Getting supplies into the woods–the next big problem. In Yukon in June 1942 heavy equipment had made it into the interior and galvanized the progress of the 93rd. But General Hoge’s battle with the folks in Seattle, at the other end of his supply line, raged through June. Hoge had, several weeks earlier, urgently requested three quartermaster truck companies from the War Department, one to haul gravel and two to haul supplies. The first truck company landed in Skagway during the first week of June—without their trucks or any basic supplies; directed to draw their supplies from non-existent stockpiles in Skagway. Hoge’s headquarters found them a place to sleep in the hanger at the airfield, and Hoge urgently messaged Seattle not to send the other two companies without equipment and supplies. They came anyway. By the end of June, Hoge had 300 drivers and mechanics jammed into the hanger, and it took until mid-summer to get the last of them out on the road and working.
Colonel Johnson now had well over a thousand men in the woods, half of them getting farther from Carcross every day. They had to eat, repel mosquitoes, replace ruined uniforms and boots… Their brand-new dozers and trucks gobbled fuel, grease, oil and spare parts voraciously. Thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, mountains of fifty-five-gallon drums, had to get out to the line every day—without fail. Every box and every drum had to come through tiny Carcross–either a distribution center or a bottleneck, depending on your point of view.
In the beginning, a few soldiers from the 93rd and an eleven-man quartermaster detachment transferred the ‘stuff’ from train to truck. Truck drivers hauling supplies from Carcross to the line companies in those early stages endured an eight hour round trip. A driver knew his destination company, but only its approximate location. Moving two to four miles a day, the companies were, for the drivers, a moving target.
By the end of the month, one of Hoge’s Quartermaster Truck Companies, the 134th, made it to Carcross and set up a more efficient routine. As rations and supplies came up to the depot, the 134th loaded them and moved them out on a ‘truck train’ of 2 ½ ton tactical trucks (deuce and a half). Drivers bounced over ruts and slewed through mud for as many as twenty-four or even thirty-six hours, swatting at hordes of monster mosquitoes as they drove. If they got stuck, they walked to find a D8 to yank them out.
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