O’Connor, Colonel James A. “Patsy” O’Connor, southern sector commander on the Alaska Highway Project, finally caught a break in May. One of his regiments, brand new, sorely lacking in experience, fresh off the shocking disaster at Charlie lake had a lot of learning to do. But at the end of the month, one more regiment joined O’Connor’s team when the 95th Engineers came up from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
They had existed as a regiment for a full year. They had under their belt thirteen weeks of training at Ft. Belvoir, construction projects at Camp A.P. Hill and ten weeks of training at Ft. Bragg. In short, the 95th had jelled into a working team that brought significant training and experience to the project, qualities O’Connor desperately needed. They knew their job and how to do it. Moreover, their equipment followed close behind them—including heavy equipment. The Corps had sent O’Connor, struggling to reorganize and recover from a disastrous month, a tremendous asset.
Link to another story “Twichell, Father and Son, and the Alaska Highway”
But the men of the 95th, like those of the 93rd and the 97th, were black. Their resume mattered less to O’Connor than their color. When the 95th’s heavy equipment arrived at Dawson Creek, O’Connor immediately handed it over to the 341st!
The 95th would come to the highway with two bulldozers, one grader, a carryall, less than twenty small dump trucks—and hand tools.
The Army’s Take on the Highway Project
The skin color of the soldiers of the 341st mattered more than their demonstrated inexperience and its consequences. O’Conner pointed them and ‘their’ new heavy equipment at the road and ordered the black soldiers of the 95th to fall in behind them to clean up the roadway with hand tools. The soldiers of the 95th swung picks and wielded shovels, hauled dirt with wheelbarrows and felled trees with axes and saws.
Whatever enthusiasm they had for the Alaska Highway project dissolved. One soldier, Henry Roberts remembered it succinctly. “Morale was bad”.
