By Cody J Fongemie
The order came down the line, and the men were a bit shocked as word got around that they were not bringing rifles on this climb.
It’s the night of February 18, 1945, and a group of American soldiers, part of the 10th Mountain Division, is making its way up a sheer, isolated rock face called Riva Ridge in the Northern Apennines, Italy. The Nazis were confident that no one would come and take them from this side; the approach was nearly vertical and every which way, over 2,000 feet of loose scree and frozen rock. It would be crazy for someone to risk making the climb and exposing themselves to the fire of the MG 42s that they had on top of that mountain. Surprise was needed to take it, and a single gunshot would give it away before a single man could reach the summit, so the decision was made among the men of the 10th Mountain Division to climb only with bayonets and hand grenades slung in their packs. By doing this, they would avoid someone fumbling their M1 Garand and firing a round off, alerting the Nazis.
An Archer Among Skiers
However, one soldier climbed with something else: a bow and a quiver full of arrows. That soldier was Ralph Hulbert, a rifleman in Company F of the 86th Infantry Regiment. Before he found himself enjoying this scenic Italian mountain while being shot at, he was a competitive archer, a good enough one that when the Army went looking for men with unconventional skills to add to the unit they were building from scratch, his name came up. The 10th Mountain Division famously recruited those who wouldn’t fit in the standard infantry mold. They went after cowboys, professional skiers and mountaineers, ranchers, and pretty much any form of outdoorsman. All these guys could do things the average infantryman couldn’t. The division made themselves at home at Camp Hale in Colorado, 10,000 feet up in the Rockies, to train somehow, and an Army custom-made takedown bow ended up in Hulbert’s kit to train with and one day join him in Europe.
This cast of characters was trained to operate in really austere environments, like the sides of steep mountains, to hike and climb all day to conduct an assault, or just to survive a blizzard, so they were ready to fight the next day. All this training prepared them for their deployment to Italy to try to kick the Nazis out of the country that had surrendered to the Allies just a few months prior. Riva Ridge would become the proving ground for the men of the 10th Mountain Division and Hulbert. Once the ridge was secured, they would then need to take Belvedere massif. When the massif was taken, it would open up another whole area for Allied operations. But none of that would matter if they couldn’t get up onto Riva Ridge.
The Quiet Approach
While his fellow members of the 10th Mountain climbed up with knives, Hulbert climbed up with his bow, and, according to multiple testimonies of the men who were taking the ridge, Hulbert must have had a Nazi tag or two in his pocket for an open archery season. Because he made the first confirmed kill that night on the ridge when he took down a sentry in total silence with a well-placed arrow from his bow. And that sounds like something insane in a modern conflict like World War II with rifles and strategic bombing, but multiple men who were there told the same story.
As the legend goes, his use of the bow did not stop on that ridge; he burned through those arrows, and then, in the weeks following the fighting to take those mountains, a letter arrived at his mother’s home in Denver asking her to send more arrows to him as soon as possible. While the Army made the bow, they didn’t have a supply chain in place to get him more arrows, so she went down to Sears, bought the arrows, and shipped them off to her son somewhere in the Italian mountains.
In the end, the Allies were able to break through those mountains, largely thanks to the deeds of the 10th Mountain Division, and the initial breakthrough may not have happened if a sentry had been able to raise the alarm. But luckily, someone brought a bow, and all that was avoided.
PS: Need any more proof that this happened? His bow and some of those arrows Mom sent him from Sears are on display today at a museum in Colorado.
