by William W. Campbell
As the airliner closed in on Montpelier, a snowy landscape stretched toward the hulking silhouette of the Green Mountains in the distance, a vista radically different from the flat, piney woods and marshlands of my native south Georgia. My destination lay nestled somewhere in those mountains—Camp Ethan Allen, home of the Vermont Army National Guard’s mountain warfare school, just outside the small town of Jericho. As someone who spent his youth on water skis and never put on snow skis until age thirty, I felt apprehensive about this assignment I had volunteered for. What did I know about mountains?
A gangly, ginger-haired Sergeant Major met me in baggage claim. He had long shanks, a long neck, long face, and a wide smile. He stuck out a massive mitt. “Nice to meet you, Major.”
We shook, grabbed my bags, and made our way through the short-term parking lot. The Vermont cold felt like a punch in the face. The icy wind cut through my attire of BDUs and field jacket like they were made of gauze. I would soon learn more about how to properly dress for winter conditions.
Our family had delighted in a white Christmas in Virginia only three weeks ago, after many years in Texas and California. It was cold but not like this. We enjoyed Christmas dinner at the Manakin Ordinary. We had never eaten at an Ordinary before and relished the family style meal seated around a rustic dining table with complete strangers, passing around bowls of steaming side dishes. Usually turkey people, we all had the goose. Strange that not long after, a goose would figure so prominently in my memories of mountain school.
The Sergeant Major steered us to an olive-drab pickup truck and threw my stuff in the back.
“How far to Ethan Allan?” I asked, as we cleared the airport congestion and drove through the outskirts of the city.
“Roads aren’t too bad right now. Probably about an hour and a half.”
Before long, we were on two-lane roads and winding our way along switchbacks as we climbed into the mountains. We rattled across a covered bridge spanning a frozen river. Rural Vermont resembled rural Georgia, just hillier. Run-down, white, clapboard houses with peeling paint and decrepit, off-kilter, double-wide trailers sat back from the road with rusted automobile hulks propped on cinder blocks in their yards. Poverty looks the same in the North as it does in the South.
Pretty close to the predicted hour and a half we pulled off the main road and climbed a narrow, gravel track toward a group of buildings. We passed through a gate and pulled into a parking spot outside the barracks. On a quick tour, the Sergeant Major pointed out the dining hall, the schoolhouse, where classes were held, and the medical trailer, my new duty station. He escorted me to supply, where I was issued an armload of gear, including crampons, skis, ski poles, an ice ax and a white coverall. But no ski boots. Much of the other gear was strange and unfamiliar.
I held up a carabiner, aka a D-ring. I’d never seen one before. “What’s this?”
The supply room sergeant regarded me askance. I could see the thought bubble above his head. It read, “Flatlander.”
***
Fifteen astonishingly short years earlier, as a third-year medical student, I had raised my hand, taken the oath, and been sworn in as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves. The draft was still on and I reasoned that volunteering might offer a little more control over my future than Selective Service. I would soon learn that maxim of military life: never volunteer.
It also meant the military might pay for part of my education, in return for extra service. Nine years of active duty later, including internship and residency, I separated and went my way for a neuromuscular fellowship, then joined a medical school faculty. Four years later, kicking myself for throwing away all those years of retirement credit, I raised my hand again and rejoined the Army Reserves.
My reserve program touted its flexibility, offering many ways to fulfill duty obligations. They sent out periodic mailings announcing opportunities for the required two weeks of annual training. One of the opportunities involved providing medical support for the Vermont Army Guard’s mountain school, winter phase and summer phase. It seemed the most interesting of all the announcements. Sign me up.
***
Not so sure about this idea, I thought the morning after my arrival, peering at the thermometer mounted on the doorframe of the chow hall. It read −20° F. I had on long johns, an army sweater under my field jacket and regular socks under a pair of heavy woolen army boot socks. It was not enough. My cheeks tingled and I could barely feel my nose. This after the five-minute walk from barracks to dining hall.
These guys knew how to do breakfast. Pancakes with real, locally made Vermont maple syrup every morning. Eat up, we were told. You’ll burn a lot of calories in the cold.
