Cameron Cox came up by train from Fort Ord, California and detrained with the rest of the 35th Engineers into bitter cold at the Dawson Creek depot. They travelled to Fort St John and started building road northwest from there.
Cameron remembered moving constantly, taking down pyramidal tents, moving a few miles, setting them up again. The soldiers built a kitchen on runners so they could tow it with a D-8 bulldozer.
Cameron drove and operated an air compressor truck, and the compressor powered saws, drills, jack hammers… His truck also served as a makeshift lifting device. With a tall log A-Frame in front, he could run a winch line out over a pully. The soldiers would wrap the line around felled logs and the winch would drag them out to build culverts or lay corduroy.
The 35th worked past the Liard Hot Springs. Cameron remembered that warm water covered the road in one place. A truck would run through it and get wet—then, just a couple of miles on, its undercarriage would freeze solid.
On the plus side, a tent over a hot pool provided hot baths even if the temperature outside fell well below zero.
The 35th had no electricity, of course. Cameron remembered the medical officer removing an appendix in a tent lighted by a gasoline lantern. He also remembered a dentist who drilled out a cavity for him using a drill powered by his foot on a pedal.
And he remembered the mountainside that dropped deep into Muncho lake. They had to blast a ledge out of it with dynamite and it took days.
The men ate powdered milk, dehydrated potatoes, powdered eggs, Spam, C-rations—thank God the fish in the rivers were as hungry as the soldiers.
historynet on the biggest hardest job since the Panama Canal
Good read I couldn’t image drilling a tooth with a foot powered drill “yikes”
Chilling thought, isnt it.