STORY AND PHOTOS PROVIDED BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

The Army was aware of the public’s interest in ski troops and used its resources to make movies that would highlight their training and daring.

Lt. John Jay was a photographer who was reassigned into the 87th in late 1941. He participated in the unit’s training on Mount Rainier, while making films about the mountain troops there and in Sun Valley.

Darryl Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox Studios, had produced the award-winning movie, Sun Valley Serenade, that was released in 1941. Ski Instructor Otto Lang filmed the ski sequences for the movie at Sun Valley, and Gretchen Kunigk Fraser, who would go on to win America’s first Olympic gold alpine ski medal, did the skiing scenes for the movie’s Norwegian star, ice skating champion Sonia Henie.

10th Mountain Division ski troops train in Colorado.

The full budget musical starred Sonja Henie, John Payne, Milton Berle and the Glen Miller orchestra, the top band in the country.  Several new songs were introduced. Among them,  “Chattanooga Choo-choo,” the first gold record. It sold more than a million copies and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Song of 1941.

Other well-known songs from the movie included “In the Mood,” “It Happened in Sun Valley,” “Moonlight Serenade” and “I Know Why.”

Friedl Pfeifer said the movie was one of several events in 1940 that “would forever change the image of Sun Valley in America...The movie became a big hit and retained its popularity for decades,” romanticizing Sun Valley’s image.

In 1941, Zanuck became a newly commissioned colonel in the U.S. Signal Corps.  He believed the Army needed a film to make sure the ski troops would learn the method of skiing based on the Arlberg technique that Otto Lang had learned from Hannes Schneider at St. Anton, Austria in the 1930s.

10 Mountain Division ski troops train at Camp Hale in Colorado.

Lang had opened the first Hannes Schneider Ski School in the United States at Washington’s Mount Rainier and Mount Baker in the late 1930s and began teaching at Sun Valley in 1938.  Zanuck had power in the military, so he ordered the film to be made with Otto Lang directing it.  Lang later became a member of the 10th Mountain Division.

In the spring of 1941, Lang made The Basic Principles of Skiing, the first mountain troop training movie in America, filming the ski scenes at Sun Valley.  The Army authorized the use of a five-man detachment of soldiers from Ft. Lewis, Wash., to participate in the movie. It was led by Lt. John Woodward and included Sgt. Walter Prager, a Dartmouth College ski coach.

John Jay was assigned to the project.  Lang wanted at least 10 men in the movie so he used Sun Valley ski instructors to play the role of soldiers, in addition to the soldiers from Ft. Lewis. The men he chose were Sepp Benedikter, Fred Iselin, Johnny Litchfield and Pepi Teichner, all of whom went on to play major roles in developing and expanding ski resorts after the war.

The film demonstrated the Arlberg method of skiing that was considered well suited to military skiing.

Two soldiers train on a crevasse. PHOTO: 1944 American Ski Annuals

The opening scenes for the movie were filmed in Hollywood, showing recruits being equipped for their training.  One of the recruits was Alan Ladd, then an unknown young actor, who had a speaking part in the movie.  Ladd said this was a step up from his previous non-speaking role in an Army film about Venereal Disease.  

Lang’s film was called a “wonderful exposition of Arlberg.”

“Lang’s eye for graceful motion together with his passion for detail produced what is arguably the most beautiful military training film ever made,” a critic said.

His movie was sent to Fort Lewis where the 1st Battalion of the 87th Mountain Regiment was activated on Nov. 14, 1941, as the U.S. Army’s first official mountain unit. The first recruits were learning to ski the Army way when the Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Soldiers train on skis.

John Jay said the movie was filmed so beautifully that, for years afterward, recruits into what eventually became the 10th Mountain Division complained bitterly that the ski troops were nothing like the movie.

Lt. John Jay made another army training film in May 1942. They Climb to Conquer showed rock climbing techniques.  It was filmed over a 12-day period when an eight-man detachment of the 1st Battalion at Fort Lewis made the first winter ascent of Mount Rainier led by Corporal Peter Gabriel, a famous Swiss mountaineer.

During that time, they tested clothes, food, stoves and tents under the severest conditions.  The vertical climbing was done by Sgt. Walter Prager. An exhibit on the Mountain Troops done by the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Museum described the movie:

“Before the troops left Mount Rainier, a group of them decided to make a trip to the summit. During this 12-day expedition, with John Jay as the photographer, the men realized a few very important winter survival skills. Using the cooking stoves inside the tents produced carbon monoxide, and some of the tents were no good during snowstorms. These soldiers tested almost 30 different types of ski and mountaineering equipment, discovered how to make shelter and food in winter conditions and reached the summit of Mount Rainier.”

Although not selected as a training site for ski troops, Sun Valley played a role in the war.

On July 1, 1943, Sun Valley was commissioned as a Naval Special Hospital offering facilities for the hospitalization, rehabilitation and recreation of servicemen.

The Sun Valley hospital was one of 14 Naval Convalescent facilities in the country.  The first was at Harriman, N.Y., which happened to be the ancestral home of W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia and the founder of Sun Valley Resort.   

The Naval Hospital at Sun Valley operated between July 1, 1943, and Dec. 1, 1945. It was second in bed capacity of similar facilities but first in actual load. It was especially equipped to administer physiotherapy for orthopedic convalescents. And neuropsychiatric cases, except psychosis, epilepsy, and ‘constitutional psychopaths,’ were accepted.

