The problems that had emerged to plague the Alaska Highway Project in April piled like dirt in front of a bulldozer blade in May. The hell-bent advance into the wilderness threatened to dissolve in chaos and confusion. Three entry points, Skagway, Valdez and Dawson Creek, swarmed with confused troops trying desperately to get organized.More on …
Category Archives: Alaska Highway
The Trail at Muncho Lake
The men of the 35th Engineers stood by in Ft Nelson, ready to build a road. And McCusker had bequeathed a route. Scouting that route from the air, though, Colonel Twichell and civilian Curwen could only see the relatively easy terrain to Summit Lake and sixty-five miles beyond. At a cloud-shrouded pass near Muncho Lake …
The Road from Ft Nelson
A few weeks ago, I posted about the dramatic effort of the 35th Engineering Regiment to get to Ft Nelson before the spring thaw. On the first of April, bedraggled, surrounded by their abused and broken machines, the soldiers of the 35th bivouacked there. General Hoge had ordered the 340th and 93rd Engineers into Skagway …
General Hoge’s Problem
General Hoge directed the 1500-mile project from a ramshackle office with a homemade desk and empty packing crates as file cabinets at Headquarters in Whitehorse. The Hoge Highway “the Burma Road of North America” would be a more finished bit of construction if it did not have to be done in a terrific hurry. But …
Experience Operating Railroads
The officers and men of the 770th Railway Operating Battalion had long experience operating railroads; thought themselves prepared for just about any challenge. Warnings from the civilian railroaders of the WP&YR fell on deaf ears. Then they met the little railroad that could. Captain Richard L. Neuberger told the story of the worst storm of …
Hoge’s Invasion
By the end of March Hoge’s headquarters in Whitehorse had geared up and was pushing hard, not just in the Southern Sector, but all along the route of the Highway. Hoge had long realized four regiments would not be enough. He needed seven. The Corps didn’t have enough white regiments, and the desperate need for …
Chester Russell
When the 35th Engineers came through Dawson Creek, crossed the barely frozen Peace River and moved on up toward Ft Nelson, their number included Chester Russell. An ex rodeo bronc rider, 6’4” Chester Russell, had once worked the rodeo circuit with a future star of Hollywood westerns, Slim Pickens. In the Army in 1942, Chester …
Precarious River Ice
Four separate trains hauled the 43 officers and 1230 enlisted men of the 35th Engineering Regiment to Dawson Creek. The last train arrived in late afternoon on March 16. Everyone confronted the Peace River. The First Soldiers on the Highway Colonel Hoge had flown to Fort St. John and set up temporary headquarters in a …
Soldiers in British Columbia Got Cold
The soldiers coming through Dawson Creek in March 1942 got cold, really cold. They would pitch a tent as best they could and bring in a wood fired Sibley stove. Fired, the stove brought warmth, but the warmth proved elusive. A soldier had to be within a foot of the stove to feel it. And …
The first troops to Dawson Creek
Flying above, driving over, and thinking about the massive challenge facing his soldiers, Hoge began getting organized. And even as he and his staff worked to create a plan, his troops in the Southern Sector rushed in to implement it. An advance party, Company B of the 35th, under Lt. Miletich completed their 5 day–2,000-mile …