After breakfast, we held sick call but nobody was sick or injured yet. The three medics and I then joined the rest of the group in the schoolhouse for class. A large, framed placard on one side wall of the classroom, near the front, read:
“The Gods of the valleys are not the Gods of the hills.”
– Ethan Allen
The instructors covered a lot of material in those two weeks. They hammered the topic of winter survival, particularly how to dress. Layers, layers, layers. Do not under any circumstances allow yourself to sweat. Layers on when inactive; layers off when moving. Another layer off at the least hint of exertional perspiration. Aim for feeling slightly chilly. Frozen sweat leads to hypothermia. Properly managing one’s layers can make the difference between feeling warm and comfortable or cold and miserable.
Numerous classes covered knot tying. To graduate from the basic military mountaineering course, students had to master twenty-seven different knots. Other topics covered included first aid, casualty evacuation, climbing techniques in general focusing on rock climbing in the spring and ice climbing in the winter, land navigation, rappelling, and high-angle marksmanship. Students at the school included active Army, National Guard, Army Reserve, and members from other branches as well as allied nations.
As with other military courses, things became interesting when they took us out of the classroom for hands-on experience, the military equivalent of microbiology or biochemistry lab. During the experiential phase of other courses, I had been exposed to tear gas, experienced hypoxia in an altitude chamber, ridden a human centrifuge, gotten stick time in a helicopter and seen the miraculous effects of atropine in reversing the effects of nerve gas on a monkey.
During my residency at Letterman Army Medical Center, we took full advantage of living in San Francisco. We learned to ski on a trip to Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, now known as Palisades Tahoe. All my kids learned to ski before they turned ten. Some things are best learned early in life.
Normal downhill skiing uses a rigid boot with the heel locked into the binding: the alpine technique. All my civilian skiing had been alpine style. I had no idea there was any other way to do it. I’d heard about cross country skiing and seen it on TV, but never done it. Mountain school had other ideas.
The alpine skier picks skis appropriate for their height, longer skis for taller individuals.
The Army gave everyone 190 cm skis, over six feet long, whether the soldier was 5 ft. 2 in. or 6 ft. 3 in. The bindings were telemark. With a telemark binding, the heel is not permanently locked in place and the skis can be used for either downhill or cross-country skiing. The term refers to the Telemark region of Norway, where the technique originated. No special boots, just ordinary combat boots.
The highlight of the winter phase of mountain school was a trip to Smugglers’ Notch, a steep, icy Vermont ski resort, for an afternoon of downhill skiing, Army style.
To ski downhill with telemark bindings, the skier can either lock the heel in place and ski alpine style, although this is difficult without rigid, alpine-style ski boots, or leave the heel unlocked and ski telemark style. Most of the guys were Vermonters, skiers since infancy. They spent the afternoon making graceful, sweeping telemark turns down the mountain, first down on one knee, then the other.
Although a flatlander, I had grown to love skiing, especially in the Rockies. But that afternoon at Smugglers’ Notch was miserable. I had no idea how to make a telemark turn, so I locked my heels down and tried to ski alpine style. But skiing alpine style wearing combat boots required a level of skill far beyond mine. I busted my butt all over the mountain. Couldn’t hear the laughter, but could sense it. I just felt happy not to have sustained any more serious injury than a sprained thumb during one of my many tumbles.
***
Summer phase the following year proved more enjoyable. Except for the goose.
Vermont had put on her finest greenery for my visit. Dense foliage in every conceivable shade blanketed the mountains, accented by summer wildflowers. The landscape grew lighter and lighter as each successive range of hills marched toward the horizon.
A cadre of assistant instructors (AIs) ran the course, many of them veterans of the storied 10th Mountain Division. Early in summer phase, they began to talk about the survival meal. Cooking a survival meal was a graduation requirement, they informed us.
One of the AIs, Sergeant Brown, had a pet goose. At least he treated it like a pet. The goose followed him everywhere. He kept treats, mostly kernels of corn, in one trouser pocket, and frequently fed the creature. It waddled around behind him, honking, begging for a treat. We knew that before it was over, Sergeant Brown would eat that goose.
We practiced land navigation and casualty evacuation. We built a rope bridge across a deep gully and tried to cross it. Not easy. Many men lost their footing and wound up hanging from the top rope, feet desperately kicking and scrambling to find the bottom rope.
