The Boys of Winter: Life and Death in the U.S. Ski Troops During the Second World War
The third recent book on the Tenth Mountain Division in World War II focuses on three of its members: Rudy Konieczny, a high-school skiing champion from a working-class New England family; Jacob Nunnemacher, who, coming from a wealthy Wisconsin family, knew yachting as well as skiing; and Ralph Bromaghin, who had climbed Mount Rainier with the Boy Scouts and was a talented musician. Konieczny made captain; the others, sergeant. None survived the war, and only Nunnemacher was married. To his credit, Bromaghin wrote the Tenth's anthem, "Ninety Pounds of Rucksack." By focusing on these three, Sanders makes more vivid the Tenth's relationship to America's outdoor community and also what it was like to be a skier just before the war. Sanders is more critical of the U.S. command that sent the Tenth into savage combat in northern Italy near the war's end than is either McKay Jenkins inThe Last Ridge[BKL O 1 03] or Peter Shelton inClimb to Conquer[BKL O 15 03], making his book a distinctive companion to theirs.Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.