Editor’s note: This Veterans Day, take a look at the 10th Mountain Division and its connections to Seattle and Sun Valley. And, then, catch Chris Anthony’s films “Mission Mt. Mangart” and “Friedl” at Ketchum Community Library tonight and Wednesday, Nov. 12.

STORY BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN W. LUNDIN

The story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and its training facility at Camp Hale, Colo., is well known.  However, relatively little is known about the Army’s initial training of ski troops at Mt. Rainier in Washington beginning in 1940, before the U.S. entered WW II in December 1941.

Capt. Paul Lafferty and Lt. John Woodward teach recruits on Mt. Rainier.

And virtually nothing has been written about Averell Harriman’s offer to allow the Army to use Sun Valley as a training facility for ski troops in 1941 and the resort’s other contributions to war effort.

One man is credited for the creation of army mountain troops--Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole (1900 - 1976), who helped to form the National Ski Patrol in 1939, then become its president.  Dole was assisted by John E.P. Morgan, one of the founders of the National Ski Patrol and its treasurer.

Morgan was one of Averell Harriman’s advisors when, as Chairman of the Board, Averell had Union Pacific Railroad build Sun Valley as the country’s first destination ski resort in 1936.  Morgan and Charles Proctor laid out Sun Valley’s ski mountains, ski lifts and designed a series of back country skiing routes around the resort.

Dole, according to his book Adventures in Skiing, and Morgan were influenced by the performance of Finnish soldiers on skis who annihilated two tank divisions after the Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939 during the Fino-Russian war.

Walter Prager rappels on Mount Rainier. American Ski Annual 1944.

The Battle of Suomussalmi took place on the Karelian Isthmus, which was honeycombed with canals, marshes and frozen inlets.  A lightly armed contingent of 11,000 swiftly-moving Finnish ski troops surrounded a heavily armed Russian force of 50,000 that was supported by tanks and trapped them on a single mountain road.

The ski troops nimbly kicked and glided through the snow-laden pines, then encircled the hapless Russians, and either shot them or waited for their food and firewood to run out.  Finnish soldiers on skis would attack the Russians with bottles of lighted gasoline and rifles, then ski off, unbuckle their skis, strap them on their backs, don ice skates and whisk away across the ice.

More than 13,000 Russians were killed and the Finns seized 43 tanks.

Dole and Morgan unsuccessfully lobbied the War Department for the creation of a unit of mountain troops, meeting strong resistance from Army officers who would not consider anything outside the regular military organization.  In the summer of 1940, Dole wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt about his idea and offered to have the National Ski Patrol recruit skiers for the unit.

Mountain troops march at Fort Lewis, Wash.

A few months later, relying on their Ivy League contacts, Dole and Morgan went to Washington D.C. to meet with War Department officials to again try and persuade them about the necessity of creating a special group of ski troopers. They finally met with Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall and pointed out the recent success of German mountain troops in their invasions of mountainous Norway and Greece.

General Marshall committed to forming six small experimental ski units and directed the Army to develop clothing and equipment for mountain forces.  The Army initiated military ski exercises with small groups of volunteers, who became the first Army ski patrols, to train at Mount Rainier, Wash.; Lake Placid, N.Y.; Old Forge, N.Y.; Camp McCoy, Wis., and Fort Richardson, Alaska.

In the fall of 1940, Gen. Marshall selected Fort Lewis, Wash., as a site for the development of ski warfare tactics and equipment.  The Army began training what were known as ski troops and testing winter equipment at Mount Rainier with soldiers from the Regular Army’s Company C, 3rd Division, 15th Infantry Regiment from Fort Lewis, and the National Guard’s 41st Division from Camp Murray.

Fort Lewis, named for Meriwether Lewis, consisted of 87,000 acres located south of Tacoma, Wash.  There were 8,000 men stationed at Fort Lewis in July 1940, which expanded to 37,000 soldiers by the end of the year.  Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower became the Fort’s commander when the war broke out.

Lt. John Jay filmed much of the 10th Mountain Division’s activities for future generations to see.

One of the benefits of Fort Lewis was the proximity of Mount Rainier, which could be used by troops for winter warfare training.

Mount Rainier attracted the military for the same basic reason that it attracted natural scientists and tourists: it stood out as an "arctic island in a temperate sea."

