The Ski Troops of WWII
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2016
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
The 10th Mountain Division fought in World War II for only four months, but it had one of the highest casualty rates of the war. The division started out as an experiment to train skiers and climbers to fight in the mountains. The men of the 10th went on to lead a series of daring assaults against the German army in the mountains of Italy.
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| 0:00.0 | Radiotopia. |
| 0:02.0 | From PRX. |
| 0:05.0 | From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 0:09.0 | Dan Kennerly was a soldier in World War II, and he kept a diary. |
| 0:14.0 | Wednesday, February 14, 1945. |
| 0:17.0 | This morning, I'm up at 9 a.m. I eat and work in my Jeep. Sargent tells me in Slim Crowder that |
| 0:23.5 | Parker is down with a bad back and that one of us will have to take his place. Slim says that he has a |
| 0:28.6 | bad ankle and can't walk. Me like a damn fool volunteer to take his place. Why I do this, I'll never know. |
| 0:35.7 | Right now I'm really pissed off at myself. |
| 0:40.1 | Kennerly grew up in the South, in Georgia. He'd never seen snow actually stick to the ground. |
| 0:46.1 | But in World War II, he decided to volunteer for an unlikely new unit of the U.S. Army, the ski troops. |
| 0:53.0 | They were officially called the 10th Mountain Division. |
| 0:56.0 | It began as an experiment to train skiers and climbers to fight in the most difficult |
| 1:00.0 | mountainous terrain in Europe. |
| 1:02.0 | Some of the men who joined the division were skiers already. |
| 1:05.0 | Others had never seen a ski in their lives. |
| 1:08.0 | Along with skiing, they were trained in sn-shoeing and rock climbing, and they |
| 1:12.3 | learned things like how to build a snow cave. With all this training, the men of the 10th |
| 1:18.2 | Mountain Division would go on to lead a series of daring assaults against the German |
| 1:22.0 | army in the mountains of Italy. The 10th Mountain Division would also have one of the highest |
| 1:26.5 | casualty rates of the war. |
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