By the end of March Hoge’s headquarters in Whitehorse had geared up and was pushing hard, not just in the Southern Sector, but all along the route of the Highway. Hoge had long realized four regiments would not be enough. He needed seven.
The Corps didn’t have enough white regiments, and the desperate need for the Highway rolled right over the color bar. Secretary of War Stimson authorized three regiments of black troops for Hoge’s provisional brigade–the 93rd, the 97th and the 95th. On March 27, 1942 Colonel Hoge became General Hoge.
A flood of men and equipment just like the one that had already inundated Dawson Creek, Fort St John and Ft Nelson was quickly building, preparing to inundate Skagway, Whitehorse and Valdez, Alaska.
Hoge had ordered Ingalls to get the troops to Ft. Nelson—they would figure out what to do with them when they got there. Now they were there and the urgent problem of finding a route through the Rockies and on to Watson Lake, replaced the urgent problem of getting there. Read More Getting Them There
The North Country hit the surveyors with unique problems. Few maps or aerial photos existed. Worse, they found their compasses of limited use. “This far to the north, they don’t behave right.” Army Air Corp pilots flew 50-mile-wide flight patterns out of Ft. St. John recording the topography from Dawson Creek to Watson Lake.
Eschbach of the 648th made a four day foray with three of his surveyors into the wilderness northwest of Ft. Nelson. Traveling on snowshoes with packs and pup tents in subzero weather, they found an endless expanse of steep mountains and deep canyons. “No way a road could be built there.”
Frantically busy organizing his flood of men and equipment, Hoge delegated solving the Southern Sector’s route problem to Colonel Ingalls in Fort Nelson and Major Welling at Fort St. John.
By March 31, even though most of his troops were getting organized in California, North Carolina, Florida, Washington and Louisiana, Hoge had, for better or for worse, mounted his invasion of the North Country.