The vertical zones that made the fauna and flora of Mount Rainier so diverse and beautiful also made the area a good place to find terrain and weather conditions that could simulate European winter conditions in the Alps. Snow and inclement weather were abundant and, if Army officers found the weather at Paradise too mild for their purposes, they only had to march their soldiers higher up the mountain to test cold-weather clothing and equipment under the most severe conditions.

Men tested sleeping bags and snow suits on the summit of Mount Rainier, including a kind of sleeping bag with legs and feet that they wore while doing sentry duty at night. One party of ski troops made a circuit around the mountain carrying rifles and 85-pound packs.

John Woodward was a top racer on the University of Washington ski team.  In late fall 1940, Woodward was recruited to be a ski and mountaineering instructor at Fort Lewis and was called up as a reserve officer.

In November 1940, Woodward took 18 volunteers from the 3rd Infantry Division of the 15th Infantry Regiment to Longmire in Mount Rainier National Park, where they spent six weeks testing equipment and learning skiing and mountaineering skills, living in a converted garage.

These were the army’s first ski patrols.  At the end of the unit’s training, Woodward led his men on a week-long trek from Snoqualmie Pass to Chinook Pass to test their newly acquired skills and the equipment being considered for use by the Army.

On Nov. 23, 1940, the Seattle Times published a picture of the National Guard’s 41st Division training on Mount Rainier, advising “Army to Train Large Number in Use of Skis.” “Training of troops for ski patrol tactics will be rotated so a large number of men will be schooled in that type of warfare.”  

Ordinary bed sheets were used as camouflage to blend the soldiers with the snow. The main body of the regiment was equipped with snowshoes, which did not require the same skill and special training as skis. Fast-moving ski patrols could harass enemy troops at vulnerable points in hit-and-run sorties.

The need for specialized mountain troops became a high priority in summer 1941.  In April 1941, Germany’s mountain troops invaded mountainous Yugoslavia.  A memo to the Army’s General Staff described a battle in the Balkans where the army was defeated by German mountain troops due to its “lack of well-equipped mountain troops, organized, clothed, equipped, conditioned and trained for both winter and mountain fighting.”

In all, 25,000 troops were killed, 10,000 were frozen and large numbers were captured, highlighting their inability to fight in the mountains in winter conditions.  The memo concluded that “such units cannot be improvised hurriedly from line divisions.  They require long periods of hardening and experience for which there is no substitute.”

On Oct. 22, 1941, Gen. Marshall authorized the formation of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington, to train on Mount Rainier. The regiment would eventually consist of approximately 1,000 men.

Soldiers were transferred into the 87th Regiment from the 3rd, 41st, and 44th Divisions stationed at Fort Lewis.  On Nov. 15, 1941, the Army formed a new experimental oversized unit--the 1st Battalion, 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment (Reinforced).

Nothing like it had existed before in the entire history of the U.S. Military, according to a history of the 10th Mountain Division written by John Jay.  

In November 1941, Lt. Col. Onslow S. Rolfe, a calvary officer who did not know how to ski, became commander of the 87th Regiment. In February 1942, Rolfe leased Paradise Lodge and the Tatoosh Club in Rainier National Park from the National Park Service for use by the 87th.

The troops trained on Mount Rainier, testing ski equipment and learning skiing techniques, carrying loads up to 90 pounds.  They had excellent mountaineering and ski training on Rainier. But, since they were in a national park, they were not allowed to use either live or blank ammunition.  

Additionally, while the soldiers had exclusive use of the Park’s rope tow during the week, they had to share it with civilian skiers on the weekends.

Rolfe insisted they were not “ski troops” but, rather, “mountain troops” where “skiing will play only a small part.”

Capt. Paul Lafferty and Lt. John Woodward were in charge of training the 87th and had to decide whether the ski troops would use Swiss or Austrian ski techniques.  Both favored the Swiss technique, which relied on stemming, unweighting and weight transfer to make turns.  

The Arlberg technique used an exaggerated upper-body rotation that caused a person to swing too much when wearing a heavy pack.

Only two soldiers in the 87th were from Switzerland and knew the Swiss technique. Those were ski race champion and Dartmouth ski coach Walter Prager and mountaineer Peter Gabriel.

