For the 93rd Engineers in Yukon in June the motor pool’s first frantic mission, getting heavy equipment through and out to the road, rapidly morphed into an equally frantic ongoing mission—supporting the line companies in maintaining and fixing it once they got it. With heavy equipment, especially the big Caterpillar bulldozers, finally in hand, the …
Category Archives: Bulldozer
The Swamp Claimed a Dozer
Big Devil Swamp immortalized Captain Pollock, Company B commander, in June 1942. Read More about Getting to the Teslin River Racing to the Teslin River early in the month, the soldiers of the 93rd had passed Summit Lake and plunged through the swamp—left a barely passable trail. The soldiers of the 340th had worked through …
New Equipment Gets Old
New equipment came to the Alaska Highway Project in 1942, but the project aged new equipment quickly. Some of it went with the army when the soldiers moved on at the end of the project. A lot of it they just abandoned in place. On one of my stories the other night, Wayne Olstad wrote …
Big Devil Swamp Ate a Dozer
Big Devil Swamp swallowed a Company B bulldozer whole in June 1942 and immortalized the Company’s commander, Captain Pollock. Commanding General Hoge had assigned the Black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers to create a path from Carcross to the Teslin River. The white soldiers of the 340th Engineers would use it to get to their …
Motor Pool
Motor Pool–the soldiers of the 93rd Engineers needed one desperately. And locating one and getting heavy equipment to it presented a problem. In May 1942 the black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers plunged through Yukon’s forbidding wilderness working with a couple of borrowed bulldozers and hand tools. But Ships carrying their heavy equipment steamed out …
Nature Could Beat the Dozers
Nature fought the Alaska Highway builders in 1942—fought them hard. And, for all their awesome power, sometimes even the monster dozers lost a battle. At mid-summer, the soldiers of the 93rd Engineers struggled through Yukon. Nature opened her spigots and endless rain fell day after day. Long stretches of road turned to thick mud with …
Correction about D8 Caterpillar
Correction. The historical accuracy of these stories is extremely imortant to me and I always appreciate a factual correction. Last night I posted about Caterpillar bulldozers on the Alaska Highway Project. At one point I referred to the D8’s air cooled engine. Caterpillar Dozers–the Offending Story Those of you who visit and follow this blog …
Caterpillar Dozers
Caterpillar dozers did jobs on the Alcan project that Caterpillar never imagined. One night a sergeant of the 18th Engineers, working his D8 into and through the trees, acquired a determined grizzly bear guide and companion. He swerved toward the giant bear and it ran away, but as soon as he returned to his work, …
Subarctic Cold
Subarctic cold should have stopped the men building the Alaska Highway in 1942 dead in their tracks. To be sure, endless problems confronted them every step along their way and finding solutions and driving on rendered their achievement epic. But none of the endless list of obstacles—mountains, mud, muskeg, permafrost, mosquitoes and all the …
Private Russel at Ft. Nelson
Private Russel and his fellows at Ft. Nelson not only struggled to find food to eat, they also struggled to fix the trucks and tractors that their winter road trip up from Fort St. John had all but destroyed. Ft. Nelson, Chester Russell’s Passage The army rushed mechanics from Union Tractor Company in from Edmonton …