The Coldest War

When it is --60DEG F. in the midwinter wastes of the Arctic, a man must battle without cease just to keep alive. Out on the tundras of Alaska, flesh exposed to such intense cold may freeze within one minute, and mistakes are paid for by the loss of a hand or a foot. At 60 below, steel will break more easily and rubber is as brittle as glass. Standard lubricating oils solidify into a buttery mess, and gasoline must be liberally dosed with alcohol to keep motors running. Unless engines are kept .turning over, they risk a "cold soaking" that seizes every moving part in icy immobility.

Even when they live outdoors for days on end with only tents for shelter, men can prove more rugged than their machines. Last week 6,000 weary G.I.s trekked back to the warmth of barracks after a fortnight of war games across 642,000 acres of frozen Alaskan muskeg 128 miles below the Arctic Circle. Though they were engaged in the coldest winter maneuvers on record, only eight soldiers had been hospitalized briefly for frostbite and 46 others treated for minor freezing pains (six men died in accidents not connected with the cold). At the same time, 100 cold-soaked trucks, tracked personnel carriers and tanks had to be towed from snowdrifts to thawing-out tents to be restarted.

Logistics Nightmare. The locale for the exercise, aptly named "Acid Test," was south of the Tanana River near Fairbanks, in one of Alaska's coldest spots, where -- 80DEG F. has been registered. With temperatures of 60 below at some locations, the war games strained men and machines to new limits as officers tested new doctrines for winter warfare.

Acid Test's deep freeze was a special nightmare for supply officers. Gasoline, for transport and collapsible Yukon stoves, had first priority, far ahead of ammunition. Next came rations: each infantryman must tuck in a formidable 5,000 calories of food a day to replace heat lost by his body. Water was another life-or-death commodity. Ski troopers in the desertlike dry cold require between three and five quarts of water daily. While equipment designers have achieved some success in producing insulated canteens and tanks to transport water into the field, the delay caused by a flat tire can turn an entire battalion's supply into ice.

No Deterrent. The troops carried on. "The cold is no real bother," claimed Pfc. Timmy Sasser, 17, a mortarman from Dallas who was striving to erect a tent in --40DEG. Two companies of "aggressors," dropped by parachute, endured the equivalent of --175DEG F. as they hit the icy prop wash of their aircraft. But the cold was no deterrent to the paratroopers. Mushing ten miles on skis through deep powder snow at 53 below zero, dragging their survival kits on Ahkio sleds, 16 troopers pulled off a brilliant nighttime surprise attack on the headquarters of Brigadier General John C. Bennett, field commander of the maneuvers. In order to "get the feel of the place," Bennett had been sleeping in a tent with his Yukon stove unlit.

Bennett, who learned to fight with helicopters as deputy commander of the Green Berets in Viet Nam, believes airmobile tactics hold the answer to the overriding problem of how to move men quickly across an Arctic battlefield. A heliborne assault by infantry on 925-ft.-high Clear Creek Butte was a travesty of the lightning raids against the Viet Cong. Troopers, with clothing and equipment adding more than 100 Ibs. to their weight, floundered in waist-deep snow roped to their sleds under the freezing blast of the chopper blades.

An enemy, of course, could move no faster over the same terrain. Although a conventional footsloggers' war under Arctic conditions sounds improbable nowadays, Bennett and his staff are mindful that both the Soviet and Chinese armies have forces inured to such climes. The U.S. officers want to know just how cold it must get before armies are obliged to stop fighting each other and fight merely to survive; the troops who can stay effective as soldiers the longest in the coldest have a decided advantage. To Bennett, Acid Test proved that his men were capable of meeting any human foe, because the elements, their most dangerous enemy, had failed altogether to stop them.

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