Swimming? Not a topic you would expect in a story from the Alaska Highway Project, but here it comes… Near the end of June, with the critical task of getting the 340th to the Teslin River behind them, Headquarters moved up to Squanga Lake. One day, when the air temperature climbed to 80 degrees the …
Category Archives: Baths and Showers
Deep Woods
Deep woods in subarctic Canada and Alaska not only provided a unique place for the Alaska Highway builders to work through 1942. Deep woods also provided a unique place to live. Canvas, humble, vaguely malodorous, supported life in bivouac. Canvas tents provided barracks, mess halls, repair shops and offices. Inside the tents some lucky soldiers …
Keeping Clean
Keeping clean isn’t easy when you live and work deep in the wilderness of the far north. Soldiers building the Alaska Highway tried keeping clean. They did not always (more accurately, they did not often) succeed. ‘Big John’ Erklouts of the 340th dealt with icy cold rivers and streams by washing half of his body …