From balmy above zero the temperature plunged to 36 below at Big Gerstle, Alaska on March 29. Sergeant Heard and his nine men spent that morning loading three deuce-and-a-half trucks with supplies for Fairbanks. Ten shivering black men in worn and ragged uniforms lifting and packing, working around the snow in the truck beds, escaping periodically to warm themselves around a fire in the yard yearned for a return to balmy.
Winter and Sergeant Heard’s Squad
The soldiers broke for lunch then reassembled near the trucks and the orderly room—company headquarters. Next to the three loaded trucks stood an empty fourth truck, clearly intended to haul them to Fairbanks.
As they eyeballed its unheated, ice and snow packed cargo area and its ragged canvas cover, the cold that surrounded them took on ominous significance. Moving down the road would generate wind, and wind would take the raw cold to a whole new level. They had learned the hard way just how dangerous Alaska cold could be.
The men reluctantly loaded their personal gear, but they hesitated to climb aboard. When Lieutenant Howell asserted his authority, he found that the soldiers feared riding in a dangerously frigid truck more than they feared him. Sergeant Heard and his squad had learned from experience that young white officers make mistakes. And they, not the young white officers, suffered the consequences.
Howell called the men into the orderly room one at a time, took their names and serial numbers. When the men, back outside, continued to hesitate, Howell ordered them into a rough formation. He stalked out of the orderly room and, standing between the men and the truck, informed them that refusing to get on the truck constituted mutiny, that the Army punished mutineers by executing them. He ordered them to get on the truck, gave them ten seconds to comply and portentously raised his arm to stare at his watch.
The men moved reluctantly, not fast enough to beat the second hand on the lieutenant’s watch. He stalked back into the orderly room, cancelled the trip and ordered the men arrested and confined to quarters.
Four days later, he preferred charges against all ten men for mutiny.