Non-fiction Review: The Winter Army

Title: The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors

Author: Maurie Isserman. Narrated by Brian Troxell

Publication Info: Audible Audio, 2019. Hardcover 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages
Source: Library digital resoures
 
Publisher's Blurb/Goodreads:
The epic story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, whose elite soldiers broke the last line of German defenses in Italy’s mountains in 1945, spearheading the Allied advance to the Alps and final victory.

At the start of World War II, the US Army had two cavalry divisions—and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions, some of whom by 1943 blocked the Allied advance in the Italian campaign. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers, and others with outdoor experience. The resulting mix of Ivy League students, park rangers, Olympic skiers, and European refugees formed the first specialized alpine fighting force in US history. By the time it deployed to Italy at the beginning of 1945, this ragtag group had coalesced into a tight-knit unit. In the months that followed, at a terrible cost, they spearheaded the Allied drive in Italy to final victory.

Ranging from the ski slopes of Colorado to the towering cliffs of the Italian Alps, The Winter Army is a saga of an unlikely band of soldiers forged in the heat of combat into a brotherhood whose legacy lives on in US mountain fighters to this day.

My Review: 

I’m a sucker for interesting books about bits of WWII, as well as for books about mountaineering and outdoor adventures, so of course I had to check this one out. I got the audiobook from my library, and enjoyed it, but didn’t find it as compelling as I expected. The story is well-written, and many of the players are familiar: David Brower (Sierra Club), Fred Beckey (who wrote THE mountaineering guides to the Cascades), and a couple of other names I knew all showed up on the roster of the 10th Mountain Division.

 

What held it back was in part how much of the book was about the drive to create the force, and the initial struggles to get it going. The other disappointment was finding out just how little of their mountain training they ended up using. I knew about the elite mountain troops, and somehow I had thought they got to prove that their training and expertise were worth it. Instead, they had very little opportunity to do so, though they fought valiantly and well when they got to Italy, and played no small role in the Allied victory there. They just didn't get to do it on skis.

 

Reality interfered with a great story, and left us with a very good story, well told. This was an unusual bunch of men, many of whom chose to serve as enlisted men in the 10th rather than as officers elsewhere. They deserve their own chapter in the history books, and I am glad to have read it. Kudos to the narrator as well, for an excellent delivery that never called attention to itself.

My Recommendation:

Another worthwhile chapter for those interested in those who fought WWII, and how they did it, with a bonus for the skiing and mountaineering.

FTC Disclosure: I checked The Winter Army out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

R: Last of his Kind, by David Roberts

It's a shame I didn't need W instead, but there it is.  Instead of pegging it to the amazing mountaineer whose story this is, I've tied it to the biographer's name.





Title: The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer 
Author: David Roberts
Publisher:William Morrow, 2009

Review:
This one needs no summary, because it's all there in the subtitle.  It is the life of Brad Washburn, June 7, 1910 to January 10, 2007.  Washburn was an adventurer, an early climber and explorer of Alaska's mountains who began a love affair with climbing in the Alps as a teenager.  He was also a photographer and a pilot, and he was David Roberts' mentor.  The accounts of climbs are concise and vivid, and the personal relations are treated with gentle care, so that we do see Washburn as a whole person, but I never lost sight of the fact that Roberts loved and admired his mentor. 

Roberts insists that Washburn's greatest accomplishments are in his first ascents of a number of remote Alaskan peaks, with a secondary nod to his truly extraordinary photography (several examples of which are in the book).  But I agree with Washburn, who considered his greatest accomplishment to be his work with the Boston Museum of Science, where as Director for many decades he took the museum from the dusty do-not-touch model common at the time to be one of the leaders in the hands-on interactive museum style.  Helping to pioneer that movement is, in my opinion, a truly great act.

My only other complaint about the book is that Roberts spends a long chapter near the end recounting a couple of his own expeditions.  They are interesting to read about, and Washburn was instrumental in setting him off on them, but they are not really part of Washburn's story.  Roberts can be forgiven this bit of self-indulgence, however. 

Recommendation: For those who like mountains, mountaineering, and stories of the great adventurers of a nearly a century ago.  Also those who don't mind just a touch of hagiography.

