{"id":68715,"date":"2016-11-01T09:47:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T13:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=68715"},"modified":"2016-11-01T09:47:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T13:47:36","slug":"10th-mountain-division-returns-to-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=68715","title":{"rendered":"10th Mountain Division returns to Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"10th_Mountain\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

For decades the 10th Mountain Division has been stationed at Fort Drum, New York – the flatest terrain in New York State. I seem to remember that one unit of the division was at Fort Polk, Louisiana, again mountainless. Our buddy, Nina Bookout at Victory Girls<\/a> reports that the Division now has a National Guard unit at Camp Hale, Colorado, where the division began it’s storied history before World War II;<\/p>\n

These American soldier skiers were instrumental in turning the tide of war to Allied Victory at Riva Ridge, Mount Belvedere, Mount Della Torracia and Lake Garda. One of their own, PFC John Magrath, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. After the war, many went on to serve as ski instructors, establish ski areas by the name of Vail, Aspen, Arapahoe Basin, or as one soldier by the name of Bob Dole did, enter the world of politics.<\/p>\n

In the 1950\u2019s Camp Hale served as a training ground for the Mountain Cold Weather Training Command. It became so due to the fact that those serving in Korea were ill-equipped to handle the weather and terrain. I\u2019m proud to say that my father, Tyler Dodge, was one of those instructors. Others with the same command went on to establish new ski areas \u2013 Chuck Lewis with Copper Mountain, work as geologists, or become engineers who now enjoy a second career as an artist, and others became business owners or entered into politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the Vail Daily<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Now official members of the third maneuver battalion of the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Mountain), organized under the 10th Mountain Division, many of the 300 to 400 troops of the 550-member battalion who were present on Sunday will learn vertical and high angle movement on rock faces like those at Camp Hale. Other troops will learn skills like inserting themselves into high altitude alpine terrain, long range weapon operation in mountainous terrain and high-altitude marksmanship. Some will even learn to ski.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a National Guard Unit, we don\u2019t have the time to train every single day,\u201d said Lt. Col. John W. Hancher with the 157th Infantry. \u201cSo we wanted to spread out the knowledge and experience throughout the entire battalion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the 157th Infantry\u2019s re-patching on Sunday, the 10th Mountain Division patch was for active duty personnel only. The troops who were re-designated Sunday are part of a pilot program where the part-time servicemen and servicewomen with the Colorado National Guard\u2019s first battalion of the 157th Infantry are now organized under the 10th Mountain Division. Captain Rich Piltinsrud was among the troops to receive the new designation; he was one of only a few selected to have their patches adhered to their shoulders by an original member of the 10th Mountain Division who trained at Camp Hale in the \u201840s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nina was at the re-patching ceremony and took some good pictures, you should click over and look at them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades the 10th Mountain Division has been stationed at Fort Drum, New York – the … 10th Mountain Division returns to Colorado<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-army-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}