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.
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.