Full Disclosure: I was given The Last of His Kind  by a friend with no connection to the author, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

P is for Pete the Peak-Bagging Pika

 This week, Chuck just gave us an opening-line challenge, with the intent that we pick one and write a story next week.  Of course, I could have been clever and used one line this week and one next week, but instead I decided to make a story that really fit my theme and my letter!  So, in 807 words, I bring you:

Pete the Peak-Bagging Pika

Pika Pete wasn't like the other pikas.  Oh, they all liked the rocky talus slopes high up on the mountains.  But for most of them it was enough to find a burrow near an alpine meadow where they could harvest their winter provisions and watch the seasons change from the front porch.  Pete was different.

Pete would sit on his front porch and, instead of looking down over the meadow and thinking about eating grass and harvesting stalks of delicious flowers, and preparing for winter, he would look up at the high peaks and dream about climbing them.  He already had the top apartment in the talus, so high he harvested the columbine and sky pilot that grew among the rocks, or climbed to the next meadow, rather than joining his neighbors down below.  Yet he still wanted to go higher.

"I don't know why," Pete told his neighbor, Pika Paul.  "I just do.  I want to climb to where I can see in every direction at once.  The rock pile is so confining."

"The rock pile is safe," said Paul.  "If you can see in all directions, you're hawk-bait.  A pika needs a tunnel at his back."

Pete knew that.  But he could see that even the tops of mountains had rocks.  So surely he could find shelter at need, however high he went.

One day Pete decided to stop thinking about climbing the mountain and start actually climbing.  It was summer, so there were plants everywhere he could eat on the way.  He'd gathered an extra-large pile of stems and leaves the day before, and they were carefully laid out on his porch to dry for the winter.  He could afford a day or two for adventure.

With a cheery “eep-eep” to his neighbors, Pete started climbing.  It was easy as long as he was on the talus.  Pikas are very good at running over rocks, almost as though gravity was only for lesser, two-legged creatures.

At the top of the rocks was another meadow.  Pete paused, scanned earth and sky for danger, and dashed to the other side.  He then snuck back out for a mouthful or two of grass.  That was one danger passed, and a good time for a snack!  Then he was off, climbing through a new jumble of rocks.

Pete repeated this process for hours.  Sometimes the bare patches were larger or smaller, the plants swaying columbines or tiny mat plants, but he kept going, aside from pauses to nibble when he got hungry.  Gradually the rocks grew smaller and the bare patches barer. The slope was very steep and sometimes slippery with gravel.  Pete got tired.  Pikas are tough alpine animals, but they are used to running in short bursts, not trotting uphill all day.

At last Pete realized that he wouldn’t be able to finish his climb in a single day.  The “summit” he had seen from his porch was only a ridge on the way up, and the top of the mountain was much higher and farther off than he’d imagined.

A bit of a search found some cubbies under the rocks.  Pete rejected a couple of them because they smelled of other animals, or things he wasn’t sure of.  But not many things lived so high, and soon he found a snug hole, dragged in a few sprigs of phlox, and settled down for a good rest.  Pete found he could sleep anywhere, as long as it was under a rock.

In the morning, Pete went on.  An hour or so later, he nearly gave up.  A big field of snow blocked his way.  Snow!  In mid-summer!  As a pika he of course knew all about snow.  He spent long winters hiding from the snow, snug in his den with his provisions all around him providing insulation as well as dinner.  In the spring he and his fellow pikas had to deal with snow as provisions ran low, though they worked around it as much as possible.  But to meet snow now!  A pika was too easily seen against the white.  Crossing a snowfield was both cold and dangerous.

A little exploration, however, showed Pete a way around the snow, and he scuttled along, considering the idea that there might be places up here where the snow never did leave.  It was a strange thought.

Shortly after noon, Pete reached the summit.  A big pile of rocks gave him a safe approach and a cozy place to rest.  After a good look around for hawks and eagles, he stood for a minute on the very highest boulder, turning to look in all directions.

Everywhere he looked he saw another mountain. 

When Pete started back down from his first summit, he had a lot to think about.

He went down the far side.

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014