Ft. Nelson, Chester Russell’s Passage

Ft. Nelson, General Hoge’s goal for Chester’s 35^th lay another 230 miles north of Fort St. John on a trail resting on ice—ice rapidly turning to water.

The 35^th moved over the trail in an endless stream of men, trucks, dozers and other equipment—for three weeks in March while the trail behind them effectively disappeared.

The Most Colorful Soldier

Out at the head of the line, Lt. Miletich’s exhausted, hungry and, above all, cold advance party stumbled into Fort Nelson on the afternoon of March 20^th—the first to arrive.

The rest of the regiment followed and found the experience excruciating. Upon arrival at their destination, soldiers who had made the trip in the back of cargo trucks could hardly climb out or walk.  Finally, in a tent and near a fire, their “blood warmed and thinned, they would become dizzy and fell asleep.”

The soldiers of the 35^th and all the attached units pulled it off.  They and their equipment made it to Ft. Nelson before the thaw.  But they were far from ready to make a road.  As hard as the trip had been on the men, it had been even harder on their equipment.

More important, if they hadn’t brought it with them, they wouldn’t get it any time soon.

In his interview with Earl Brown and Hank Bridgeman, Chester remembered, “After the thaw we was stuck in there…” They had brought food up in single axle trucks and Chester had driven one of them. The regiment built an icehouse and when the trucks arrived they unloaded the frozen food and stored it there.  Unfortunately, “As soon as thaw came, all that melted right along with it. All the meat spoilt.”

Pancake flour didn’t spoil, and Chester remembered endless meals of pancakes. They got sugar by “taking the wrappers off of the hard candies and melting them down.”

Mail came by plane, but the planes couldn’t land. They dropped the mail sacks. “They just dumped it out, hit the ground, and some of it we got, some of it we didn’t.

Ft. Nelson today