Wellfleet Public Library

The Winter Army

At the start of World War Il, the US Army had two cavalry divisions and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions, some of whom by 1943 blocked the Allied advance in the Italian campaign. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers, and others with outdoor experience. The resulting mix of Ivy League students, park rangers, Olympic skiers, and European refugees formed the first specialized alpine fighting force in US history. By the time it deployed to Italy at the beginning of 1945, this ragtag group had coalesced into a tight-knit unit. In the months that followed, at a terrible cost, they spearheaded the Allied drive in Italy to final victory. Ranging from the ski slopes of Colorado to the towering cliffs of the Italian Alps, The Winter Army. is a saga of an unlikely band of soldiers forged in the heat of combat into a brotherhood whose legacy lives on in US mountain fighters to this day.

Maurice Isserman is the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of History at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He is the author of many books, on topics ranging from the history of American radical movements to the history of mountaineering. He is currently working on a book entitled The History of World Mountaineering in Ten Epic Climbs, to be published by Yale University Press.

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