Sometimes funny, the exploits of bush pilot Les Cook on the Alaska Highway Project make great stories. Most stories portray Les as a hero. Cook flew when no one else could or would. He and his plane saved lives. Cook’s plane brought food, mail, emergency equipment and doctors to places no other mode of transportation …
Category Archives: Construction of the Alaska Highway
Paul Raso–Guest Post
Paul Raso’s father served as a company commander in the 97th Engineering Regiment—appears several times in our new book, A Different Race. And I posted a story about him and a pack mule here just a few days ago. Captain Paul Raso commanded a company of black soldiers who played a major part in constructing …
Pack Mule
Pack mule out front, soldiers of the 97th Engineering Regiment started their road out of Slana, Alaska in 1942. Technically the mule didn’t lead them because a Lieutenant named Razo led him—but close enough. A few days into the woods, the Lieutenant made the mule extremely unhappy. Link to another story “Blazing the Path of …
Two Books
Two books, We Fought the Road and A Different Race, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local bookstore will appeal to people who enjoy my stories. Christine and I wrote them. An Epic project comparable to the construction of the Panama Canal, the construction of the Alaska Highway left behind a treasure trove …
Scrapers–or Carryalls
Scrapers or carryalls, in 1942 in Northern Canada the Army called them both. The big machines scraped mud and dirt, but the soldiers also pressed them into service to carry almost anything. The big machines, most from LeTourneau, made the Alaska Highway Project possible in 1942. This story consists of photos because photos tell it. …
Relations
Relations between Canada and its tightly coupled neighbor to the South, generally but not always good, influenced the Alaska Highway Project in 1942. Even today, the things we get up to down here don’t always leave Canadians, our oldest and best international friends, with a warm fuzzy feeling. And the things we get up to …
Stuff, Mountains of Stuff
Stuff, simple stuff but mountains of it, caused enormous problems for Alaska Highway builders in 1942. Swarming over the mountains and through the woods carving out the Highway, thousands of soldiers consumed mountains of rations. And thousands of soldiers needed underwear, boots, coats, sleeping bags, and toilet paper and an untold number of other things …
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 …
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 …
Routine, Not Easy
Routine settled in on the Alaska Highway Project in August, but no amount of routine could make it easy. The details of daily living and working—eating; sleeping; recreating (or lack thereof) and, above all, gouging a highway out of the forbidding wilderness, one mile at a time—had fallen into a pattern that applied to all …