Thad Bryson, a young black man from Old Fort, North Carolina met the Tuskegee Airmen. Shortly after that his regiment, the 97th Engineering Regiment quite suddenly left Florida—for Alaska! Thad Bryson meets the Tuskegee Airmen Thad’s son Fred shared with us his dad’s stories. Like a lot of veterans, Thad didn’t talk about it much; …
Category Archives: Construction of the Alaska Highway
The Road to Fairbanks
Richardson’s road to Fairbanks replaced Abercrombie’s trail to Eagle on the Yukon, but nobody replaced the Richardson Highway until the US Army Corps of Engineers, in a feat many had considered impossible, installed a totally new way to get to Fairbanks—a land route from the railhead at Dawson Creek, British Columbia. More on the …
Humble, Vaguely Malodorous Canvas
Humble, vaguely malodorous, canvas, on the Alaska Highway in 1942, supported life in bivouac. Canvas tents provided barracks, mess halls and offices. Men slept on folding canvas cots. Canvas “lister bags” stored treated drinking water. Canvas enclosures became mechanical repair shops. In canvas enclosures, soldiers transformed empty fuel drums into stoves, showers and bath …
Routine but Not Easy
Life settled into a routine by the first of August. That didn’t mean it got easy. All the soldiers, white and black, had worked in the woods for weeks. The racial issues that plagued the black regiments hadn’t gone away, but by August they lurked in the background–part of the routine. New Plan and new …
The fate of Private Major Banks.
Private Major Banks, a young black soldier in the 97th Engineering regiment reported for sick call on May 20, 1942. The medics sent him to the little hospital in Valdez, Alaska. Port of Valdez in 1942 Banks grew up in New Canton, Virginia. He didn’t enter the Army until January 1942, so he came late …
New Plan and new route
General Hoge’s new plan and new route would absolutely get the Alaska Highway completed on time or he and his soldiers would die trying. For more on Hoge’s Reassessment https://www.chrisdennis111.com/struggle-in-july/ On July 15, the point where the men of the 340th Engineers needed to meet the oncoming men of the 35th lay a very long, …
Struggle in July
With 1800 miles of Alaska Highway to build and the summer half over, General Hoge took stock. Up in Alaska the 97th Engineers had struggled to get in place. They got going and then ran into Mentasta Pass. In Yukon it had taken the 340th Engineers the first half of the summer just to get …
Malevolent Mentasta
A vaguely malevolent sounding name, “Mentasta”. It describes a precisely malevolent stretch of road through the mountains of the Alaska Range. Through late June and early July, the black soldiers of the 97th Engineers had finally begun to build road. The men of Company B forged out front clearing a rough right of way. The …
Troopship
The troopship USS David Branch met the young black soldiers of the 97th at the Port of Seattle. They got off their trains at Ft. Lewis and one company moved directly to the port to deliver their few small trucks for loading on the ship. More on Getting to Seattle Through the day on April …
Lt. Mike Miletich, Forgotten Hero
A true hero of the Alaska Highway Project, Lt. Mike Miletich has managed to fade into anonymity. Not fair. The ‘go to’ guy for the 35th Combat Engineering Regiment, Lt. Miletich turned up at every challenging point in their work on the Highway. He led, for example, the advance party to Dawson Creek in March …