We learned to rappel off a fifty-foot, wooden tower. The AIs taught us how to tie a rappel seat with rope and a carabiner, and how to carefully thread the descent rope through the carabiner. They taught us how to control our descent by whipping the rope behind our backs. Taking that first step, off into space, the ground oh so far away, having faith in the simple gear and the teaching of the AIs, was daunting. Then it became fun. The AIs entertained themselves during breaks by rappelling headfirst using some expert method known only to mountain maniacs.
The AIs occasionally found themselves unsure what to do with me, this officer among the grunts. After one rappel during which I exhibited less than ideal technique, one AI turned to the senior NCO overseeing the activities and asked, “Can I drop him?”
“As you wish,” came the reply.
Down I went for twenty push-ups. Pretty light punishment, considering. It would have been at least fifty for one of the regular troops.
After a couple hours, the AIs began to teach the troops the hasty rappel. It involves simply wrapping the rope around the body. No rappel seat or carabiner involved. They decreed it too advanced for the doc. Thank God.
Before long, one of the men slipped through his hasty rappel. The rope slid up past his armpits, then wrapped itself around his neck leaving him hanging about twenty feet off the ground, gurgling and turning blue. The AIs ran to form a human ladder, standing on each other’s shoulders. Someone above cut the rope. They had him down quickly, but his lips and nails were still blue and his neck bore ugly rope burns.
I rode in the back of the ambulance as it screamed back down the switchbacks and along the narrow roads in hot mode with siren wailing and lights flashing, then spent the next several hours with the soldier in the ER. He recovered fully but Headquarters (his wife) decreed no more playing army. He dropped out of mountain school and applied for separation from the Guard.
One beautiful June day we were practicing rock climbing. The task involved climbing up the sheer face of a rock wall about one hundred feet high. We were roped in and dependably belayed, and with numerous AIs to advise and assist the risk was minimal.
After scrabbling and clawing my way up the rock, I sat exhilarated on top, beside one of the AIs, looking out on the beautiful Vermont mountains, deep viridian up close, growing light and hazy in the distance and melting into the cloudless, cerulean sky. I said, as much to myself as the AI, “That was the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. What makes this so much fun?”
The AI replied, and I’ve always remembered these words, “Sir, when you’re spread-eagled on the rock, looking for a move, it’s hard to think about anything else.”
Many people try to find a way to get figuratively spread-eagled on the rock, searching for some activity that demands enough concentration to quiet the everyday worries. Something challenging. Painting, for example, at least for me, is not relaxing. It is a way of getting spread-eagled on the rock.
The group gathered on the last day of the course for what we had all been dreading: the survival meal. Sergeant Brown was there, with his goose.
One of the AIs reached into a burlap bag and pulled out…a snake. Using his long, sharp kabar knife he quickly lopped off its head, then with a few quick strokes removed the skin and the entrails. Grasping the carcass with both hands, he raised the snake to his mouth, looked at the enraptured crowd and took a large bite of raw snake meat. He stood there, chewing and grinning. I heard the sound of retching.
He leaned to one side and spat out the mouthful of snake meat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Better to cook it but the field manual says it’s okay to eat snake meat raw in an emergency.”
Sergeant Brown stepped forward, followed by his goose. He had trained the goose to lay its head down on a piece of 2 x 4. The goose did as it had been trained but instead of receiving a treat, Sergeant Brown’s kabar came crashing down on its neck. The head fell away.
The goose’s neck began to whip around wildly, spraying blood in all directions. Sergeant Brown held the bird up and let the neck flop and gyrate for a bit, then grabbed the stump, stuck it in his mouth and began to suck blood. More retching.
“Murderer!” someone yelled.
Sergeant Brown flashed a bloody grin at the group.
“Pretty gross, huh,” he said. “Your life may someday depend on your ability to do something like that.”
Sergeant Brown and his goose. An unforgettable lesson from mountain school.
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William W. Campbell, MD is a neurologist, writer, artist, and retired U.S. Army Colonel. He holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University. His writing has been published in The Hill, the Sherwood Forest Art and Literary Review, and emerge 20: The Writer’s Studio Anthology. He won the 2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival Adult Short Story contest.
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