KV Nelson served with the 97th Engineering Regiment on the Alaska Highway in Alaska—until February 5, 1943. On that day he died.
He and a fellow soldier named Smith, driving a truck on the icy highway back to camp from the little settlement at Station Creek, slid off the road into a ditch. The truck broke through the ice and stuck fast. Thirty miles from salvation the two men had no choice, around 11:00 am they started to walk.
Injured, Sick or Worse on the Highway
Ten miles on they stopped and built a fire so Nelson could warm his feet, but they had to keep moving. After a few more miles, they stopped again. This time they couldn’t build a fire. They had matches but their freezing hands couldn’t grasp and light one.
As they trudged on through the night, cold and fatigue built up for Nelson. He began to fall down, fell several times. Smith managed to get him back on his feet, but it got harder and harder to do.
In the end Smith had to leave him, hoping against hope he could get to camp, get help and get back in time to save his friend.
At 2:00 am Smith stumbled into camp, and four soldiers set out immediately to find Nelson. The brutal cold forced them back to camp after just a few miles. At 8:00 am they tried again and made it back to a frozen corpse. Later that afternoon they got it on a sled and back to camp.
Smith, writing to his company commander, “Mentally I myself am about to crack so get some kind of message to me either giving me hell for making an ass of myself or otherwise. As I look back over it, there are a lot of if’s which if they had been done the thing might not have happened. I don’t know and probably never will know if I did the right thing.”
The incident left Smith with a frost-bitten nose and a permanently useless little finger on his right hand.
What a sad story. probably not the only one. Your second sentence, first para., shows the power of Hemingway’s (I think) style…speak short
Thank you so much. That’s a heck of a compliment.
Dennis. That anonymous was me, Tom Deupree. I forgot to sign in.
Also, very effective website
A sad story. I have known 2 different men that have had to leave their vehicles in the winter and frozen to death.
It was incredibly sad to me. I’ve never lived in a climate that bitterly cold, and this kind of accident horrifies…