AUTHOR’S NOTE

HIGH IN THE COLORADO ROCKIES, nearly two miles above sea level and a good three-hour drive from Denver, the cracked foundations of sixty-year-old army barracks lie along the Pando valley floor like ancestral bones. Walking these grounds and the sharp valleys that rise above them, one cannot but feel the presence of the remarkable experiment that gave birth to this country’s first unit of mountain soldiers.

Like anyone who has spent time in the mountains of the American West, I have long been aware of the legacy the men of the 10th Mountain Division left after World War II. All over the Rockies, ski resorts from Aspen to Vail to Sun Valley were founded or operated, or had their ski schools directed, by division veterans returning from Europe. Paul Petzoldt, known as “the highest man in the world” after climbing to 26,000 feet on K2 in 1938, served the division as a mountain rescue instructor and later founded the National Outdoor Leadership School. After returning from the front in Italy, David Brower would go on to become the executive director of the Sierra Club. In the course of my own recent research, I met an inspiring division veteran named Bob Frauson, now a retired park ranger and wilderness rescue expert. The more I learned of these men, the more interested I became in what had moved them to lead such dignified lives working in and protecting our native wilderness; to me, the work so many veterans did after the war has been every bit as honorable as anything they did on the battlefield—perhaps more so, in that it provides us with an alternative vision of what excellent physical training and wilderness experience can mean to the national character. What these men learned during their astonishing years of mountain training made them far more than elite soldiers; it made them worthy of the great American landscape. Though this book is entirely about the 10th Mountain Division’s foundation, training, and wartime experience, its imaginative origins are in a postwar legacy that has gilded virtually every mountain range in the country.

The 10th Mountain Division was officially disbanded soon after the war. In 1948, the 10th Infantry Division was reactivated at Fort Riley, Kansas; it played a role in training soldiers for the Korean War and supporting NATO in Europe. In 1958, the division was once again disbanded. In 1985, it was reactivated and moved to Fort Drum in upstate New York, becoming the first division formed since 1975 and the first based in the Northeast since World War II. Units from the division have served in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm in 1991; in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope in 1994; in Haiti a year after that; and in Bosnia in 1997. As of this writing, mountain troops have recently returned from six months on the front lines in the war against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda network, most dramatically during Operation Anaconda on Afghanistan’s mountainous border with Pakistan. Three weeks into the war against Iraq, units from the division were beginning to move north into Iraq from Kuwait, initially to help upgrade roads and airfields.

But this book is concerned with the division’s origins and its original members. It is based primarily on more than a thousand pages of personal letters written by soldiers during their training and battle experiences, and many hundreds of pages of military and extramilitary documents written during the division’s years of training and months of fighting. All of this material is meticulously catalogued and lovingly cared for by the remarkable staff of the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center, part of the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library. It is to this staff that I owe my greatest debt. Debbie Gemar and Barbara Walton assisted my research in ways that are truly beyond measure; their patience, diligence, and meticulous knowledge of the division’s history made this project not only possible but a real pleasure. Bruce Hanson and others at the center, both staff and volunteer, were also helpful, guiding me through files and copying box upon box of documents.

I also wish to thank in the deepest way possible two division veterans, Conrad Brown and Edward “Nick” Nickerson, who not only contributed hours of interview time but scoured this manuscript from top to bottom. Brown, a retired editor, and Nickerson, a retired journalism professor from my own department at the University of Delaware, represent what Nickerson wryly calls “the Writing Tenth,” a remarkably talented collection of scholars, writers, and professors from within the division’s ranks whose postwar numbers sometimes seem to challenge their wartime reputation as “the Skiing Tenth.”

The vast majority of the letters quoted and paraphrased in this book were taken from the collections of Denis Nunan, Stuart Abbott, Hugh Evans, and Dick Wilson, for reasons that will become apparent to anyone who reads them. All four were not only remarkably prolific but vivid and passionate writers. I was fortunate enough to interview Evans and Wilson in Boulder, Colorado, and Grantham, New Hampshire, respectively; Abbott and Nunan I also came to know through their families. My thanks in this regard to Timothy Nunan, Denis Nunan’s son, and Abbie Kealy, Stuart Abbott’s niece.

John Imbrie, who has become the division’s unofficial majordomo of research, has been an invaluable resource; his assistance, both personal and through his meticulously updated database, helped keep facts straight. There were times during the researching of this book that he—and through him, his wife, Barbara—answered a half dozen of my inquiries a day. Newc Eldredge, the division’s film archivist, also helped solve a number of perplexing problems.

I also wish to thank the veterans who gave so generously of their time during dozens of hours of personal interviews, particularly Bob Frauson, John Litchfield, Arthur Delaney, Gene Hames, Dick Wilson, Hugh Evans, Earl Clark, Howard Koch, and Harry Reinig. In Exeter, New Hampshire, Bob Bates, one of our pioneering mountaineers (and a member of the team that got Petzoldt to 26,000 feet) became, through his equipment-testing expertise, one of the cornerstones on which the division was built. Bates remains, in his nineties, an inspiration and elder statesman for those dedicated to exploring wilderness worldwide.

Dan Kennerly, whose taped oral histories provide what has to be the most vivid recollection of the division’s wartime experience ever recorded, deserves thanks not only from me but from anyone interested in the division’s history, or in World War II history broadly conceived. Listening to nearly two dozen hours of Kennerly’s recollections was one of the most pleasurable experiences I have had as a writer; his skill, humor, and understated pathos as a storyteller place him firmly in the greatest southern tradition. For other details and anecdotes, I have also relied on a number of memoirs published by division veterans, including those written by Bill Putnam, Robert Ellis, Hal Burton, and Harris Dusenbery. Division histories, particularly Flint Whitlock’s Soldiers on Skis, were also of great value, as was, for details on the Aleutian campaign, Brian Garfield’s The Thousand Mile War.

In Denver, Chips and Gail Barry offered room and board during my frequent trips west, even during months when they were themselves nearly incapacitated. Ingrid Hinckley’s place in Vail made my field research around Camp Hale rather less than onerous. Bruno Bartolomei, innkeeper at the Hotel Monte Grande in Vidiciatico, Italy, not only served as generous host and field guide, he taught my son, Steedman, to climb stairs.

Once again, the staff at the University of Delaware’s interlibrary loan office proved themselves invaluable in locating out-of-print material from all over the country. My research assistant, Stacey Carlough, contributed not only hours of research and copyediting but a cheerfulness that made working with her a delight. Wes Davis and Chris Sheldrick, looking over sections of the manuscript, offered their usual mix of intelligence and wit; their friendship remains very dear. At Random House, Elena Schneider, Lee Boudreaux, Laura Ford, Sybil Pincus, and Lynn Anderson all helped move this book through the pipeline, and to them I am grateful. Both my editor, Scott Moyers, and my agent, Neil Olson, proved themselves remarkably able readers of military history. I owe them both deep thanks not only for their depths of knowledge but for their unwavering encouragement and support.

My wife, Katherine, and my son, Steedman, were by my side at Camp Hale, on top of Riva Ridge, and on the shores of Lake Garda. They are my tribe.