by Christian Beckwith | Aug 23, 2024 | Ninety-Pound Rucksack Episodes
COMING SOON: When the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division arrived in Italy, they were mountain hardened, but not battle-tested. This episode looks at the first few weeks in the Italian theater, when their encounters with the enemy took the green off the mountain...
by Christian Beckwith | Jul 23, 2024 | Unabridged
In Episode 10 of Ninety-Pound Rucksack, we explore the seismic cultural shift that—driven in no small part by citizen-soldiers like John McCown—enveloped the U.S. Army during WWII. As John and his fellow officers underwent their rigorous training at Officer Candidate...
by Christian Beckwith | Jul 23, 2024 | Ninety-Pound Rucksack Episodes
COMING SOON: The Gothic Line was a series of fortified ridges and summits in Italy’s Apennines that was key to the Nazi occupation of the country. By October 1944, more than 1,200,000 soldiers had battled to take it—and now winter was on the way. And who could...
by Christian Beckwith | Jun 23, 2024 | Ninety-Pound Rucksack Episodes
COMING SOON: On June 22, 1944, the mountain troops were shipped from Camp Hale to Camp Swift, Texas. The 10th was too small, too specialized, too elite; they were to be converted to a flatland operation just like all the rest of the Army’s divisions. The entire...
by Christian Beckwith | May 23, 2024 | Ninety-Pound Rucksack Episodes
COMING SOON: Blizzards, -30° temps, 90-pound packs, 14,000-foot peaks, and hazing from the brass: never in the history of the U. S. Army had a division undergone a training maneuver as rigorous as the March 1944 Divisional Series. “It’s not as bad as the ‘D’ Series,”...
