Boys of Winter

Book excerpt: “An immensely valuable and substantial addition to 10th Mountain literature and to the history of skiing in the United States.” —International Ski History Association The Boys of Winter tells the true story of three young American ski champions and their brutal, heroic, and fateful transformation from athletes to infantrymen with the 10th Mountain Division. Charles J. Sanders’s fast-paced narrative draws on dozens of interviews and extensive research to trace these boys’ lives from childhood to championships and from training at Mount Rainier and in the Colorado Rockies to battles against the Nazis. “The Boys of Winter perfectly captures the spirit of the men who made the division what it was, as well as the spirit of those troopers who survived to help shape the postwar world.” —John Imbrie, 10th Mountain Division historian and coeditor of Good Times and Bad Times “Focusing on the lives, and the deaths, of three young men from vastly different backgrounds, Sanders traces the history of the U.S. Army’s Tenth Mountain Division from its inception, training in Washington and Colorado, first blooding in the Aleutians, and finally, to deployment to Italy in 1945 . . . The Boys of Winter is a sensitive tribute.” —Western Historical Quarterly “Sanders distills the complicated and years-long saga of the creation of America’s ski troops into an intensely personal story . . . [And] doesn’t shy away from a question that haunts the survivors of the division, and the families of those who never returned.” —The Durango Herald