There were a number of Austrians in the 87th who balked at using the Swiss technique.  Given that, Woodward and Lafferty decided the mountain troops would be taught a “modified Arlberg,” using the leg part of the technique but not the shoulder part when wearing a pack.

Charles Bradley in his book, Aleutian Echo, described his training on Mount Rainier with the 87th in 1942:

“We spoke very quietly and learned downhill techniques as fast as possible...When we were finally carrying rifles, a common misjudgment of speed and control could end with the load lifting the skier off the snow, rolling him forward in the air and driving him head first back into the snow.  The rifle, lagging slightly, would now catch up and deliver the coup de grace by whacking the skier on the head.”

The men who arrived at Fort Lewis represented a "who's who" of skiing consisting of John Litchfield, Bob Parker, Steve Knowlton and Larry Jump, who came from New England colleges, while other big skiing names, like Friedl Pfeifer and Walter Prager, were European transplants.

John Jay entered the 10th as one of the top ski cinematographers of the period. The men at Fort Lewis possessed a love and respect for the outdoors, and were dedicated to skiing and other wilderness activities...The Oregon Journal called this first mountain regiment the "Army's greatest sports school."

The troops at Paradise Lodge cross country skied all around Mount Rainier while carrying up to 90 lbs. of gear in their rucksacks. The combination of training at high altitude and consistently carrying large amounts of gear worked the members of the 87th and the rest of the 10th into great shape as they faced some of the toughest training in the U.S. military.

That said, the Army had little experience with ski equipment.  Ski patrols purchased civilian gear and told the Army what worked best.

Boots were a big problem.  The soles on civilian boots would tear off when a soldier fell with a full pack. Their first boots had Tricouni nails that were only good for ice climbing.  Bramani soles were just coming out and the army mountain boots eventually used them.

All their skis had metal edges.  The 15th used a rucksack made by Ome Daiber, a Seattle-area mountaineer, with a metal tubing frame.  The pack used by the 41st had a rattan frame that was suitable for civilian use but couldn’t be thrown out of a truck like a metal-frame pack.

Woodward and Daiber experimented with a foam rubber pad for sleeping, which worked well. But the Navy had priority on rubber and the Army couldn’t get enough for their use.

Mountain troops made bough beds on maneuvers.  Daiber’s Penguin sleeping bags were great for sentry duty but too bulky for combat.  The Army’s two-man tent was heavy and cramped. It was water-proofed which was fine in summer. But it would get frosty inside in the winter. Ski patrols used one-man tents that could be zipped together to create a common area for cooking and moving around and worked well for sleeping.

Soon, top skiers from all over the country enlisted in the 87th.  Two of the most experienced were Captain Paul Lafferty and Lt. John Woodward, who transferred into the new unit after spending the prior year training mountain troops on Mount Rainier.

Ski instructors and racers from all over the country became enlisted men and were given the job of teaching flatland soldiers to ski in eight weeks.  Ski instructors came from Sun Valley, Mt. Hood, Franconia Notch, Yosemite and elsewhere.

Swiss national champion and Dartmouth ski coach Walter Prager arrived in April 1942, after teaching paratroopers to ski at Alta, Utah, with Dick Durrance. Prager missed the instruction period but came in time for maneuvers, and taught rock climbing skills.

Italian Swiss born Peter Gabriel, a well-known skier and mountaineer, made the greatest contribution to the mountain troops.   Other well-known skiers who joined the mountain troops included Torger Tokle, a Norwegian who held the American Ski Jumping distance record; Friedl Pfeifer, an Austrian ski champion and head of the Sun Valley Ski School; and Lt. John Jay, a well-known ski coach and ski photographer, who was borrowed from the Signal Corps to handle photography.  

Sun Valley instructors and ski racers who joined Pfeifer in the 10th Mountain Division included Florian Haemmerle, Andy Hennig, John Litchfield, Pepi Teichner, Walter Prager, John Woodward, Paul Lafferty, Nelson Bennett, Edmund Bennett, Toni Matt, Barney McLean, Gordon Wren, Wendall Cram, and Bill Klein.

