June brought the War to the North Country—to the Aleutians. Down in Yukon the black men of the 93rd Engineers battled a less vicious but ultimately much tougher enemy—mother nature. The white soldiers of the 340th, though, mostly still battled confusion—battled themselves. General Hoge finally had heavy equipment on the way. It would begin to …
Category Archives: Construction of the Alaska Highway
They Soldiered On
When the Japanese attacked, the men on the Alcan soldiered on. The Japanese Bomb Dutch Harbor In spring 1942 seven regiments of the Corps of Engineers had headed into the wilderness of British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska, trailed by mountains of equipment and swarms of support troops. They came to build a land route to …
Aleutians
The Aleutians. The American and Canadian Governments’ fear, after Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese might assault North America through the Aleutians and Alaska inspired the emergency project to build the Alaska Highway. For the soldiers on the ground in Northern Canada and Alaska in 1942, May rolled seamlessly into June, but they had not forgotten …
Bodies Populated Charlie Lake
Bodies, corpses, populated Charlie Lake after Colonel Lane’s raft capsized. The Colonel, determined to bypass the bottomless mud north of Fort St John, had dispatched the raft. Now, horrified, he rushed to the scene. He found Gus, the old trapper who had tried to rescue them, and the two men rowed Gus’ skiff out to …
Drowned in Charlie Lake
Men drowned in Charlie Lake. Lead up to Charlie Lake I posted about Colonel Lane of the 341st and his problem—getting a supply road up to Ft Nelson to support the 35th. At mid-May he thought he had found a solution—rafts up Charlie Lake would bypass the 12 most difficult miles of sucking muskeg. The …
341st, Much Too Slow
The 341st moved much too slowly. In March, when he ordered the 35th to rush to Fort Nelson before the winter road thawed to impassable, General Hoge bet that Colonel Joe Lane’s 341st Engineers could create a road across the rivers and through the gumbo to Fort Nelson before the 35th’s supplies ran out. No …
The Soldiers of the 35th Went Hungry
And the soldiers of the 35th went hungry–the ones who didn’t have serum hepatitis. Read about the Serum Hepatitis When, in March, their commanders dispatched the soldiers of the 35th over the 250-mile winter road to Ft Nelson, they took a hell of a chance. The road behind them would soon melt into impassible muck. …
Sick Soldiers
The Army made some of them sick. In March 1942 the 35th Combat Engineering Regiment had come first to the road. They flooded into and through Dawson Creek, British Columbia, out over the Peace River and on to Fort St John. The stuff of legend, their race against the spring thaw got them to Ft …
Gouging a Road through Yukon
The soldiers of Company A, finally gouging a road out of the wilderness powered through Yukon in May. The soldiers of Company B came right behind. For more on the 93rd On May 19th the North Country threw a curve at Company B when a forest fire flared about seven and a half miles from …
Moving Out to Tagish
When I last posted about the Alaska Highway Project, I followed the segregated 93rd Engineering Regiment into Carcross and out on the road toward Tagish. In early May, the Line Companies of the regiment mingled in confusion in the ten miles between Carcross and Crag Lake; and Commander Johnson, his staff and his company commanders …