions of, Alaska, G reenland, and Canada, those are areas that are not only cold, they're very mountainous.
And so I see a big future for units like this.
Moving forward, not only in their own, but you need more people trained in this and I think they'll have a beautiful picture ahead.
So as we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War ii, what do you think is the most importa nt lesson we can learn from 10th Mountain Division ?
I think the most important lesson is the need for the nation and the army to be ready and able to mo bilize, not.
Only to turn industry to war production, but to create forces almost from scratch, comprised of citi zen soldiers, warriors of the working day, whose m otivations are [00:31:00] quite different from tho se of volunteer soldiers.
(16:30):
And what General Marshall understood in World War ii.
And what we need to learn, I believe, is that mobilization has to meet society where it is to make m aximum use of the skills, abilities, and interests that citizens already possess.
And this, I believe, was what made the 10th Mountain Division so unique and so capable in that most of the men wanted to be there.
They wanted to be in the mountains, to be in the mountain troops to learn and use the skills they tr easured.
I think that's one of the most unique insights we've ever had at this point in any of our podcasts, because we ask questions like this regularly.
But the thing that you've said about the citizen soldier and the need to mobilize and to create new capabilities, not just for mountains, but cyber an d other things occur to me, that's the basis of th e success of the United States as a nation, and I think you've captured that really and it's not wha t one would really expect.
So I hope the audience understands the real depth of what you [00:32:00] had to say, sir.
(16:51):
Lance, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion.
Your research and storytelling and ski climb and fight bring a unique perspective to one of the most remarkable units of World War II and of today.
Before we wrap up, what are your final thoughts you'd like to leave with our audience?
The final thought I would like to leave the point that mountain warfare and mountain operates of the kind that the 10th Mountain Division, carried out .
As you pointed out, arctic and cold weather operations.
Are very hard operations to conduct.
They require, the ability to survive.
(17:12):
They require the ability to be mobile at the individual and unit level.
If you cannot survive and you cannot be mobile, you're not going to maneuver on the enemy.
So you have to have that suite of individual skills that you didn't have to build up into unit capab ilities in order to do that.
And that suite of individual skills and the gear and the kit that goes with [00:33:00] that to enabl e those skills are in fact best found in the civil ian skiing and mountaineering communities.
They have to be adapted to military use, but it is there that they in fact, reside.
And this is a very unique part of mountain warfare, that continues on to this day.
It's wonderful that each time you've answered a question, you've brought to light something that's m ore unique and amazing.
(17:33):
So it's been fascinating to discuss this.
And it's funny because I can.
Now connect an early experience of my own when in that unit.
In fifth group, we designed our mountain, winter and desert training to be able to climb several cli ffs and ascend to the height and then repel into a zone where we would expect to have met.
Enemies that we were headed for in Afghanistan in the mid eighties.
We didn't go, but the training was such that you had to wonder what was it all about?
And characteristically, as we produced this thing, which we thought would be in warm weather, it tur ned out to be in the snow in a place in New Mexico .
(17:54):
And [00:34:00] so we're climbing and repelling and shooting mortars, machine guns, and everything el se at night.
We had practiced all of that, but we never got to assemble it all until the assault itself.
No one wounded, no one injured carried it off and the targets were targets.
But it demonstrated to me after, two years of commanding the unit how difficult it was to put that t ogether.
And now you've described how a unit brought itself to being from no place.
Went off to World War II and dominated an enemy that had been fighting already for years.
And these were many cases, volunteer soldiers.
(18:15):
And they went on to give us and the world, not only the people who would, set the pace for downhill skiing, but a lot of it contributing to Nordic ski ing.
And of course Whitaker and Sheard and others.
I was just at REI co-op last week.
There's Patagonia stuff still all over the place.
And, so just a wonderful way to connect, my own experience to this most remarkable podcast, and, we cannot thank you enough.
So anything you'd like to say in conclusion to what I've said?
No, thank you very much.
(18:36):
The final [00:35:00] thought will say is this, is that I've written this book for a variety of audie nces and I was hoping that military practitioners would be interested in it and much to my.
Gratitude and gratification and in a little bit humbling, large numbers of NCOs and officers who are struggling, just as you point out how to do this, have picked up on it.
And I can only be so honored, that my explanation of the past, of previous experience, appears to be helping many of them, working in the present for the future.
Dr.
Blythe it's really been a pleasure for John and me to host you this evening, and I think audience yo u also ought to check out.
What he does in regards to his being the historian at not only North American Air Defense Command or norad, which routinely every year around December 24th, will track Santa Claus.
I've seen that since I was a boy, but it also tracks a number of other threats and then also of the joint.
(18:57):
Element there, the US Northern Command, those are very interesting assignments.
[00:36:00] And although that's not the focus of a World War II podcast, I think those things bear ch ecking for anyone interested in the future defense of the United States.
So Lance, thank you again for joining us and for your dedication to preserving and sharing this hist ory.
It's just been fantastic.
And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into front of the films.
The official podcast of the World War II Foundation.
If you're interested in learning more about ski, climb and fight, we'll include links to Lance's boo k and website in the show notes.
(19:18):
And please don't forget to check out NORAD and Northcom.
They are very important to the defense of the United States and of the world.
Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep learning from the past to help shape our futu re.
We'll go out again, as we always do to that stirring music from our favorite film, the Great Escape.
This is Rend Out.
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