All new soldiers reporting in to the 10th Mountain Division were provided orientation packets. In addition to schedules of events and services and maps of the post, the packet included a history of the Division reaching back to 1916 and the Russian Revolution. The modern 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), “the most deployed unit in the army,” sprouted out of two separate and seemingly disparate roots, the 31st and 87th Infantry Regiments, one of which served not a single day stateside for more than forty years.
As a result of a treaty ending the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States gained possession of the Philippine Islands and established it as a commonwealth. In 1916, the 31st Infantry Regiment was activated at Fort William McKinley as part of the nation’s defenses. Less than two years later, the 31st along with its sister regiment, the 37th, shipped out to the bitter cold of Siberia to fight off hordes of Red revolutionaries, Manchurian bandits, and Cossack plunderers trying to gain control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Sixteen soldiers of the 31st won the Distinguished Service Cross and thirty-two were killed in a war few Americans knew was being fought. As a result of its service in icy Siberia, the 31st Infantry adopted a silver polar bear as its insignia and became known as the “Polar Bear Regiment,” a designation it retains today.
The 31st returned to the Philippines in 1920 and remained garrisoned in the old walled city of Manila until 1932 when Japanese troops invaded China. The Polar Bear Regiment, reinforced by the U.S. 4th Marine Division, joined a British international force to protect Shanghai’s International Settlement, after which it returned to Fort McKinley.
The invasion of tiny Finland by the Soviet Union in 1939 germinated the idea that led to the commissioning of the 87th Infantry Regiment. After Finnish soldiers on skis promptly whaled the Russians by annihilating two tank divisions, American skiing pioneer Charles Minot Dole began lobbying President Franklin Roosevelt to create a specialized mountain unit modeled after that of the Finns. General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, liked the concept and ordered the army to take action.
Skiers, trappers, muleskinners, and assorted other outdoor types volunteered in early 1940 to begin training on the slopes of Mount Rainier’s 14,408-foot peak. The 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment was activated at Fort Lewis, Washington, on 15 November 1941, three weeks before Pearl Harbor.
The day after Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers attacked military installations in the Philippines. A 31st Infantry soldier at Camp John Hay became the first casualty of the Japanese campaign to seize the islands. Enemy troops landed in both northern and southern Luzon in a rapid pincher movement to capture Manila. The 31st Infantry covered the withdrawal of American and Filipino forces to the Bataan Peninsula, fighting the invaders to a standstill for over four months.
Finally, starving and out of ammunition, the Bataan Defense Force surrendered on 9 April 1942. Of the 1,600 members of the 31st who began the Bataan Death March, roughly half perished either during the march or during the nearly four years of brutal captivity that followed. Twenty-nine Polar Bears earned the Distinguished Service Cross and one was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but the entire chain of command died in captivity before medal recommendations could be submitted.
In the meantime, the 87th Infantry Regiment was redesignated as the 10th Light Division (Alpine) and saw its first action in August 1943 during assault landings against Japanese who had occupied Kiska and Attu in the Aleutian Islands. In November 1944, it acquired its modern designation as the 10th Mountain Division and entered combat in Italy three months later.
The division fought its way across Italy, crossing the Po River and securing Gargano and Porto di Tremosine before German resistance ended in April 1945. The division earned fame in climbing unscalable cliffs in order to surprise and assault German positions.
Deactivated after the war, the division would be reactivated and deactivated three times during the next four decades. The 31st Infantry Regiment, however, remained on active duty status. General Douglas MacArthur assigned it to the 7th Infantry Division for occupation duty in Korea, where it remained until the occupation ended in 1948.
The regiment moved to the Japanese island of Hokkaido, but its stay was cut short by North Korea’s invasion of the South in 1950. The 31st returned to Korea as an element of General MacArthur’s invasion force at Inchon.
After Inchon, the regiment launched a second assault landing at Iwon, not far from Vladivostok, Russia. Polar Bear troops pushing toward the Yalu River suddenly encountered the Red Chinese Army sweeping down from Manchuria. Surrounded in a steel corridor of death, only 365 members of the task force’s original number of 3,200 survived. Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith, who took command of what was left of the 31st Regiment after Colonel Alan MacLean was killed, also died trying to break out of the trap and lead his survivors to safety. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Battered and bloody and all but decimated, the 31st evacuated by sea to Pusan where it rebuilt and retrained, then plunged back into battle to stop the Chinese at Chechon and join in the counteroffensive to retake Central Korea. By 1951, the line more or less stalemated along the 38th Parallel.
For the next two years, the 31st slugged it out with Chinese and North Koreans across a series of cold, desolate hills that bore such names as Old Baldy, Pork Chop Hill, Triangle Hill, and OP Dale. By the time the war ended, the Polar Bear Regiment had suffered many times its strength in losses, and five of its soldiers had won Medals of Honor.
In 1957, the U.S. Army reorganized infantry regiments into battle groups. The 31st Infantry of the 1st Battle Group remained in Korea with the 7th Infantry Division while its counterpart, the 31st Infantry of the 2nd Battle Group, formed at Fort Rucker, Alabama. After 41 years, for the first time in its history, the regiment’s flag flew over its U.S. homeland. Until then, it was the only regiment in the army never to have served inside the continental United States.
The Vietnam War was beginning to build up some steam by that time. In 1963, the army abandoned the battle group concept and brought back brigades, regiments, and battalions. The 4th Battalion of the 31st Infantry Regiment (4/31st) was activated at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in 1965. Less than a year later, it was operating in Vietnam’s War Zone D and around Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border. The 4th Battalion was part of the last brigade to leave Vietnam.
The Reagan buildup of the armed forces in 1985 finally merged the 31st Infantry Regiment with a reconstituted 10th Light Division to permanent status as the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). No longer strictly “ski” or “mountain” troops, the division’s strength lay in its ability to deploy by sea, air, or land anywhere in the world within 96 hours of being alerted, prepared to fight under harsh conditions of any sort.
Throughout the 1990s and early 21st Century, the 10th continued to add to its reputation for being the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army. Its list of tours in far-flung and war-torn regions circumnavigated the globe: Haiti, the Horn of Africa, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Somalia, the Sinai, Qatar, Kuwait, Kosovo, Desert Storm in Iraq, Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom . . .
During the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, made famous by the book and movie BlackHawk Down, the 10th Mountain provided infantry for the UN quick reaction force sent into the embattled city to rescue Task Force Ranger. Two division soldiers died in the fighting.
In 2001, 10th Mountain soldiers were involved in the famous rescue of downed Navy SEALs during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan.
Four Brigade Combat Teams composed the 10th Mountain Division—the 1st BCT known as “Warriors;” the 2nd BCT “Commandos;” 3rd BCT “Spartans;” and 4th BCT “Patriots.” During its 2004–2005 deployment to Iraq, the 2nd BCT assumed responsibility for the entire sector of western Baghdad, from Abu Ghraib and Monsour to the notorious “Route Irish” running from Baghdad Airport to the International Zone. The area harbored the largest number of enemy in the country, resulting in the highest concentration of casualties among American soldiers operating there.
And now, in August 2006, soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division were once again going into harm’s way.