BRATTLEBORO-The Brattleboro Literary Festival will hold its first Literary Cocktail Hour of 2025 online on Friday, Jan. 10, at 5 p.m. The discussion that will showcase the new book, Ski, Climb, Fight: The 10th Mountain Division and the Rise of Mountain Warfare, by Lance R. Blyth.
Blyth's book examines how the 10th Mountain Division of World War II met the challenges of fighting in the mountains, where armies must overcome the challenges via survival strategies and mobility, and how the U.S. military does so today, according to event coordinators writing in a news release.
In the fall of 1944, Gen. Lucian Truscott, commander of the Fifth Army, assigned the center of the offensive against the Germans - the effort in the highest elevations - to the 10th Mountain Division, elite American troops specially trained in mountain climbing, skiing, and survival in cold weather.
Five years earlier, the president of the National Ski Patrol had written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposing that the Army train special units for fighting in mountain terrain, citing the effectiveness of ski troops in Finland's defense against the Soviets earlier that year.
Gen. George Marshall agreed with the idea and gave the go-ahead.
The Army formed the 10th Mountain Division and recruited experienced skiers and university athletes, including Vermonters with ties to The Putney School, such as Bing Briggs, George Heller, Ted Moore, John Quisenberry, and Donald Watt Jr.
In addition to normal infantry instruction, these men underwent rigorous training in rock climbing and mountain survival.
Blyth is command historian of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command. His previous book Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680–1880, which examines two centuries of violence in northern Mexico, received the David J. Weber Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America.
To participate, sign up at bit.ly/797-skiclimbfight.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.