The New York Times has a wonderful feature on an American experiment in training troops for battle in the extremes of the Arctic.

Well worth your time:

At minus 40 degrees and below, weapons fail, batteries quickly lose their charge, and fuel turns into a viscous jelly. Army officials wanted to learn how their equipment would perform in the extreme cold.
But their biggest questions were about the soldiers who came from places like Alabama, Texas, Florida and California. How far could these troops go before exhaustion set in and they started to lose focus, make mistakes or simply quit?
About 4,000 soldiers from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, including 107 from the division’s Able Company, were taking part in the training battle, which pitted two similarly sized forces against each other.
In this fight, the ammunition was fake; blanks and lasers replaced bullets and artillery shells. But the cold was unsparingly real.

The report is huge and has great photography. Check it out.