Camp Hale is the Colorado training post where Ben Givens entered the infantry and endured the mountain exercises that shaped his early military experience. In a later recollection, the camp is more than a place of instruction: its escalating tests of endurance lead Ben to confront the possibility of dying through inaction, then to reject that surrender and continue forward.

Setting and Arrival

Ben reached Camp Hale during a snowstorm, arriving by the Denver and Rio Grande Western line at two-thirty in the morning with six dollars in per diem money. Carrying his duffel bag, he reported to the sergeant on duty at the station and was assigned to L Company, Third Battalion, 86th Mountain Regiment. He spent his first night in the barracks unable to sleep, thinking of Rachel Lake. The recollection thus places his military beginning alongside a personal attachment that remained present even as he entered a new and demanding life.

The camp’s setting shaped the routine from the start. On Ben’s first morning, recruits gathered on the parade ground in late-fall weather and performed calisthenics before marching for three hours at 10,000 feet on the Continental Divide, north of Leadville. The training made altitude and cold immediate conditions of service rather than distant features of the landscape. Three recruits fell behind and were left on the ground as L Company continued, establishing the severity of the course before Ben himself became ill.

Training and Military Assignments

Ben developed altitude sickness during the first march. He was sent to the camp hospital with a fever and respiratory symptoms, and a doctor told him that many men in the regiment had experienced similar problems. Ben considered going absent without leave to Denver once he recovered, but after three days his health improved and he returned to training. The episode marks an early point of uncertainty: he had entered the regiment, yet briefly considered leaving before he could adapt to its conditions.

Back in training, Ben served as a private first class and infantryman in L Company’s Second Platoon. His assignments later shifted without an apparent explanation. He was transferred to N Company and placed in a weapons platoon, possibly because he had scored well with a .30-caliber light machine gun. A company commander then moved him to a rifle platoon and assigned him a Browning automatic rifle (BAR). Bill Stackhouse and Kelly Lastenpole were assigned as his ammunition bearers, carrying extra clips while Ben bore the weapon, his field pack, and his own additional ammunition. The change in role placed him under a heavier physical burden during training.

Winter Maneuvers and Ordeal

After two months, the regiment began winter field maneuvers, setting out from the camp toward Tennessee Pass and Ptarmigan Peak. The exercise required the men to travel on skis with heavy packs and equipment; Ben carried a mountain tent and other cold-weather gear. The conditions worsened over several days, and the maneuvers continued despite a general blizzard. Ben struggled onward with Bill Stackhouse, sharing a tent with him at Ptarmigan Peak.

That night, guards who had taken shelter in snow caves failed to prevent a mock enemy force from ambushing the company. Ben was taken prisoner while in his sleeping bag. His BAR had frozen, and the pistol he usually kept with him had been left in his field pack. The incident exposed the gap between the regiment’s training scenario and the practical vulnerabilities produced by the conditions: equipment was not usable, and the company’s defenses had failed.

After a temporary thaw, the temperature fell again. The men had little left to eat or drink besides snow, and the following morning they were ordered to dig out and march through a pass under armed guard. On an exposed slope, Ben recognized that he could stop moving and allow the cold to end his suffering. He paused over that possibility, then turned away from it and resumed struggling through the snow. The moment gives the maneuvers a consequence beyond endurance training: Ben’s decision to continue becomes a decisive choice for life amid an exercise that has made death seem attainable through surrender.

Memory and Narrative Significance

Camp Hale returns in the narrative as part of Ben’s war memories. Years later, while staying in a motel and under the influence of marijuana, he finds himself thinking about his military past as he approaches sleep. The recollection moves from his arrival and early illness through the increasingly severe exercises, narrowing toward the near-surrender on the slope. This progression makes the camp’s training history a remembered ordeal rather than a detached account of military routine.

The episode also links Camp Hale to Ben’s later understanding of persistence. The regiment’s maneuvers repeatedly test whether he can keep going—first through illness, then through cold, exhaustion, and failed equipment. At the final turning point, continuing is no longer merely an order imposed by the exercise: Ben consciously rejects the option of remaining still. The camp therefore anchors a formative memory in which survival depends not on a victory over the mountain but on a renewed resolve to move.