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chapter 10 The Great War The ski, a new instrument for war, and just the thing that will make guerrilla warfare possible on the entire front. —General Courbebaisse, 1914 The war, the open air, all the activity will certainly exercise a happy influence on general health.—Club Alpin Français, 1916 The ski battalions must be used like drops of gold. —Order from Italian High Command, 1917 preparing for war Armies gave a panache to imperial parades where glittering uniforms were equated with military efficiency. In winter the ski troops of France, Italy, Germany, and Austria provided a thrilling spectacle as they joined in social skisport before the First World War. Yet military skiing should have owed little to the sporting activities. Ski troop leaders ordered forced marches through hilly terrain, which received wide public-­ ity and provided proof of reliance and stamina. But there was a minimum of actual field training. When the war came in 1914, the mix of sporting skiing imbued with upper-­ class and nationalistic attitudes combined with the basic training of long marches proved ineffective. The British, for example, imagined themselves in the Hindu Kush “sweeping down on Afridi villages in the winter when the lively occupants are buried in snow up to their necks.”1 Such highly roman-­ ticized views of winter warfare played some role in both the Great War and its sequel in 1939–45. At home, in the winter of 1906–07, the Cameron and Seaforth Territorials trained in Scotland, something noted by the Germans and Austrians. The Swiss military were on skis on the Grand St. Bernard Pass as early as 1894 and ran a military ski school out of Andermatt. Georg Bilgeri taught sections of the Turkish army, and in far-­flung Japan, Austrian Lieuten-­ ant Theodor von Lerch had such a success with his Zdarsky instruction that his memory is kept alive to this day by two statues and a Lerch society.2 However, war menaced in Central Europe. The high commands looked to Norway for guidance, yet the Norwegian experience was not necessarily the best model because one vital need for European ski troops did not obtain in 154 chapter ten Norway: Europeans first had to be trained to ski. In Norway, universal military service could produce 200,000 men on skis if the reserves were called up. Here there was a connection between civilian skiing and military service, and one knowledgeable observer found it “difficult to separate the task of the Army from that of the [civilian] union.”3 The relationship between officers and men was different too; they worked together. “Officers do not spare themselves,” wrote one reporter, but worked, if possible, “even harder than the men.” In the rest of Europe, the caste-­bound Junker of Prussia, the French conservative rightist (monarchist or not), and the upper class of England would find the democracy of such ski trooping difficult and uncongenial. Norwegian military ski maneuvers were reported in the foreign press with unstilted admiration. The New York Times in 1879 commented that ski-­ ers were as mobile as cavalry. The Birmingham Register titled an appreciative article “The Fastest Army on Earth.” The British Ski Year Book ran an article on the Norwegian military in its first issue, and the French Petit Parisien ana-­ lyzed Norwegian troop movements in the snow. At home, the Norwegian and Swedish journals were full of reports of winter exercises. Drawings and photo-­ graphs titillated the enthusiastic. The rest of European militaries concentrated on copying these extraordinary marches: distance covered indicated not only expert technique but also stamina and courage. There was comparatively little field training, so that at the outbreak of war, ski troops were initially thought to be useful only for patrol and courier work. It comes as a surprise that the Swedes seemed unconcerned about the mili-­ tary application of skiing, given the recent uneasy relationship with Norway to the west and with the Russian province of Finland to the east. It was only in 1892 that the Society for the Development of Skiing (Skidfrämjandet) was founded, and in 1901 a permanent military conscription ordered. Even then, only three volunteer military schools practiced skiing with regularity. At the same time, military officers provided the leadership of civilian ski and athletic clubs. Further impetus for ski training came in 1915, and two years later a budget was provided for races among the military. Major help came from a parliamentary subvention to the Skidfrämjandet to improve the...

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