Down in Yukon

Down in Yukon the action in June 1942 centered on the black soldiers of the 93^rd Engineers. Their equipment arrived. Out on the road just one company, Company C, rapidly acquired nine new dozers, three carryalls, a towed rooter plow, a galleon road grader, a gas operated crane shovel…  With each dozer came light and heavy towed graders, a ten-ton motorized roller and one transport trailer.  And, once equipment started coming, it didn’t stop.  Captain Boyd acquired a jeep and company headquarters acquired a command car, a ½ ton pickup and three 2 ½ ton cargo trucks.  Behind that came three ½ ton weapon carriers, nine ½ ton dump trucks, a motorized air compressor and a four-ton cargo truck for heavy hauling.

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Their meagre stock of borrowed equipment replaced by new equipment coming into the mushrooming headquarters and motor pool at Jake’s Corner, Johnson’s lead companies raced through the wilderness.  But the wilderness fought back—hard.

Melting ice and snow and spring rains turned rivers and streams into raging cataracts.  Lakes swelled into the surrounding woods.  Deep mud covered the route of the highway. Daytime temperatures averaged 72 degrees and night time 29 degrees.

May had introduced the engineers to muskeg.  June taught them even more about it. Patches of the nasty stuff lay in wait for unwary truck and dozer drivers and many fell prey to them.  They learned to look for stands of Aspen and Popular because the roots grew on rocky soil or a firm gravel base and avoid stands of spruce that grew, often leaning precariously, out of muskeg.

Hammering diesel engines powered heavy vehicles through the mud—slewing left and right, tires alternately spinning and gripping, spitting mud at everything around them.  Sooner or later the mud won.  Gripping would cease and spinning would simply sink the big tires deeper.  Shifting into neutral and letting the diesel idle, a driver would climb out into the mud, unwind steel cable from the winch mounted on his bumper, drag it through the mud to a tree, wrap it around and secure it with a steel hook.  Engaging the winch gear, he would rev up the diesel, wind the cable back in and pull the truck from the sucking mud.  This worked for trucks. Winching a twenty-three-ton dozer, though, would usually move the tree instead of the dozer.

The mosquito assault that had launched in May continued apace.  Ten thousand mosquito nets had finally arrived, along with a quantity of repellant, and that levelled the playing field a bit.  But the battle raged into June. Lt. Dudrow of Company B remembered, “You could reach up and smack the back of your neck and have fifty mosquitos in your hand.”

Truck drivers had to take care when following the hand and arm signals of a ground guide—he might be swatting mosquitoes instead of giving directions.