Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 10th Mountain Division (training and Italy)

Great article on the 10th from a North Texas news website:

http://www.ntxe-news.com/artman/publish/article_126492.shtml

"The story of Bonham’s WWII winter warrior and the assault of Riva Ridge (Italy)"

My buddy's Dad was a professional mule packer in the Tenth Mtn during the push up and over to the Po Valley. Hazardous business because Jerry concentrated on ambushing supply trains. Old Jess would occasionally talk about it. Mostly he said, nobody likes getting shot at and mules were no different, and it didn't take them long to figure it out. He said if Jerry got lucky and hit an ammo mule loaded with mortar rounds, he said it was the devils own work to get the survivors lined out and going again. Occasionally Jerry would put mines out as well which was hard on mule morale.

My father was a rifle squad leader in the 10th Mtn Div during WW2 - E Company, 86th. Pretty good chance he knew the guy in the article. Can't ask him - he passed away last spring.

My best good friend was 5th Army 91st MTN Div
Fought the Po River campaign.

After the war he took his wife to Europe. The only place he wouldn’t go, Italy.....

Great Read... thanks for posting....

I came across what had been Camp Hale, near Leadville CO.... spent a couple of days in the high country there....hiking and taking pictures..
Reading the article I could relate to what the men endured just for training... there wasn't much left of the camp.... but then I had been around WW2 bases that had been decommissioned, after WW2 in England... All Air Fields and Bomber bases.... but the remains of buildings was just the same.

The taking on the Mountain from the Germans, was part of the movie "The Red Devils" made back in the 60s... but those ' movie soldiers' were trained in Montana, and were half Canadians... so it wasn't historically accurate in that fact... but was certainly one of my favorite war movies in my youth.

Once again, great read.

The man who taught me to ski was a 10th Mtn veteran.
He had a wall full of medals that few ever saw - his second wife showed me (after we'd been friends for years)
About all I know of his time in WWII is he once told me "You came out of training thinking We're the toughest - and the fastest.
You have NO idea how fast you are, until the Germans start shooting at you. The first would go, as fast as they could, over a 30+ foot cliff; and all the rest would follow - kind of like lemmings!
I also know he owned a bring-back Luger.

RIP to another Texas soldier - Harold Paden.

They trained right around the corner from me at Camp Swift, Tx.

You're mixing up two different units. The WW2 10th Mountain Division was an approximately 8600 man, 3 regiment division. Trained at Camp Hale, CO and Camp Swift, TX as a light infantry and alpine division. They ended up in Italy and Yugoslavia during WW2, and one regiment went to the Aleutians earlier on (but I think it was before they were actually designated as the part of the 10th).

The 1968 movie "The Devil's Brigade" was based on the 1st Special Service Force, a 1400 man joint US/Canadian commando unit trained at Fort William Henry Harrison, Montana. They also had some alpine training because there were originally intended to conduct commando raids against German heavy water production facilities in Norway. They fought in the Aleutians, Italy and Southern France.

Thanks for that article! Brought back some memories from my early ski-patrol days at Silvercreek in Granby, CO. The old boys from the 10th Mountain would come and ski en masse a few times each winter. Some really cool stories , and great skiers! It was an honor to meet so many of them . I forgot most their names, but one sticks out named, Dick Over! Not a named easily forgotten. I also had a good friend from Grand Lake, Co. , Mac Ruske, Rest in Peace, who was 10th Mountain in WWII! Not many of these heroes left out there!

Living close by to Camp Hale, random objects used by the 10th show up at yard sales. I bought a white backpack from one sale and the Ulster designed and built jack knife at another.

Your father might have known my stepfather as well. He joined up and became a ski/backcountry instructor and was good enough to be kept stateside to continue training troops as they came in so never made it across the pond. He grew up back east and started skiing as a youngster on equipment that would make a modern "free rider" blush.

He didn't talk much about the experience but did relay enough about the skiing that would lead me to question some of the quotes in the article as to the claimed speeds reached on skis during their training with 80+ lbs. packs or racing down "Chicago Ridge" doin' 110 mph....considering the stuff they did and equipment used was impressive enough for the times, there was no need for exaggeration, but if it popularized the Tenth, all the better.

My Dad's brother, who is 98 years old today, was 10th Mountain Division mule skinner in Italy. Grew up on a farm so they figured he knew mules.

I grew up near Camp Hale and met and knew several WWII 10th Mtn. vets. I used to elk hunt all the time at Camp Hale and on Chicago Ridge. I would commonly find unexploded mortar rounds, hand grenades, and ammo lying around all over those mountains, in places you would never expect. My Dad taught me at an early age to just leave them alone and not to touch them, so no problem. I found lots of grenade pins in areas where they must have practiced throwing grenades.

Just one story that I remember from one of the vets concerned the mules. He said his team of mules never arrived in Italy since the boat the mules were on was sunk prior to arrival. He said they tried to find similar animals in Italy, but that it was a lost cause since Italy didn't have any mules, only the small donkeys and they couldn't haul nearly the gear a Missouri mule could. He said they ended up humping what gear they could carry on their backs and left the rest behind. How true that story is, I have no idea. It's just what he told me.

I'll also add that there were a lot of yarns they told about their skiing prowess that I knew were total BS, so I'm not surprised the BS has found its way into films, publications, etc.

My son is in the 10th Mountain Division.

He drinks a lot and is strong as a HGH fueled ox.


-Proud Dad

Bob Dole was in the 10th

Thanks to norm macdonald we are all reminded about Bob Dole’s cock

Climbing mountains with one arm gotta be a real bitch!

Tough mudder

Nice video SBTCO. Wish I could have seen it when it looked like that.

Not sure what the heck they are skinning at the end of the video. Looks like a mule? Weird.