Climax at the Teslin River

The Climax came at the Teslin River.

At mid-June 1942 the black soldiers of the 93^rd raced, a long train, through the Yukon woods building a road for the white soldiers of the 340^th to the Teslin River. Way behind schedule and burning with impatience the soldiers of the 340^th had moved in behind them and now moved around and through them.

The men of the 340^th formed their own long train, marching men, small vehicles carrying supplies… On June 7^th and 8^th the head of their train bivouacked at Tagish; crossed Tagish River on the 9^th.  Thirteen miles further east, they passed the 93^rd’s motor pool and supply dump at Jakes Corner, then they passed through and around the black soldiers of companies B and C.

On June 11^th they sort of caught up with the lead company of the 93^rd—Company A—at Squanga Lake. Actually, they caught up with Company A’s encampment—where the black soldiers would normally eat and sleep. But the frantically working black men of Company A had left eating and sleeping behind. When they set up their encampment at Squanga Lake, twenty miles of swamp and woods remained between them and the river. They could all but feel the presence of the soldiers of the 340^th coming behind them and the climax coming up.

Leonard Larkins of Company A

They needed speed.  The climax of their effort lay just ahead.

Quality control went out the window along with personal comfort, food, rest and a lot of other things normally considered essential.  Incredibly, they built that last twenty miles of road in just seven days.

When, northeast of Squanga Lake, they hit the Johns River, Holtzapple didn’t even slow down.  He turned the problem over to the 73^rd Pontoon Engineers and kept going.  The 73^rd brought in two pontoon boats, floated them between two trestles, and made a temporary thirty-six-foot bridge that could support a 23 ton D8.

Ultimately the 73^rd, the 340^th and the 93^rd would gang up on the Johns River with a stringer bridge—three open spans supported by two rock filled cribs.  But there was no time for that now.

The soldiers of Company A reached the Teslin River on June 16. The men of the 340^th began boarding boats there that same day.

Between June 9^th and June 16^th, Company A of the 93^rd completed the twenty miles from their bivouac to the Teslin River—and accomplished Colonel Johnson’s primary mission—all by themselves.  With their bivouac twenty miles behind, the exhausted men of Company A were hungry and filthy.  But they had got the white regiment to the river.  And the Teslin River crossing remains, to this day, “Johnson’s Crossing”.

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