Twice, while I was in the Marines, we went to cold weather training. Once in California and then in Japan. In California we were bused from Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, to Bridgeport, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains above Lake Tahoe. At Bridgeport we were transferred to trucks for the last climb to our tent camp. When we arrived at camp the first Marine to get out of the truck jumped down. He jumped down on a patch of ice and took a hard fall. He grew up in Los Angeles and never walked on ice. So, the cold weather training began. 😀
The company commander for our company, H Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Division, was Captain Gaffney. Either in WW II, or the Korean Conflict, he'd been promoted from a non-comissioned officer to officer status. Captian Gaffney was fanatic for conditioning, which meant we ran a lot. That conditioning came into play in cold weather training.
After some time of general training about maneuvers there was a war game. There are four companies in a battalion. For the game one company was designated as the enemy with the other three in pursuit. Because of our forced conditioning the other companies could not keep us with us as we travelled on snowshoes up and down the mountains. Had we been in actual combat the captain's conditioning routine would have saved lives.
A little side bar about snowshoeing in mountains. If the slope is long and steep it's possible to ski down the mountain on snowshoes. Squat down on the snowshoes, grab the back of them and go for a slide. There's no turning and stopping at the bottom means tumbling in the snow. Of course we had full backpacks, rifles, helmets, etc. so climbing out of the snowbank was a challenge.
Compared to winter in South Dakota it wasn't very cold but it was cold enough for snow.
Takk for alt,
Al
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