Charlie Lake

Charlie Lake saw the deadly consequences of an enormous gamble. In March General Hoge had ordered Colonel Robert Ingalls to race his 35^th Engineers over the ice road to Fort Nelson. The road thawed to rivers and gumbo right behind them. The General had gambled that Colonel Joe Lane’s 341^st Engineers could build an all-weather road to Fort Nelson before the 35^th’s supplies ran out.

No pressure!

The 341^st arrived in Dawson Creek in early May; pushed a few miles through the gumbo to Fort St John and on to Charlie Lake; pushed much too slowly.

341st, Much Too Slow

But at the Lake Lane spotted an opportunity to bypass 12 miles of muck. He ordered one of his Companies to leave their heavy equipment behind and negotiate the mud on foot to the other end of the lake. Behind them he ordered the 74^th Pontoon Company to build a raft to float their equipment up.

Corporal Robert Wooldridge described the end of the raft’s first voyage in a letter to his sister from his hospital bed.

“At 8 o’clock, I was ordered by Lieut. Nelson to take my radio car down to a lake and load it on a pontoon float … there was a Caterpillar and gas cans [on the pontoon] … it was only eight inches out of the water supported by three flat pontoons … we had to go against the waves all the way … as we rounded the last bend in the lake … the wind was the strongest and we started shipping water faster … we put all hand pumps to use. The Major [Turvey], a Lieutenant [Hargis] and

myself were inside the car keeping warm … trouble started and the Major got out … he ordered us to head into shore. As the pontoon under the Caterpillar started turning broadside of the waves, I could see it would sink … we got out of the car. I just put my feet on the raft when the whole thing went over and over. The command car was tipping towards me so I jumped and swam as fast as I could to keep from being pinned under it …. The Lieutenant couldn’t swim and was yelling “please save me”. A mile upstream was a little cabin and the trapper eating his breakfast had seen us bobbing in the water … so he hopped into his row boat and came after us … he rowed so hard the oar cracked … he made three trips and I was in the second.

The trapper, Gus Hedin explained how he rescued the five, but lost Lt. Hargis. On his second trip, two men hung on the side of his boat. One could not hang on any longer and dropped off. He said that the other men yelled out “That is our Lt. Hargis. Save him if you can. He is the best ever.” Gus went out again but could not find him.

Working with grappling equipment, a crew from the 341st found two more bodies. Wallace Lytle remembered, “We was out searching for the bodies. It’s not a happy thought, but we just, we just went on. That’s the way it was.”

Dynamite brought more bodies to the surface—ghastly, frozen stiff by the icy water. They recovered 11 corpses, but Lt. Hargis remained unaccounted for until June 9.

The Memorial