Others with Sun Valley connections were Ken Back, Barney Becker, Barney Bell, Ralph Bromaghin (for whom Bromaghin Peak is named), Gordon Butterfield, Fritz Ehrl, Leon Goodman, Don Goodman, Alex Gordon, Victor Gottschalk, Ted Handwerk (for whom Handwerk Peak is named), Willi Helming, Chelton Leonard, George Loudis, Donald Marburg, Freddy Peren, Phil Puchner, Dale Rank, Peter Riehl, Olaf Rodegard, Adolph Roubicek, James Saviers, Karl Stingle, Pepi Teichner, Frank Unamino, Lou Whitcher, Percy Rideout and Hans Moser.  

By the end of summer 1942, many of the nation’s top-notch skiers had come to Fort Lewis.  They were said to be impressive names in the ski annals. But to the mountain troops they were just so many more privates to be steered through a stiff eight-week training period before being assigned to the various line companies.

Seattle newspapers published detailed reports about the mountain troops that were training on Mount Rainier.  Reporters witnessed training exercises and their articles contained pictures of the soldiers in action.

In mid-February 1942, the Seattle Times reported that 350 men moved into Paradise Lodge for winter maneuvers on Mount Rainier, 85 percent of whom were non-skiers taking ski classes.

Paul Lafferty, of Eugene, Ore., was in charge of the ski maneuvers, directing 40 ski instructors.  Olav Rodegaard was in charge of instructing officers.  The men of the 87th--all of whom were volunteers from other units--resented being called “ski troopers,” insisting they were “mountain troopers.”  

The unit’s goal was to perform tactical missions in every conceivable style of mountain country, snow or no snow, with all types of military equipment. The units often traveled in country not meant for mechanized equipment, reporters noted: “The mountain troopers’ work begins where motor and rail transportation end, and each unit and each man will be self-sufficient.”

The Seattle Times noted that the men’s commander had made an intensive study of the mountain troops of other countries, applying their lessons and inventing a number of others: “Drills include strange commands of ‘right shoulder skis’ instead of ‘right shoulder arms’ and ‘mount skis’ instead of ‘mount steeds.’ ”

The 87th was a highly specialized pioneer branch that trained six days a week for six weeks on the mountain, doing rigorous dawn-to-dusk work as they learned to operate in  mountainous terrain.  Only 30 percent were experienced skiers, although they were some of the country’s best-known amateur and professional skiers, and they instructed the rest of the men.

The troops learned how to build snow igloos that could hold four men, with vents to provide fresh air and a place for observation periscopes.  The men wore parkas that were khaki on one side and white on the reverse, which made them almost invisible in the mountains.

“Troop rations are being tested with a view of cutting down the bulk and increasing the calorie content,” the Seattle Times reported. “Each man carries a one-man tent, a small gasoline stove, and field equipment for individual sustenance many days in the field.

The men were very healthy and had high morale and were proudly known as mountain troops, the newspaper observed. The unit had two kinds of motor toboggans--one driven by an airplane propeller powered by a motor mounted on ski-like runners and the other a tractor-type sled driven by a motorcycle engine.

Only problem was: Ordinary soldiers were not volunteering in sufficient numbers to expand the Regiment into a full division.  In late 1941 the Army asked the National Ski Patrol to assist in recruiting qualified men for the ski troops.

The Army made the National Ski Patrol an official recruiting agency, and Charles Minot Dole was asked to recruit 2,500 men with winter and mountain experience in 60 days for the 87th Infantry. Dole’s philosophy: “Make soldiers out of skiers, don’t try to make skiers out of soldiers.”  

The National Ski Association and the National Ski Patrol ran ads in newspapers near ski areas seeking experienced 18- to 20-year-old volunteers.

Men who had lived and worked in the mountains, such as rock climbers, trappers, packers, guides, prospectors and timber cruisers, were preferred.  If they skied, so much the better.  Applications of other men who could show evidence of exceptional fitness were considered, even though applicants had no broad mountain experience.  The emphasis was on toughness.

The National Ski Patrol obtained 2,500 qualified men for the 87th, recruited from all over the country, within the deadline.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Learned what happened next and how Sun Valley Resort’s Averell Harriman fit in the picture in Part II of John W. Lundin’s story on the 10th Mountain Division. The article will appear in the Sunday, Nov. 16, Eye on Sun Valley.

John W. Lundin, who divides his time between Sun Valley and Seattle, is the author of several history books, including “Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass” and “Ski Jumping in Washington State.”