Along with Asheville, N.C., Sun Valley’s was the only facility that accepted all members of the naval service, including officers, enlisted men and WAVES. The maximum complement of staff and patients was reached shortly before V-J Day when 1,603 naval personnel were aboard.

An integrated rehabilitation program was started in 1944, to provide orthopedic surgery. The mental and physical wounds of 6,578 Navy, Marine and Coast Guard patients were treated there through Dec. 1, 1945.

The Valley Sun’s article, Sun Valley Joins the Navy, described the Navy’s takeover of the Resort for the U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital: Sun Valley’s buildings sheltered the convalescing patients.  The lobby of the Inn was the reading room.

The first floor was Ward A where the doctor and dentist offices were located.  The second floor was Ward B where patients were placed two to a room--there were no open wards.  The Café Continental was the mess hall, the Ram was the officers and nurses mess and the Camera Shop was the laboratory.  

The Lodge was also taken over by the Navy.  The front office desk was used by the Officer of the Day.  The bell-boys room was the office of the master-at-arms forces.  The Duchin Room was the accounting office.

Sun Valley’s sports offered everything from horseshoe games to lift rides to the top of Baldy. The tennis and badminton courts, golf course, bowling alley, skeet field, ice rinks and swimming pools were in use, and Trail Creek tested the patients’ fishing skills.    

“Certainly, this is an ideal location for an institution dedicated to promotion of convalescence of Navy men,” opined one newspaper article.  “In such surroundings, patients should soon forget the horrors of war and, having their minds at peace, rediscover the beauty and grandeur of this, our United States, as well as their own good health.”

The Army’s lease of the lodges at Mount Rainier ended in May 1942, and the 87th returned to Fort Lewis where they continued training. The Army decided to establish a new larger Mountain Training Center at Camp Carson, Colo., to expand the initial 87th Regiment to a three-regiment division, which would make up a full division.

Camp Carson, which was renamed Camp Hale, was located 30 miles south of Vail, between Leadville and Red Cliff at an elevation of 9,200 feet above sea level. Eventually, 15,000 soldiers were stationed there.  

Construction at Camp Hale began in April 1942, and winter warfare training began there in fall 1942.  In November 1942, the 87th Infantry Regiment was transferred from Fort Lewis to Camp Hale.

In December 1942, the 99th Battalion arrived at Camp Hale. It consisted of native Norwegians to train for an invasion of Norway, and the Army requested that the National Ski Association provide 2,000 more men to train at Camp Hale in three months.  

Before the 87th moved from Fort Lewis to Camp Hale, Lt. John Woodward was asked to select 100 to 200 ski instructors to write manuals on skiing and mountain training, select training areas, and have everything ready when the new training facility opened.

Woodward’s Mountain Training Center wrote manuals that were used at Fort Hale.  The center included the division’s top instructors who were in charge of ski training and mountain climbing operations, “and as a result thousands of men became competent skiers under his command,” said Woodward’s biography in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.  

In July 1943, the 10th Light Division (Alpine) was formed at Camp Hale, which was redesignated as the 10th Mountain Division on November 6, 1944. A rocker was added over the division patch saying “Mountain,” the first such designation in U.S. military history.  

In August 1943, the 87th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division participated in an Allied assault on the Aleutian Island of Kiska.  Unknown to the soldiers, the Japanese troops had already evacuated the island, and during the foggy conditions two officers and nine enlisted men were killed by friendly fire.  This relatively unknown part of the 10th’s history was told in Bradley Benedict’s book, Ski Troops in the Mud.

The 10th Mountain Division fought in the mountains of Italy in some of the roughest terrain in World War II.  Its initial mission was to dislodge Germans from their artillery positions in the Northern Apennine Mountains on the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna regions in order to make possible the Allied advance through the Po Valley.

The 10th was responsible for the Mount Belvedere area, climbing nearby Riva Ridge during the night of Feb. 18. They attacked Mount della Torraccia on Feb. 20, in what was the 10th Mountain Division’s most famous battle. These peaks were cleared after four days of heavy fighting.

During World War II, the 10th Mountain Division had 992 men killed in action and 4,154 wounded in action in 114 days of combat.  Soldiers of the division were awarded one Medal of Honor (John D. Magrath), three Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, 449 Silver Star Medals, seven Legion of Merit Medals, 15 Soldier's Medals, and 7,729 Bronze Star Medals. The division itself was awarded two campaign streamers.

In 1945, John Woodward went to Italy with the 10th Mountain Division.  He was executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry as a Major (later Lt. Colonel), and won the Bronze Star and Oak Leaf Cluster for heroism.

After the war, like many of the veterans of the 10th Mountain Division, Woodward played a major role in developing the ski industry.  He ran the Seattle Times ski racing school at the Milwaukee Ski Bowl at Hyak. In 1950, he became a partner in Anderson-Thompson Ski Company where he spent 25 years.  He patented the first flexible heel release binding.

EDITOR’S NOTE: John W. Lundin is a lawyer and author who divides his time between Sun Valley and Seattle. His award-winning history books include “Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings.” Today’s article on the 10th Mountain Division is the third in a three-part series that includes articles published in Eye on Sun Valley on Nov. 11 and 16.