East of Tagish work speeded up.
Recall that in April 1942 General Hoge had dispatched the black soldiers of the 93rd to Carcross to build a road to the Teslin River for the 340th. He had done so to get the black men out of Skagway and he didn’t propose to leave them long in Carcross either. Getting the supply road built, yesterday if possible, fell to Colonel Johnson, commander of the 93rd.
At mid-May the Line Companies of the regiment mingled in confusion in the ten miles between Carcross and Crag Lake; and Commander Johnson, his staff and his company commanders worked furiously to get organized and move out toward their first goal, Tagish and the Tagish River.
With two borrowed bulldozers, the soldiers of Company A, finally powered into and through Yukon. gouging a rough road out of the wilderness. The soldiers of Companies B and C came right behind.
Commander Johnson called it a train. Company A knocked down and cleared trees. Company B came right behind, grading the path into a semblance of road. Company C came next, laying corduroy and building culverts.
Just beyond Tagish a peaceful bit of woods would become the junction between the supply road out from Carcross and the Alaska Highway—Jakes Corner. The soldiers in the lead companies powered through Jakes Corner and the motor pool and heavy equipment came hard on their heels.
And with heavy equipment, the lead companies’ drive to the Teslin was well and truly on. On June 6, filthy, hungry, exhausted soldiers of Company A set up camp a few miles east of Jake’s Corner–and then kept going. On the 7th they added four more miles. Sgt. Albert France remembered, “They had difficulty cutting down trees. Often we would dig down through green grass and then hit cakes of solid ice beneath the dirt.”
Taking advantage of the ‘midnight’ sun, Captain Boyd of Company C worked his platoons in seven-hour shifts, stopping work only during the hours of darkness between 11:00 pm and 2:00 am. During those hours they did basic maintenance on their equipment.
On June 9th, Company A moved to a bivouac near Summit Lake, smack in the middle of Big Devil Swamp, eight miles east of Jake’s Corner, just twenty miles from the Teslin River.