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June 9, 2005
[Have an opinion about the views expressed in this article? Sound
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By Michael S. Woodson
Last month, a platoon of about 40 Chilean army infantry froze
to death while trying to hike out of an Andean mountain blizzard.
It was the heaviest snowstorm in a decade, and some Chileans called
it a "snow tsunami." The tragedy carries a reminder for the U.S.
Army that ongoing and expanded mountain warfare training, research
and development must be a priority despite the fact most of our
troops today are fighting in urban and desert terrain.
The Koreas, Pakistan, Iran, Columbia, some Central Asian hot spots,
a few Himalayan backwaters and southern European ranges could expand
mountain challenges for the U.S. Army and Marines beyond Afghanistan.
Also, the complex history of invasions by the Chinese Red Army has
often occurred in mountainous border nations such as Tibet.
Higher mountain battlefields can prolong insurgencies, as the Peruvian
government learned from the Maoist Shining Path terrorist organization
that killed and tortured tens of thousands in the 1980s. Columbia
now deals with the FARC, another communist guerilla group, and in
Nepal, the Maoist rebels have become a force patterned after the
Shining Path, according to a recent BBC
report.
The Chilean storm did give up some survivors. CBS News interviewed
18-year-old Chilean Army survivor, Pvt. Juan Millar, reporting
his sad account:
" 'At one point, I fell to the ground and nearly fainted. But the
lieutenant told us to drop our backpacks and save our lives,' Millar
said."
"As Millar trudged through the knee-high snow, he watched comrades
- exhausted and disoriented - tumble into drifts. More experienced
corporals pulled some of them onto sleeping bags, which they used
as sleds to pull them down the slopes."
"But most of the soldiers were teenagers who began their military
service just last month, and had little experience with the fury
of such a storm. Millar, recovering at headquarters, is haunted
by the idea that some of the friends he saw fall never got up."
" 'They just stayed in the snow,' he said. 'The corporals had to
abandon them to save their own lives.' "
CBS also reported that Chilean General Gen. Emilio Cheyre relieved
three commanders from duty over the affected regiment and ordered
an investigation. Gen. Cheyre reportedly said, "The march should
not have been started, never, under those weather conditions. It
was the worst snowstorm in 30 years. And if it was started, it should
have been suspended. Those were officers specialized in mountaineering,
and they should have known better."
Soldiering in mountainous terrain has long been a major concern
of armies everywhere. In today's conflicts, international militants
will flee to sympathetic mountain communities, and native guerillas
will make their homes in them. Standing armies of aggressor nations
will fortify and use the mountains as natural defenses.
It may not comfort the Chileans to know that the Italian Army suffered
thousands of casualties from winter exposure after the Greeks forced
them into the Albanian mountains in the winter of 1940. This, and
some impressive winter warfare by the ski-trained Finnish Army against
the Russians in the winter of 1939-40, prompted U.S. National Ski
Patrol founder Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole and others to call for
specialized American mountain warfare training even as the United
States secretly prepared for World
War II, according to Colorado author Louis Dawson.
After hearing of Italy's losses to winter exposure, the U.S. Army
heeded Dole and formed the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment on Nov.
15, 1941. The fascinating history of the Army's absorption and expansion
of the mountain infantry regiments and their eventual development
into the 10th Mountain Division, may be found at Dawson's website
here.
Dawson wrote that the 10th Mountain Division later broke through
the German line of defense in the Apennine Mountains of Eastern
Italy and took the high ground in two key assaults. The first was
a surprise attack by the division's rock-climbing teams, who night
climbed the variable 1,700- to 2,000-foot rock face of Riva Ridge
and took Campiano Peak early on Feb. 19, 1945. The second assault
was on Mount Belvedere.
"This was the big one - the battle to gain the upper hand," Dawson
wrote. The 10th took the summit in less than a day to break the
German stranglehold on Italy, called the Gothic
Line. This silenced German artillery over a crucial route into
the Po Valley, which the allies soon breached, according to a compiled
history by the National
Association for the 10th Mountain Division, Inc..
While tragic, the loss of the Chilean platoon last month illustrated
the value of sound mountain warfare training despite techno-war
developments such as mountain-hugging, armed anti-personnel drones
and robotic infantry systems. Without such training, it is easy
to die in the mountains. The training should be tough but not foolish,
if U.S. experience has proven worthy. It should build confidence,
but not pride. For those who have seen the documentary movie, "Touching
the Void," about a separated climbing party of two in the Andes,
you can imagine how miserable surviving a high mountain crisis can
be, much less dying in one.
