Fire on the Mountain, a documentary film about the U.S. Army's Tenth Mountain Division in World War II, will be shown on Thursday, March 30, at 8 p.m. in Hamilton College's Kirner-Johnson Auditorium in the Kirner-Johnson Building. The film will be followed by a discussion with Hamilton history professor Maurice Isserman, Hamilton geosciences professor Todd Rayne, Director of Adventure Programs Andrew Jillings and Donald B. Potter, Hamilton emeritus geology professor and World War II veteran and member of the 10th Mountain Division. The program is free and open to the public.
The New York Times' Peter Nichols described Fire on the Mountain as "an altogether … upbeat World War II documentary by Beth and George Gage about the eager young fellows of the American 10th Mountain Division who fought the Germans in the Italian Apennines." The division trained in the Colorado Rockies where they, according to Nichols, "came together like a roiling college fraternity." Almost a thousand of these men died in combat.
Many members of the unit were Western skiers. Some were from the East Coast where skiing was limited to the moderately well-to-do including members of Ivy League ski teams. Other members were top European skiers, many of whom had fled Hitler.
The film also follows up on the lives of alumni from the Tenth who have made a name for themselves. Some came back and started ski areas like Aspen, Vail and Sugar Bush and led organizations like the Sierra Club and Outward Bound. One, William Bowerman, started Nike. Bob Dole was a member of the 10th Mountain, but he joined the division in Europe and didn't undergo the specialized training at high altitudes in the Colorado Rockies and is not included in the film.
The Tenth Mountain Division, stationed at Fort Drum, New York, is a specially tailored infantry division that is rapidly deployable by strategic airlift to conduct a full spectrum of operations from humanitarian relief to combat. Over the last decade, the 10th Mountain Division has been involved in more deployments than any other division in the U.S. Army including those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This program is sponsored by the Hamilton departments of history and geosciences, Hamilton Outing Club and the Dean of Faculty Office.
