Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
We've had the reactivated 10th Mountain Division for around two decades, but I doubt they are trained up to the same standards of the World War II outfit. Still, I have to wonder whether their mountain-climbing training was really put into practice very frequently in Italy during '44-'45 -- did they really have to go up and down on ropes on cliffs as a matter of course?

This special training thing might be a bit like the Airborne philosophy -- it's not as much about the efficacy of large-scale parachute drops in combat today or rock-climbing, it's about the motivation level of the guys who volunteer for that kind of thing in the first place, and the "Never Quit" attitude they have.
Of course the 10th Mountain isn't trained to the same standards. That was a "heritage" naming that coincided with some of the light division ideas...rather like the 101st still being called airborne in some instances when in fact it's not or the 1st Cavalry Division (which is of course an armored division).