STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Sickness from Outsiders

Indians, First Nations, In the North Country

Sickness from outsiders, nothing new to the people of the Great Subarctic North. Outsiders who came to the North Country always brought sickness. The first Nations suffered infectious diseases brought by white missionaries and trappers throughout the 19^th century. Myriad bugs and germs rode north in the bodies of Gold Rushers at the end of the century. Few societies on earth developed in an isolation as profound as that of the indigenous societies of the North Country, and that isolation set them up for the recurring bouts with outsider borne diseases.

Sickness came, even in isolation, to the Tlingit people and their fellows; but for centuries it had not come often. Household remedies dealt effectively with minor ailments such as rheumatism and upset stomach. When someone fell seriously ill, a relative would carry a gift to the medicine man and he would decide if he could take the case. Medicine men came equipped with animal skins, bones, claws, stones from animal stomachs, medicinal herbs and carved and painted walking sticks.

The victim might lay by the fire under a blanket as the medicine man yelled and shouted for his spirit-helpers and an assistant played the drum. Sometimes he would suck out, or cut open to pull out, whatever evil thing was making the patient sick.

As they travelled or picked berries or ventured out to set snares, everybody gathered medicinal plants. Angela Sidney remembered the tradition of bringing back seeds to scatter near camps or villages–a wild celery, medicine for rheumatism, or balsam fir whose boughs, heated on a fire, relieved toothaches.

The natives’ bodies, never exposed to the diseases of the rest of the world, had no defense when outsiders making their way north unwittingly brought them along. Medicine Men and herbs didn’t offer much defense against tuberculosis—a disease that had become endemic among the First Nations long before the Corps arrived. Pneumonia and bronchitis killed despite the Medicine Man’s best efforts.

So the Corps of Engineers brought sickness to the North Country. The problem started slowly, gained momentum through the spring and summer; came to the attention of appropriate authorities gradually.

The Whitehorse hospital helped all it could

November 2, 1942

Dearest Helen,

…one of the Indian villages they all got measles.

Five people died. Seems they get some kind of trouble

in their head and it kills them…

Opening Ceremony, the Publicity Machine Launched

Two bulldozers met in the woods and the publicity machine launched. Colonels and generals had got bulldozers from the 97^th and the 18^th in the same place, therefore they had completed the Alaska Highway. End of story. On to a dramatic opening ceremony.

Two Bulldozers in the Same Place

Secretary of War Henry Stimson issued a press statement two weeks before the regiments actually met at the White River. “Trucks,” he said, “started to roll the entire 1671 mile length of the Alcan Highway this week, carrying munitions and material to troops in Alaska…”

Not exactly.

Staff officers in Whitehorse looked for a location for an opening ceremony well south of the messy permafrost at the border. Last summer the 18th Engineers had built road along the western shore of beautiful Lake Kluane. Perfect. Staff officers named a high point there “Soldiers Summit” and scurried to make a ceremony happen.

In Yukon, of course, a significant piece of the road still didn’t exist. The soldiers of the 18th still labored to complete the road to the White River and the soldiers of the 97th still labored south to meet them there. The scurrying staff officers in Whitehorse worked at desks next to roaring stoves. The soldiers didn’t.

The soldiers of two regiments made it to the White River before the ceremony happened—but only because weather delayed the ceremony.

On November 20, dignitaries from Canada joined dignitaries from the United States in barracks at the south end of Kluane Lake. Heath Twichell described the accommodations. “By the standards of the Yukon wilderness in the middle of November, the accommodations at Kluane Lake were deluxe. Stove-heated, generator-lit, and redolent of spruce planks and tar-paper…” barracks housed them in comfort.

