10th Mountain Division

During World War II, the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division served in combat for only four months, but it had one of the conflict's highest casualty rates.

The division started out as an experiment to train skiers and climbers to fight in the most difficult, mountainous terrain in Europe.

Some of the men who joined the division were skiers already, while others had never seen a ski in their lives.

Their training at Camp Hale, near Pando, Colorado, included skiing, snowshoeing and rock climbing. They also learned cold-weather survival tactics, such as keeping warm by building snow caves.

The men lived in the mountains for weeks, working in altitudes of up to 13,500 feet, in five to six feet of snow and in temperatures that dropped to 20 degrees below zero at night.

At the end of 1944, the 10th Mountain Division was finally deployed and began the first of a series of daring assaults against the German army in the northern Apennine Mountains of Italy.

Mount Belvedere was the highest mountain in the Apennines, and the Germans had stymied the U.S. Army there for nearly six months.

On Feb. 18, 1945, the 10th Mountain Division took Riva Ridge — to prevent the Germans from being able to survey U.S. positions below — in a nighttime operation. The steep mountain was covered in snow and ice. At night, the Germans did not bother with guard patrols, because the conditions were so difficult that they did not believe any American unit could climb the ridge — day or night.

But the Germans were wrong, and the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division climbed, silently, to the top and secured Riva Ridge with minimal casualties.

The next day's operation, the assault on Mount Belvedere, would prove to be very different. The American soldiers ended up victorious, but not without a price: Nearly 1,000 of the 13,000 soldiers in the division died.

10th Mountain Exhibit

TSgt. Earl Norem

Earl Norem saw military action in World War II with the 85th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. He trained in Colorado and Texas, and fought the Germans in the Northern Apennine Mountains of Italy.

Read More

SSgt. Bill Duncan

Bill Duncan learned to ski at the age of 7 during visits to his aunts' home at Bear Mountain, and quit high school in the middle of his senior year in January 1943 to enlist in what later became the 10th Mountain Division.

Read More

Mural's New Home

When the U.S. Military Museum, formerly the Military Museum of Southern New England, closed its doors in 2017, many of the museum’s 10,000 artifacts were gifted to the Museum of American Armor in Bethpage, NY.

Read More

 

Museum of American Armor

In a move designed to further strengthen Nassau County’s destination tourism industry, while simultaneously providing a new source of revenue for the county’s park system, the 25,000-square-foot Museum of American Armor was born, just inside the grounds of the Old Bethpage Village Restoration.

The ability of the museum to create a military armored column among vintage farm houses and country roads, accurately replicating the sights and sounds of American forces during World War II, stands as one of the most compelling educational tools our region has at its disposal, in telling the seminal story of American courage, valor, and sacrifice—a virtual time machine, if you will.

Once visitors walk through the museum’s camouflaged front doors—which have been heavily sandbagged, similar to the way important bunkers were protected some 70 years ago—they are greeted by a stunning display of some 30 vehicles. Half a dozen times a year, in coordination with Old Bethpage Village Restoration programming, these vehicles are presented in the field, or on the village’s country roads, as living historians offer skilled demonstrations of WWII tactics.

Operational vehicles on public display include an iconic Sherman tank, a Stuart light tank used extensively by the Marines during their Pacific campaigns, a potent 155 mm howitzer, reconnaissance vehicles that acted as armored scouts for American forces, anti-aircraft guns, and similar weapons that broke the back of the Axis powers during World War II.

Other vehicles range from a classic LaSalle staff car in the markings of a Fleet Admiral, to jeeps, weapons carriers, and half-tracks. Multimedia displays augment this exhibition, as visitors young and old have the unique opportunity to view tanks under repair and restoration.