87th Mountain Infantry Regiment

The 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment was an early Army mountain unit whose activation and training linked the emergency following the attack on Pearl Harbor with a later effort to recruit skiers for the 10th Mountain Division. In the novel, its history reaches Ben Givens through a letter that turns military mobilization into a personal choice: enlist for mountain service or wait for the draft.

Activation and Training

The regiment was activated at Fort Lewis on the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Its training on the slopes of Mt. Rainier and the advances made there established it as an existing example of Army mountain troops. The account places the 87th before the 10th Mountain Division: the division followed the regiment, but the text does not specify that the regiment became part of it.

Connection to Recruitment

In May, Willard Anderson, president of the Leavenworth Ski Club and local chairman of the National Ski Patrol, wrote to Ben. Anderson remembered him from the time he had passed on the jump at Ski Hill and used the 87th’s record to describe the Army’s developing mountain forces. The division was then recruiting, in part with the National Ski Patrol’s help, and Anderson appealed to young men who loved the high country to join. He presented enlistment as a way to meet the war on one’s own terms rather than be assigned wherever the draft sent them.

Role in Ben’s Decision

The regiment appears not through a battle scene but through this recruiting history, which gives Ben’s possible enlistment a specific military context. Anderson’s letter frames mountain service as both a practical alternative to the draft and a matter of honor during a moment of urgent need. Ben’s father accepts that, if Ben must go, he may as well go as a mountain trooper, even as he wishes Ben could stay because he needs him. The regiment thus stands at the start of the argument surrounding Ben’s departure: its earlier activation and training make the later appeal for recruits seem like part of an unfolding wartime effort, while the family response exposes the personal cost behind that effort.