The next morning at Soldiers Summit the 18th Engineers band stood by. Flags fluttered from fresh cut spruce flagpoles. At 9:30 the convoy of dignitaries arrived. They heard speeches. Two honored guests cut a ribbon while the guests cheered and the band played “God Save the King” and the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Two young soldiers and their Dodge half-ton weapons carrier arrived, leading a convoy of trucks. The band serenaded them as they pulled away up the Highway. From Twichell, “By the time [they] reached the bleak outwash valley beyond Kluane Lake, General O’Conner and his guests were sitting down to a feast of “moose steak a la Donjek…”

In February President Roosevelt had ordered up a land route to Alaska. In November the Army presented him with one. But very few vehicles would drive through to Fairbanks that winter.

Permafrost is still a problem

Two Bulldozers in the Same Place

This was the dream of senior officers in Whitehorse–not so much a reality

Getting two bulldozers in the same place, in front of a reporter’s camera, became the overriding goal for commanders on the Alaska Highway project in October 1942. The 97^th Engineers working south from Alaska and the 18^th Engineers working north through Yukon Territory had to cross 55 miles of permafrost to meet and complete the Alaska Highway.

The Genesis of the publicity machine

Ignore the permafrost, Colonel Paules ordered. He dispatched Major Bridges north into it with no fewer than twelve bulldozers. And he ordered the 97^th to push bulldozers south.

On October 25 Private Alfred Jalufka of the 18^th piloted a D-8 north through the wood’s near Beaver Creek. Private Refines Sims piloted a dozer just like it for Company A of the 97th. There in the woods they met.

The press, in the person of Harold W. Richardson of the Engineering News-Record, had got to the border in the nick of time. Captain Parsons wrote to his wife, “A Mr. Richardson editor (one of them) for Engineering News-Record was by here yesterday. I took him up the road to meet the 18th (made contact yesterday). He came back and stayed in my camp all night and I took him to HQ in the a.m.”

Parsons reference to the meeting of the dozers is in parentheses, an afterthought. To the soldiers on the ground the meeting of the dozers didn’t mean all that much. They hadn’t completed the Alaska Highway. The dozers had simply found a way to meet in the woods.

Beaver Creek is still a stop for travellers on the Alaska Highway.

Publicity

Publicity took over the project when, in British Columbia two regiments, the 35th and the 340th, met, in September at Contact Creek; opened the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse. Heath Twichell explained. “Many miles of filling and grading in both directions from Contact Creek remained to be done, but the Army knew a good public relations opportunity when it saw one. On September 22, two young soldiers… loaded… a Dodge half-ton weapons carrier and left Dawson Creek with orders to get through to Whitehorse.” Averaging 15 mph it took them five days to get there.

The Race to the International Border

The international border, the border between Canada and Alaska, had everybody’s attention at the end of the summer of 1942. The soldiers of the 18^th and those of the 97th would meet there and complete the Alaska Highway.

The 18th Combat Engineers–more on the champs

The target from the point of view of the Corps of Engineers

Just as the race to the border heated up, permafrost slowed the 18^th to a crawl. Their lead company crossed the Donjek River on August 31 and the international border seemed a very long way away. Fred Rust remembered that they averaged less than a mile a day, “floundered energetically for six weeks”.

These miles faced both regiments in the last rush to the border

The soldiers of the 18th fell further behind with every passing day through September and into October. The 97^th’s lead cat arrived at the border on October 12 and the black soldiers of the 97^th had won the race.

They paused briefly to celebrate their triumph. Captain Parsons of the 97^th wrote to his wife, Abbie, “We all took the day off yesterday and celebrated our reaching the boundary. It was a long, hard fight to get here, but we made it on schedule. The 18th didn’t make it so now we have to go on until we meet them.”

The soldiers celebrated too. Someone climbed to the top of a tree and hung a sign, “Los Angeles City Limits”. The soldiers of the 18th, still down in Yukon, did not celebrate. They grumbled, muttered about whose section of road had been tougher. But grumbling didn’t change the simple fact the black soldiers had got there first.

