Chatham Cadet, Team Wins Military Mountaineering Competition

FORT DRUM, N.Y. – Ryan Borthwick had a good idea that he and the rest of the Norwich University team might win the whole thing once they had survived and advanced to the third and final day up in the frigid northern reaches of New York last January.

Borthwick, a junior at Norwich, and his fellow cadets (which included another Cape Codder, Falmouth native Dylan Driscoll) had just finished the middle segment of D-Series, a grueling, multi-day contest of physical ability and military prowess hosted by the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. They were competing against a couple other teams of cadets (from the United States Military Academy at West Point and Clarkson University), a team of 11th Airborne Division members from Alaska, plus a number of teams from 10th Mountain.

But the Norwich cadets were besting the active-duty soldiers at their own game, at their own home base. Borthwick’s inclination — that after lasting through the first day of brutal physical training exercises and military aptitude challenges and the second day’s biathlon, he and his team from Vermont had the advantage in the mountaineering tests on the final day — proved correct. Norwich University won the competition.

“If I was an active-duty soldier, and I got beat by a bunch of cadets, it would light a fire under me, I would say,” Borthwick said.

The annual D-Series event originates from the intense training undergone by the 10th Mountain Division during World War II prior to deploying to Italy. More than 20 teams gathered at freezing, snowy Fort Drum in late January to begin the gauntlet of both body and mind.

Day one started with physical training: an 1,800-meter row, 50 hand release push-ups, a jog. It was 5 a.m., dark and icy. Then there were 120 pull-ups as a team and three buddy carries. 

The day continued with nine-man teams, snowshoes equipped, pulling an ahkio (a type of cold weather cargo sled used by the military). They carried heavy rucks. The Norwich cadets pull ahkios in the winter for physical training, Borthwick said, so they were very familiar with the process.

“We are like immediately passing teams, which I did not expect,” Borthwick said.

After a mile or two, they reached the first aptitude test: assembly and disassembly of a radio. The group pulled the ahkio onward to the tactical combat casualty care event, essentially a first aid challenge to treat a hypothermic patient. They aced it.

“We have people assigned to each event, so I didn't do anything with the radio — I just sat there and got cold,” Borthwick said. “But the first aid lane, that was my business.”

To round out day one, the teams worked through an expert infantry badge station involving the disassembly, reassembly and functions check of an M4 rifle, an M249 light machine gun, an M240 medium machine gun and an M17 pistol. Lastly, they completed a knowledge test on the 10th Mountain Division and its history.

Before starting that exam, a West Point cadet emerged, shaking his head and expressing to Borthwick that the test was hard, that Norwich probably wouldn’t score any points. They walked in and aced it.

“Obviously, it felt great to beat West Point,” Borthwick said, regarding the D-Series competition as a whole.

Day two arrived after the teams set up and camped inside 10-man tents (another process the Norwich team frequently did back on campus). A 7-mile biathlon starred as the challenge of D-Series’s middle portion. Again, Norwich felt that they had the advantage on skis, going up against teams that had less experience on the equipment. 

The participants replenished throughout on MREs and snacks. They got hot chow on the second morning before the biathlon. Borthwick also drank electrolytes — not only because they were sorely needed from all the exertion but because they slowed the water from freezing.

Despite starting the biathlon later than some groups, Norwich proceeded to pass other teams as they reached the event’s two shooting ranges. They were the first squad done and one of three teams to advance to the final segment.

“At this point, I can't really believe it, because having looked at the events for the last day, I knew if we made it to the last day, we were probably going to win the whole thing,” Borthwick said. 

That was because the final tests were a one-rope bridge, a rappelling lane and a combat swim — the first two being exercises that the Norwich team had been training, in similar conditions, for years. Borthwick, a Monomoy Regional High School alum, studies cybersecurity and trains in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Norwich, but he also participates in Ranger Challenge (a ROTC competition club) and the Mountain Cold Weather Company (a military mountaineering club). He and the rest of the cadets were completely prepared.

“Because the other two events were first, we knew we were going to have a pretty sizable lead, so at this point, I'm so pumped with adrenaline,” Borthwick said. “Like, I've never been like that before — normally a very cool, calm, collected kind of guy. Just sitting there, absolutely buzzing, like I had 10 cups of coffee.” 

The three remaining groups were airlifted by Chinook helicopter to the site of day three of D-Series. They watched the sun rise from the aircraft. Upon the day’s start, Norwich immediately took a wrong turn, falling behind, but caught up by quickly finishing the one-rope bridge. 

Once again, they took the wrong route as they traveled to the rappelling. Some of the 11th Airborne passed Norwich. They heard on the radio that the West Point team had reached the station. Trudging through the woods in snow up to their thighs, the Norwich squad figured the competition had slipped through their fingers. 

But for Borthwick, his three years of training had amounted to a moment like that. There was no hole at Fort Drum that he hadn’t been in before.

“I've done harder things at Norwich than the hardest thing I did there, so it was really good to be in my lowest point during the competition and say, ‘I've been here before,’” he said.

Norwich reached the rappelling and, drawing on some technical knowledge and ability, flew through the station. They had built enough of a lead to make the combat swim — the final event — no sweat.

 In a ceremony after the competition, the victorious Norwich team received Army Commendation Medals. For Borthwick though, D-Series was about the journey itself — rather than the win at the event’s conclusion.

“I think the satisfaction to me came from competing,” he said. “Winning was just like, ‘OK, we did it. Competing was the thing that garnered me a lot of satisfaction.”