Jan. 8, 1997
A couple of weeks back, I overheard one of the visitors to The Times' office mention how much she was wishing we'd have a "real" winter down here sometime.
May Eskimos park their reindeer herds on her front yard.
I hate winter. I hate snow, and ice, and any weather cold enough where you have to turn the heater on.
Back in February, 1988, I was a young — well, younger — rootin' tootin' Marine Corps Combat Correspondent. The assignment came through to join the group headed up to Wisconsin for Operation Alpine Warrior. I jumped at the chance to get "out in the bush," down and dirty with the grunts.
The premise behind Alpine Warrior was the simulation of a rapid deployment of the 2nd Marine Division from North Carolina to Norway, to defend NATO's northern flank in the event of an attack by the Warsaw Pact. Wisconsin was chosen because its terrain most closely approximated Norway's rugged mountains, and February chosen because that's when it gets coldest in Wisconsin.
After my first Wisconsin winter, I would have been willing to cede everything north of Milwaukee to the Warsaw Pact, including Norway.
Things started a couple of days after our arrival, when the temperature dropped to the teens and we had to shovel ourselves out of the ancient barracks at Fort McCoy Army Base to reach the chow hall in the morning.
Before anyone "hits the bush" in the military, of course, they must learn the survival skills necessary to survive in the bush. In the case of cold-weather survival, we needed to learn how to move about in deep snow via snowshoes or skis, how to set up and maintain the Akhio sleds and tents which carried a lot of our gear, and how to set up a hasty shelter when you're caught miles away from indoor heating.
You laugh when you see those cartoons of someone falling down a snowy hill, turning into a snowball as they roll to the bottom: me, I've done it, having foolishly leaned too far backwards while going uphill on snowshoes.
Skiing? Bubba, you won't ever see me in Aspen. I became very well-acquainted with the flora of Wisconsin during my ski trip through the hills, bashing into virtually every type of tree native to the state. One of the staff sergeants I was with referred to me as our training group's "tree detector."
For three days, we were required to survive in a hasty shelter — one made strictly from available materials we could dig out from under the snow, as well as the snow itself. The only time in my life I can remember having been more cold and more miserable was the time back in high school when the head cheerleader turned me down when I asked her out.
The kicker came when our "acclimatization" training ended and we loaded up to march 15 miles back to the base camp. Since they'd cleared the road, we didn't have to go via snowshoes or skis — we carried them, infantry being what it is.
We'd gone maybe 10 miles or so when this major started tapping me on the shoulder, asking if I was all right. I looked around to see the rest of the column several hundred yards away, having followed the bend in the road while I slogged on straight ahead. I smiled at the major and passed clean out.
Our corpsman explained later a
little about the concept of "venting" — allowing some of your body heat
to escape when you're exerting yourself in a cold environment, but to this
day, I'm the only man I know of who suffered a heat injury in 16-degree
weather.