In his Northwest Epic, Heath Twichell wrote, “The white 18^th Engineers’record-setting pace over the 150 miles from Whitehorse to Kluane Lake during June and early July had established them as the highway’s undisputed road-building champs.” But now “…the highway’s mileage champs had been beaten in a fair race by the ‘practically useless’ [quoting General Hoge] black soldiers of the 97th Engineers.

Port Alcan, the border today

What Extreme Cold Does to Equipment—and Beer

One of the most famous photos from the Alaska Highway says it all

Extreme cold does things to equipment that the soldiers of the 97^th and 18^th Engineers never imagined. As the last two regiments working on the Alaska Highway, in October and November 1942, working in northernmost Yukon Territory, they became experts on the subject.

The 18th Combat Engineers

Young Black Soldiers of the 97th

Even in extreme cold fast-moving streams resist freezing. Ford them with a vehicle and the brakes get wet. Sit still for even a second and the wet brakes freeze. Try to move the vehicle and at best you can’t. At worst you break an axle. They sledged the brakes free if they could. If that didn’t work, they set gallon cans of burning gas or diesel under them.

In the heart of permafrost country in late October

Gravel in the back of a truck froze into a solid mass. They needed picks and sledgehammers to unload it. They never turned off a motor. If a motor quit every fluid in the vehicle froze. Even a tiny bit of water in a gas line froze and brought a vehicle to a sputtering stop. They fixed that by taking the gas line loose and blowing it out by mouth.

Fred Rust of the 18^th remembered that “Trucks used to snake logs through the woods when cats were not available emerged without bumper, fenders, mufflers or running boards… Trucks with bent frames and beds and distorted springs moved crabwise up the road… Some trucks broke in half.”

The two regiments finished here in November

If extreme cold beat up jeeps and trucks it hit bulldozers even harder. “As temperatures dropped to 50 and 70 below, diesel fuel solidified ‘like lard’ and drums had to be heated before fueling.” Company B stuck a dozer in ice, sent two dozers to pull it out. No go. The ice claimed them too.

“In the morning a D-8’s tracks would be frozen so the mechanics would pour diesel fuel over them to thaw them out with the flame.”

Sergeant Honesty Fascinated Us

Obviously 1^st Sergeant Honesty fascinated us. When Researcher Chris dug in and learned more about him. He fascinated us more.

“Top Kick” Sergeant Honesty

Ashel’s parents John and Mary Honesty lived in Zanesville, Ohio; raised 8 kids there. Ashel left to join the Army in 1918 and landed with the 813^th Pioneer Infantry at Brest, France on September 25.

In France the 813^th repaired roads, sometimes under shellfire, until the Armistice on November 11. After that, they took over graves registration—digging dead soldiers from the detritus of the battlefields, trying to identify them, reburying them at the Argonne Cemetery.

More on African-American soldiers in WWI

When the 813^th returned to the states in July of 1919, Ashel became a civilian again, found work as a coal miner in Grafton, West Virginia. Given the turbulent and colorful history of the West Virginia coal mines in the early decades of the 20^th century, it’s safe to assume that 22-year-old Honesty lived an “interesting” life there.

It’s understandable that the 1930 census found him back in the Army. Thirty-one years old by then, he was stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Marion, Indiana. Ten years later, the 1940 census found him at Fort Benning in the 24^th Infantry Division—a corporal.

A year later the Army’s dire need for experienced black NCO’s transformed his life when he became the top kick of Company A of the 93rd.

That’s what we knew about Ashel Honesty as of a week ago. We cherished an image of an incredibly tough, stern, thoroughly competent and courageous black man who struggled through racism and unfairness to help defend his country and complete an epic project.

And we had some of that right!

Still fascinated I looked on Facebook and found “Zanesville Honesty”, sent her a friend request and a private message to explain Chris and I and our work. Ashel’s nephew, Wayne Honesty, responded and a two weeks later we travelled to Columbus, Ohio to meet the present-day Honesty family.

