Trump’s Greenland bases could change Arctic defense. I learned why at 76 below zero

I spent four years as an Army infantry officer in Alaska, where our operational responsibilities stretched from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean to the Aleutian Islands reaching toward Russia.

During Exercise Brim Frost ’89, some 26,000 American and Canadian troops took the field, and I served as a brigade operations officer. As we maneuvered across Alaska’s interior, temperatures plunged as low as 76 degrees below zero. The exercise produced more than 250 cold-weather injuries, including 88 cases of frostbite.