Ski, Climb, Fight: The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare With Lance Blyth скачать в хорошем качестве

Ski, Climb, Fight: The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare With Lance Blyth

Blyth's new book, "Ski, Climb, Fight: The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare," looks at how the 10th Mountain Division of World War II met the challenge of fighting in the mountains, where armies must overcome the challenge via survival strategies and mobility, and how the U.S. military does so today. In the fall of 1944, Gen. Lucien Truscott, commander of the Fifth Army, assigned the center of the offensive against the Germans – the effort in the highest elevations – to the 10th Mountain Division, elite American troops specially trained in mountain-climbing, skiing, and survival in cold weather. Five years earlier, the president of the National Ski Patrol had written a letter to Franklin Roosevelt proposing that the Army train special units for fighting in mountain terrain, citing the effectiveness of ski troops in Finland’s heroic defense against the Soviets earlier that year. “In this country, there are 2,000,000 skiers, equipped, intelligent, and able,” wrote Charles Minot Dole “I contend that it is more reasonable to make soldiers out of skiers than skiers out of soldiers.” Gen. George Marshall knew that the Germans had three divisions trained for mountain warfare, and that the Italians had just lost thousands of poorly trained men in the mountains during the Italo-Greek War. Marshall agreed with Dole’s idea and gave the go-ahead. So, the Army formed the 10th Mountain Division and recruited experienced skiers and university athletes, including area Vermonters, many with ties to The Putney School, including Bing Briggs, George Heller, Ted Moore, John Quisenberry and Donald Watt, Jr. In addition to normal infantry instruction, these men underwent rigorous training in rock-climbing and mountain survival at Camp Hale, Colorado, at an elevation of 9,200 feet. “The untrained mountain soldier has two foes – the enemy and the mountain,” noted an Army manual written for the division. “But he can make a friend and ally of the mountain by learning to know it. The mountain can give him cover and concealment, points of vantage and control, and even, at times, food, water, and shelter.” Late in 1944, the 10th Mountain Division left for Italy packed into severely overcrowded troop transports – about 14,000 men in three regiments with additional units of artillery, medics, ambulance drivers, and other support. Arriving in Naples, the Americans were shocked by the sight of ships sunk in the harbor and so many buildings bombed to rubble. The 10th Mountain was assigned to the Fifth Army, which was commanded by Gen.Truscott. They were ordered to move north to Florence and Pistoia, and then to dislodge the Germans from their strongholds that looked down on and blocked crucial roads that ran through the mountains to Bologna and the Po Valley beyond. By early January, the first units had made their way north by train and foot to the mountains north of Lucca and Florence.They hiked past burned farms, bombed churches, and villages of mostly rubble. Germans had placed mines and booby traps everywhere, and the Americans were in frequent firefights with enemy patrols. “War spares nothing,” Sgt. Denis Nunan wrote home. “The isolated hamlets, with walls of stone feet thick, make fortresses for the enemy to gather strength within and strike out to kill.” At the higher altitudes, there was four to five feet of snow. The men were issued four blanket each because the Army trucks didn't have chains yet and couldn't get sleeping bags and other supplies to their positions. And so it began… Lance R. Blyth is Command Historian of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command. Blyth's new book, Ski, Climb, Fight The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare, looks at how the 10th Mountain Division of World War II met the challenge of fighting in the mountains, where armies must overcome the challenge via survival strategies and mobility, and how the U.S. military does so today. His is also the author of Chiricahua and Janos which received the Weber-Clements Book Prize and examines two centuries of violence in northern Mexico between the Chiricahua Apaches and the Hispanic garrison community of Janos. Order the book today https://bookshop.org/