What an experience!

Wayne, Mary and Mary’s sister, Gertrude, remember their Uncle Ashel. They don’t remember him well, and they say that up front. But they remember him affectionately.

Uncle Ashel visited infrequently, but his visits invariably inspired a family reunion—great foods and a lot of grownups swapping stories and memories. And all three remember one significant thing about the Army’s Uncle Ashel–he was “a cut-up”. Always funny. Always laughing. Always teasing.

Family lore included the story of Uncle Ashel’s gift to nephew Wayne, an infant celebrating his first Christmas—a plug of “Old Mule” chewing tobacco. Gertrude remembered when he brought his new wife Minnie to meet the family in 1951. Gertrude tells us that Minnie was a tall and very well-formed black lady. And that’s important, because when Ashel asked them to get some stockings for Minnie he told them to buy the biggest ones available!

Minnie just laughed.

Ashel and the lovely wife who needed large size stockings

The contrast between the Honesty family’s Uncle Ashel and our tough as nails Top Kick made our heads swim.

“Top Kick” Sergeant Honesty

Then Private Honesty during his WWI service

“Top Kick” Ashel Honesty left his mark on the far north country. In 1942 the Army dispatched him with the 93^rd Engineers to Yukon Territory and the Alaska Highway Project. From the Highway he went with the 93rd to the Aleutians. “Top Kick” Honesty was the man in Company A of the 93^rd.

Enlisted soldiers live and work in platoons commanded by commissioned officers—usually second lieutenants, fresh from college ROTC or from West Point. Platoons work in companies, commanded by slightly more experienced 1^st Lieutenants or Captains. Enlisted NCO’s, grizzled veterans who understand how things really work, serve alongside these young officers, saluting them but also guiding and teaching them. In a company, none of these veteran NCO’s is more important than the “Top Kick”, the Company First Sergeant.

Line on the Map

Views and Visions Unsurpassed anywhere on earth

The line on the map that the Corps of Engineers would turn into the rough draft of the Alaska Highway in 1942, started at Dawson Creek, British Columbia and ended at Delta, Alaska. The Corps had no idea what lay in front of them.

The land of the Midnight Sun could offer a traveler the spectacle of a golden lavender sunset in the west and a rising moon, dusted with the same hue in the east. Oversized and spectacular, the land dwarfed every living thing in it—mosquitoes, moose, grizzlies and, very occasionally, men.

Paths Through the North Country

Winters surrounded everything in this country with temperatures that could freeze coffee between the pot and the cup. In spring red-purple fireweed blanketed the ground and, as the top layers of permafrost melted, stately spruce trees slowly leaned. Ice and snow melted into roaring rivers that scoured mountains down into flats and spread them in great alluvial fans of gravel and dirt. Water melted into the dirt and formed mud and more mud and, like lava, slowly swallowed random logs. It would soon be swallowing the bulldozers of the Corps.

During the very short summers, the temperatures occasionally rose as high as 90 degrees. The mud dried into dust that truck tires would soon stir into small cyclones of grit that stuck to teeth and eyelashes. Young elk and buffalo calves with their mothers came to the rivers and lush fields to feed and drink. The rivers teemed with salmon and grayling. But the men of the Corps would find the water too cold for bathing. As they sweated in the sweltering heat, mosquitoes and no see ums would erupt from the boggy centers of disturbed muskeg to decorate pancake batter and torture skin.

The Corps would find that, unlike men, the North Country made no distinctions between those who challenged it. The mosquitoes and the no see ums landed and feasted on skin, utterly indifferent to whether it was black skin or white. They offered equal opportunity torture.

Get out your bucket list

Stampede to the Klondike

A stampede of gold seekers descended on Skagway, Alaska in 1897. As the crow flies, Caribou Crossing and Lake Bennett lay just a few miles from Skagway and from Lake Bennett the Yukon River flowed north to the Gold Fields. No, as they say, big deal.