While it is true that the "perfect storm" scenario could kill or
injure the best of mountaineers, this should not be an occasion
for concluding that such deaths are inevitable. Every mountain event
is an occasion for learning and improving on worst-case scenarios.
Training is key and preparation is everything. The Army and Marine
Corps have ample resources for the technical, material, physical
and experiential aspects of mountain warfare, following a U.S. Army
commitment to training specialized mountain soldiers that is some
65 years old.
The Chilean platoon included brand-new enlistees, while U.S. mountain
warfare training is a more advanced proposition, following a gradual
hardening. However, in the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, we
learned how the battlefield conditions set by a remote enemy can
demand broad and deep mountain warfare training and preparation.
Had the opponent been a large standing army in its native mountains,
that invasion would have played out longer and harder, requiring
more mountain-trained forces than we may have had.
The operative lesson in the Chilean incident for planning and improving
future U.S. mountain warfare training programs is an appreciation
and respect for what mountains can do to the troops, and how to
improve their tolerance and performance under the worst possible
conditions.
Not surprisingly, this attitude says that we need more preparation,
not less, because we do not naturally measure up to the mountains.
That is the truth, and we can use it as a constant tension that
makes us limber enough to prevent error while boldly working to
improve our standing as a mountain-ready U.S.
military.
Fighting and winning battles in the mountains adds another dimension
of preparatory tension. Understanding the worst-case scenarios that
the mountains can dole out means we stay vigilant to avoid and prevent
them from befalling us. If better than the enemy at this, it could
be a factor in hastening victory in larger conventional battles.
So, what can the mountains do to people?
Mountains have the power to generate winds that can kill climbers
unless they make timely cover. They can blow essential gear beyond
reach, leaving troops less equipped for the heat-sapping environment.
They can drop the temperature before soldiers have dug in, forcing
them to build shelter in the conditions from which they sought shelter
in the first place. They can dump wet, freezing snow drifts on the
climbers, take their fingers and toes through frostbite, obscure
the climber's view until one walks off a ledge, divide troops, burn
their retinas with violent UV rays, or cut their lips with flying
ice crystals. They can disorient soldiers so they fail to properly
use essential gear. Goggles and lenses can fog, and small imbalances
in load or defects in footwear can lead to injuries that deepen
the risk of loss by causing lesser performance.
And there's more.
Altitude sickness can cause brains to swell, make noses bleed, trigger
migraines, bring nausea and cause fluid build-up in the lungs. Mountains
can melt snow in one's boots, cause dehydrating diarrhea from bacteria,
make climbers puke, tear their gear on rocky or abrasive edges,
crush them with snow slabs or rocky avalanches, pin them down or
break their limbs with a simple boulder or talus shift.
The mountain can slip their hands off invisible dew on a rock and
break a windpipe on a sharp edge the climber has just cleared by
his chin. The elevations can tempt climbers to rush into or out
of the mountains, risking a morbid fall - or an ambush. The mountain
can snap a femur if one slips into a posthole and launch over a
buried log the wrong way. And, of course, climbers can get lost
or lose the life-protecting equipment that they need.
All of these and more have happened to experienced mountaineers,
once again stressing the importance to mountain troops of having
the right attitude at altitude.
The perennial risks also support the need for advanced research
and training in human performance in the mountains, and on how to
prevent the longstanding pitfalls. The Army's memory of its battles
in the icy mountains of the Koreas
should tell us that not all wars will be fought in the desert, and
that not all mountain wars will be fought against impoverished Taliban
forces. To compete and win, we must be the perpetual beginners,
always looking for better ways to fight mountain warfare against
numerous opponents if necessary.
To prevent problems such as the Chileans encountered, one of the
best learning tools, besides mountaineering itself, is reading and
memorizing the factors and causes in mountaineering accidents, deaths
and injuries. The Chileans have provided the U.S. Army with another
example to learn from.
The Chilean disaster confirmed anew that mountaineering wisdom goes
unheeded every year, and the causes are Legion: Pride that does
not want to admit lack of knowledge; false belief in one's capability
to negotiate mountains; people unfamiliar with their gear who fiddle
with it instead of listening to instruction; mutual misunderstandings
of what is collectively understood about an expedition, and unwise
haste.
Especially in the United States, where enlistees or officer candidates
may come from any number of states with few or no high altitudes,
it would only help to expand mountain warfare training to a wider
number of troops. Even though Chile is nearly all mountains, its
army trainers and trainees last month nevertheless underestimated
the mountains' power to pull a chunk of the Pacific down on them
in freezing blankets. Let's not assume it could not happen to our
troops at a future time should the Pentagon need to deploy a large
force into mountainous terrain.
©2005 DefenseWatch. Michael Woodson
is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com.
Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not
necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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