All Hell Broke Loose

All hell broke loose when the US Army invaded little Skagway, Alaska in the spring of 1942. Endless ships of every description came up the Lynn Canal, tied up in Skagway’s harbor and disgorged soldiers—thousands of soldiers—then turned and went back for more. For old timers the sudden arrival of the Corps brought memories of Gold Rush days to vivid life.  The last time all hell broke loose in Skagway.

Link to another story “The 18th Comes to Skagway”

The first soldiers to arrive didn’t stay long. The WP&YR railroad carried them up into Canada. But soldiers kept coming, coming much faster than one little narrow gauge railroad could haul them away. Swarms of soldiers lived in pup tents in a swelling ‘tent city’ on the Airfield. The Army’s trucks and jeeps and endlessly pounding boots packed the dirt streets hard.

In normal times Marshall Louis Rapuzzi had an easy job. The swarming soldiers, young men, not angels, changed that.  For the first time in his career, Rapuzzi holstered a weapon and the City turned the McCabe College into a makeshift ‘justice center’ with a courtroom, an office for Marshall Rapuzzi and, most important, a jail.

The modern Rappuzi

For Father Gallant, his seven teachers and his eighteen students at the native mission school, routines changed dramatically.  The streets swarmed with soldiers and, for safety, the children marched to and from school in a group.  White students at the brand-new territorial school had a much better time.  Some of them even got to ride to school in Army jeeps.

Two regiments shared the grass of the air strip. Each featured mess tents with stoves up and cooking, a medical hospital tent open for business and, perhaps most important, latrines dug and ‘open for business’.

To the west, the swollen Skagway River roared.  Winds churned the water of the Lynn Canal into whitecaps.  Nighttime brought below zero temperatures.  Fully clothed, wrapped with comforters and wool blankets and snuggled in sleeping bags, soldiers still slept in fits and shivers.  No matter.  Up in Whitehorse, General Hoge, the commander of the Alcan Project, had no intention of leaving the soldiers settled in Skagway.