10th Mountain Division vets look back

The frail and aging members of World War II's 10th Mountain Division attend what some believe will be the last large national reunion for the soldiers on skis.

By John Ingold
Denver Post Staff Writer



Dick Powers limped on a stiff knee over to an old friend, remembering the days when they ran.

They chatted for a bit about those days, more than 60 years ago now, when they inhaled fear and exhaled courage. About that time in training when they practiced storming a beach near San Diego only to arrive on shore and discover that nobody bothered to warn the surf babes and housewives they were coming.

So clear was the scene in the mind of George Earle, Powers' friend, that he can still see the little boy with a toy gun crouching behind his terrified mother, pretending to shoot at the soldiers.

But when it came to recalling the name of a comrade killed in battle, memory failed them.

"Isn't it terrible," Earle said, "the way that works?"

Thursday was the first day of what will be the last national reunion organized by World War II veterans of the 10th Mountain Division. Descendants and history buffs may plan others, but many at this year's reunion regard it as perhaps the last chance to see so many of their brothers-in-arms. That's because age and frailty have thinned the ranks of the 10th, once 12,000 strong at their camp near Leadville.

Men who once climbed mountains now get winded crossing the hotel lobby. Men who once carried 90-pound rucksacks - even sang while doing it - now stoop with the weight of time on their shoulders. But for those who could make it, this reunion, held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, is a chance to grip tight the memories of the events that made them who they are, before those disappear too.

"It's good to see these guys here, laughing, talking," Powers, 86, said. "...I don't think things should be - they may be gone - but they shouldn't be forgotten."

Pierre Delfausse was 26, and a father, when he was drafted into the Army and sent to the 10th Mountain Division's Camp Hale in 1943 because he had listed skiing as a hobby.

Being at the reunions, he said, helps him grasp other memories that had nearly escaped him.

"Things flash back you remember from 60 years ago," he said.

Delfausse said he's thrilled to see his old friends but sad too that some couldn't make it and that this is likely the last time he'll see others. This year, he brought his son with him and a list of 34 people he hopes his son can meet.

"He was a member of the greatest generation," Peter Delfausse said of his father. "They saved the world. And he saved it on skis."

Teles Lauzon, 84, also brought his son, Herb, with him.

Up until now, Herb Lauzon said, much of his father's military life had been a mystery to him. "I get to learn a few more things about my dad that I hadn't heard before or was too afraid to ask," he said.

"I never did talk much about it," Teles Lauzon responded. "I didn't want people to think I was bragging."

But at the reunion, Teles Lauzon said, there is a chance to meet people who know what you went through, who maybe even know the fear he felt one cold night in Italy as he desperately tried to dig a foxhole into a frozen mountainside while being shelled.

"Just to sit and talk and b.s. and fight the war again," he said of why he comes to the reunions. "And sometimes not the war, some of the parties we had."

Dick Powers was a teenager when he joined the service and happily volunteered for the 10th Mountain Division because he was eager to be sent someplace where it wasn't hot or buggy.

He told the Army he could ski.

"Which was only 90 percent lie," he said. "I'd skied enough to know which way the skis went."

But after the war, Powers would ski as much as he could - even playing a part in the growth of a young ski area on Mount Hood in Oregon - up until his knee gave him too much trouble, and he had to quit. In the past, Powers has made documentary films about 10th Mountain reunions, but now, he said, he just wants to enjoy this last one.

Early one morning next week, a group will leave from the Marriott headed for the mountains. It will wind through the high passes to Camp Hale. Then Powers will squint up at the slopes above. And just maybe somewhere up there he will glimpse his youth in a time before life got scary.

"It's like going back to the old farm where you grew up," he said. "It matured a lot of people. We were young guys. Hell, I was 20 then. ... This was where a lot of us really grew up."