Elite Army Division Soldiers Gear Up to Go the Distance

In the past decade, they’ve become the most called-upon Army unit in a generation. They’ve fought through sniper fire in the streets of Somalia, marched across Iraqi deserts and played a leading role in keeping peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Ready for either hand-to-hand combat or peacekeeping missions, the light infantrymen of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division have a new assignment that again will take them far from their families at Ft. Drum in northern New York. A first wave of 1,000 soldiers is being dispatched to Uzbekistan, a country not unfamiliar to the group. The soldiers spent time training there in 1997 and 1998.

At least initially, their job will not involve combat in Afghanistan, although Uzbekistan borders that country and is being considered as a base for U.S. military operations. They’re being assigned to provide security for Uzbek air bases that will be used for humanitarian missions, such as food drops.

Division Started as Fighters on Skis

The history of the 10th is a rich one. Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was a member of that division when he was severely wounded in Italy during World War II. In fact, the division traces its roots to the Army’s first mountain infantry battalion formed on Dec. 8, 1941--the day after the Pearl Harbor attack--at the urging of Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole (no relation to Bob Dole).

Charles Dole, who was president of the National Ski Patrol, had spent months lobbying President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Department for creation of U.S. “mountain troops” because of a humiliating defeat suffered by Russian soldiers in 1939.

In November that year, when the Soviet Union invaded Finland, Finnish soldiers on skis annihilated two tank divisions, humbling the Russians. Dole saw this as a perfect example of why the U.S. Army needed mountain troops, and Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff, ultimately agreed to Dole’s plan to train fighting ski units.

The first soldiers, who trained on Mt. Rainier’s 14,408-foot-peak near Fort Lewis, Wash., were dubbed “Minnie’s Ski Troops,” after Dole’s nickname.

That division entered combat in January 1945, in the northern Apennine mountains of Italy, facing German positions along a five-mile-long ridge. The attack under cover of darkness led to a crucial German defeat.

Four months later, with help from other units, the 10th Mountain Division launched an offensive toward Italy’s Po Valley to mark the final phase of the war in Europe. Fighting was fierce, and 553 mountain infantrymen were killed, missing or wounded on the first day, including Bob Dole.

But times have changed. Because the 10th division has been deployed more in recent years in such places as the Persian Gulf, Somalia and even on a peacekeeping mission to Haiti, its members now train more in wooded flatlands. They no longer have artillery or heavy tanks, instead learning to fight with what they can carry on their backs.

‘They’re a Much More Lethal Force’ Now

The division members spent a month in November 1998 training in the Mojave Desert, a far cry from the original “Minnie’s Ski Troops.” Their former commander, Brig. Gen. Lawson W. Magruder III, says the troops are in trim fighting shape and ready for any role they’re asked to play.

“They’re a much more lethal force than in 1992-93,” he said, referring to the Gulf War and duty in Somalia.

Between service in the Persian Gulf and Somalia, these members of the Army’s most frequently deployed division were even sent to South Florida in August 1992, to help victims of the devastating Hurricane Andrew. Later the division was called upon to deliver meals to people isolated by a 1998 ice storm in the Northeast.

In interviews with reporters who visited Ft. Drum in recent years, members of the 10th have expressed far more interest in combat roles than in their peacekeeping missions. And they have said their frequent deployments have put a strain on family life.

“It’s been a fast train,” said Staff Sgt. Terry Abbott, who noted that his three overseas assignments in a five-year period put major stress on his marriage. “I’m on my second family now.”

Sgt. Stan Seidel agreed, saying his wife left him three years ago because “Bosnia did us in.”