Link to another story “Send Food or Send Coffins” Mutiny, the Army’s most serious crime, visited the 97th at Big Gerstle, Alaska in March 1943. Or did it? The answer depends on your perspective and how you define mutiny. In March at Big Gerstle, Headquarters Company commander Lt. Dewitt Howell received a routine order to …
Category Archives: Court Martial
Ten Mutineers
Ten young black men from the hot and humid South, Sgt. Heard and his squad had endured the spring and summer of 1942 building Alaska Highway through the wilds of Alaska. In late fall Company F and the squad had crossed into Yukon Territory to work on south through piling snow and plunging temperatures. Back …
Balmy Above Zero to Thirty-six Below
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, …