ROTC Adds Winter Warfare Course

ANY oldtimers around who are fortunate or unfortunate enough to remember Tenth Mountain Division days would find quite a familiar sight out on the Hanover golf course these wintry afternoons. Under the leadership of Captain Rees Jones, USA, Assistant Professor of Military Science, enthusiastic Army ROTC students don the familiar olivegreen field clothing, rucksack and skis to take part in one of the two mountain and winter training units currently in operation, the only other being located at Norwich University, Northfield, Vt.

There are over forty trainees in the Dartmouth course. Divided into groups of ten or eleven, they meet one afternoon a week for a period of two hours. A complete course requires two years, consisting of a total of twenty weeks of rock-climbing in the spring and fall, and twenty weeks spent on skis and snowshoes during the winter months. Depending on the weather and schedules, these field sessions are occasionally supplemented by training films and indoor lectures on mountain operations.

Captain Janes, who has worked in the past with the Mountain Training Command, Fort Carson, Colo., seeks mainly students who are mediocre or beginners on skis, believing that those skiers already skilled form a ready-trained pool that can easily be adapted to mountain units in a national emergency. The "summer" phase of training begins as soon as weather permits, ropes and climbing boots taking the place of skis and winter parkas. Weekend -expeditions and bivouacs in nearby mountains are planned for succeeding years when Captain Jones feels that his advanced second-year students have gained the requisite experience and training.

Interest in a special mountain training group had been stimulated by John Rand '38, executive director of the Dartmouth Outing Club, ever since the founding of the ROTC units at Dartmouth after World War 11, but it was not until the fall of 1956 when the old Army Ordnance ROTC Unit was redesignated into a general military science category that any progress could really be made. Rand saw his project become reality when Lt. Colonel Stulting, then commanding officer of the Dartmouth Army ROTC, requested and later received the necessary equipment and trained leadership of Captain Jones to put the mountain and winter training group into operation. Although this is the first year the course has been given, the spontaneous interest and enthusiasm of the students, who must take it on their own time in addition to regular ROTC requirements, indicate that it will become a valuable addition to the Dartmouth Army ROTC program.

MILESTONES

The Dartmouth: President, Edward W. Gude '59, Summit, N. J.; Managing Editor. Robert Sussman '59, Long Island City, N. Y.; Business Manager, Robert A. Berg '59, Louisville, Ky.; Executive Editor, Paul A. Stein '59, Webster Groves, Mo.; Associate Editor. Charles J. Donovan Jr. '59, Watertown. Mass.; Sports Editors, Michael Stern '59, Rye N. Y. and Jack D. Zipes '59, Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Captain Rees Jones, a mountain-warfare expert specially assigned to conduct the new course by the Army, stresses fundamental downhill and cross-country techniques.

Army ROTC students practice traversing up a long slope on the Hanover golf course.