"The Winter Army," by Maurice Isserman

Sydney M. Williams

www.burrowingintobooks.blogspot.com

Burrowing into Books

“The Winter Army” by Maurice Isserman

October 21, 2019

“General Hays…his division had been my most dangerous opponent.”

                                                                                    General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin

                                                                                    Commander, German IV Panzer Corps

                                                                                    May 3, 1945

                                                                                    As quoted in The Winter Army

The quote above from German General von Senger und Etterlin, in referring to General George P. Hays, commander of the 10^th Mountain Division, tells of the Division’s fighting spirit and capabilities. The German General was an experienced officer. He had fought in the Battle for France in 1940 and had led troops in the battle for Monte Casino during the winter and spring of 1944. His respect for the men of the 10^th Mountain Division speaks volumes.

In preparation for my book Dear Mary, I read more than a dozen histories of the 10^th Mountain Division, including the wartime, day-by-day story of the 87^th (my father’s Regiment) compiled by Captain George Earle and published in October 1945. Apart from the details available in Captain Earle’s book, The Winter Army by Maurice Isserman is the best book I have read about this elite mountain group. He takes the reader from the genesis of the 10^th, when four men including C. Minot (Minnie) Dole talked of the need for ski troops over drinks before a roaring fire at Manchester, Vermont’s Orvis Inn in February 1940, to War’s end in Italy on May 2, 1945, with the victorious 10^th Mountain Division on the shores of Lake Garda.

Professor Isserman writes of how the idea of a “Ski Troops” was born out of the Finnish resistance to the Soviet invasion of their country during the winter of 1939-1940. He tells of how it was Minnie Dole’s energy and persistence that convinced General George Marshall to support the idea, and of how the first troops trained at Fort Lewis in Washington and on nearby Mount Rainier. In early 1943 they moved to the newly constructed Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies. The Army Post sat at 9,200 feet, surrounded by several 14,000-foot peaks. While the mountains and altitude were perfect for training mountain troops, conditions were awful because the valley trapped coal smoke, from the three engines required to bring men and supplies up from Denver and from the coal stoves used to heat the barracks. Nevertheless, they persevered. He writes of their training and of the disastrous (and unnecessary) invasion of Kiska in early June 1943, an island in the Aleutians, which had been occupied and then abandoned by the Japanese.

We learn that a year later, in early summer 1944, the Ski Troops, now re-christened the 10^th Mountain Division, was moved to Camp Swift in Texas in preparation for overseas deployment. (It was in Texas where my father joined the 10^th.) In December and January, on two ships, the three regiments sailed from Fort Patrick Henry in Newport News, Virginia to Naples, Italy. From there they went up the coast to Livorno and then east to Pistoia and then north into the Northern Apennines, where on February 18 and 19 they attacked, first Riva Ridge and then Mount Belvedere. Maurice Isserman writes that after the battle “Belvedere was a mountain of death, littered with the bodies of American and German fighters.”

Isserman makes use of letters, diaries and newspapers, including the “Blizzard,” the newspaper of the 10th. But it is diaries and letters that are most revealing. Following the attack on Belvedere, he quotes from Private Robert Ellis’ diary: “…Counterattack surrounded us. Prayed in my foxhole and read my Bible. Shrapnel dropped on my stomach. Can’t take it any longer.” While letters were subject to censorship, there is poignancy in some of them. In a letter home, three days after the Germans surrender, Wallace Arnheiter, of the 85^th Regiment, is quoted: “We are all just coming out of the fog now – for the last  month we’ve been ‘sweating it out’ – just praying it would end before the law of averages caught up with us. So many of my buddies died and so many more were hurt…You wonder why God let you walk through all that hell, and come out unscratched, and took so many finer, better men.” In all, over 900 men from the 10^th were killed and over 4,000 wounded during the two and a half months the Division was in combat.

Much of the fighting and most of the casualties occurred during the spring offensive that began in mid-April 1945, when the outcome of the War was no longer in doubt – the Soviets had crossed the Oder by the end of January and the Americans and British had crossed the Rhine by the end of March. Professor Isserman notes the motto of the 10^th, Sempre Avanti, and wonders, “…had the time arrived in Italy when always forward ceased to make sense?” The question is rhetorical, but one asked by those whose loved ones died in the waning weeks of the war. However, it is impossible, from a perspective of seventy-five years, to place ourselves in the position of those then in command. They did not have the benefit we have of knowing their future.

Isserman concludes his story by telling the reader of how wartime skills were used to create a civilian pastime – recreational skiing. Veterans of the 10^th could be found in years afterwards on ski slopes in Colorado, the Cascades, the Sierras and in the Green and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, transforming the sport of skiing “from an elite pastime to a mass participation sport.” As for Italy today, he writes: “The views today from Riva Ridge and Mount Belvedere are of a beautiful and peaceable landscape in an imperfect but better world. The men of the 10^th helped make it so. Sempre Avanti.”

The Winter War is a valuable addition to the growing collection of books dealing with World War II, a war unlike anything the world had ever experienced and unlike anything the world will ever see again. According to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, there were 496,777 of the 16 million who served in World War II still alive in 2018. With all of them in their nineties, there are considerably fewer today. We owe them honor and respect, and we owe them an understanding of the dangers they faced in defense of liberty. To listen, read and learn from their exploits is the least we can do.