STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Bodies Populated Charlie Lake

Bodies, corpses, populated Charlie Lake after Colonel Lane’s raft capsized.

The Colonel, determined to bypass the bottomless mud north of Fort St John, had dispatched the raft. Now, horrified, he rushed to the scene. He found Gus, the old trapper who had tried to rescue them, and the two men rowed Gus’ skiff out to where the accident had occurred. Bill Leonard, Lane’s assistant, came up to meet them in a single pontoon boat. “We searched the vicinity and the nearby shores but were unable to find any more of the men.”

The Colonel’s Plan

A crew from the regiment came up, and one of them, Wallace Lytle, remembered, “We was out searching for the bodies. It’s not a happy thought, but we just, we just went on. That’s, that’s the way it was.”

They used grappling gear to bring two bodies up. Dynamite brought more to the surface—ghastly, frozen stiff by the icy water. In all they recovered eleven corpses, but Lt. Hargis remained unaccounted for until June 9^th.

On the very day of his death in Charlie Lake, the regiment had received a telegram for Lt. Hargis from his wife. Their baby boy had choked to death and she implored her husband to come home for the funeral. It fell to Colonel Lane to tell her that her husband had drowned. “I will never forget that night.”

The day after the tragedy the new Southern Sector Commander, Colonel ‘Patsy’ O’Connor, unsatisfied with the regiment’s progress, had bypassed Lane and taken personal command. Among other things he ordered a survey party to make a final survey of the completed road. The tragedy absorbed Lane’s time and attention that day, and he didn’t know about O’Connor’s changes. When he visited the construction site that afternoon, he found O’Connor’s surveyors obstructing progress, and he ordered them out of the way.

The following day a livid O’Connor stormed into Lanes’s office tent and ordered him to stand down and stop countermanding his orders. An equally livid Lane, still trying to cope with the tragedy, made clear that he thought O’Connor’s actions inexcusable.

The impasse didn’t last long. And O’Connor ultimately apologized. But in a matter of three days at mid-month, the intense pressure to build road, brought to bear on inexperienced commanders, had not only killed twelve men, but also inspired breathtaking incompetence and just plain bad behavior at the most senior level of command.

And the Corps had one last lesson to learn from the Charlie Lake Accident. Not just bystanders, watching the engineers do their job; the locals knew the North Country—knew things the Corps desperately needed to know.

In a sad denouement, Lane, eating breakfast at Mrs. Hunter’s restaurant a few days after the accident, overheard Rene Dhenin, a local surveyor and guide, talking with his friends about the drowning. Had they asked, virtually any local resident could have shown the soldiers a route around the ten miles of mud—and around the lake.

Drowned in Charlie Lake

Men drowned in Charlie Lake.

Lead up to Charlie Lake

I posted about Colonel Lane of the 341^st and his problem—getting a supply road up to Ft Nelson to support the 35^th. At mid-May he thought he had found a solution—rafts up Charlie Lake would bypass the 12 most difficult miles of sucking muskeg. The 74^th Pontoon Company launched a broad, flat raft, equipped with several 22 horsepower outboard motors, riding on three pontoons. And on May 14, loaded with a radio car, a small angle dozer, two officers and fifteen enlisted men, the ungainly craft motored out onto the lake.

Local Canadians could have warned Colonel Lane—had it occurred to him to ask.

Storms occasionally visited Charlie Lake—often quite suddenly– and, when that happened, the winds churned the placid mill pond into raging surf. On May 14^th one of those storms came to visit. Two hours out, just a couple of miles from their destination, the violent combination of wind and waves capsized the raft and pitched its passengers and cargo into the icy water.

Photo of Newspaper — Plaque at Charlie Lake Memorial

A survivor, Corporal Robert Wooldridge, described the accident in a letter to his sister from his hospital bed.

At 8 o’clock, I was ordered by Lieut. Nelson to take my radio

car down to a lake and load it on a pontoon float . . . there was

a Caterpillar and gas cans [on the pontoon] . . . it was only eight

inches out of the water supported by three flat pontoons . . . we

had to go against the waves all the way . . . as we rounded the

last bend in the lake . . . the wind was the strongest and we

started shipping water faster . . . we put all hand pumps to use.

The Major [Turvey], a Lieutenant [Hargis] and myself were

inside the car keeping warm . . . trouble started and the Major

got out . . . he ordered us to head into shore.

As the pontoon under the Caterpillar started turning broadside

of the waves, I could see it would sink . . . we got out of the car.

I just put my feet on the raft when the whole thing went over and

over. The command car was tipping towards me so I jumped and

swam as fast as I could to keep from being pinned under it . . .

The Lieutenant couldn’t swim and was yelling “please save me”.

A mile upstream was a little cabin and the trapper eating his

breakfast had seen us bobbing in the water . . . so he hopped into

his row boat and came after us . . .he rowed so hard the oar cracked

. . . he made three trips and I was in the second.

Gus Harden, Swedish Army veteran, had made his way to Fort St. John and Charlie Lake fifteen years before. Not much happened to disturb the tough old trapper’s routine. On the morning of May 14, 1942, though, he watched the progress of the raft through the window over his breakfast table with mounting concern. When the raft disappeared, leaving “some black things bobbing around”, he grabbed his small skiff and rowed to the rescue.

Lane had spent May 14^th north of the Lake, locating a path for his regiment. When he returned to E Company, a horrified Lt. Strain informed him that the raft had swamped and sunk. Some men had drowned.

Lane hurriedly gathered some men and found a pontoon boat. With long poles they pushed themselves along the shore to Gus’ cabin. In broken English, the old trapper explained how he rescued the five, but lost Lt. Hargis. On his second trip two men hung on the side of his boat. One could not hang on any longer and dropped off. He said that the other men yelled out “That is our Lt. Hargis. Save him if you can. He is the best ever.” Gus went out again but could not find him.

341st, Much Too Slow

The 341^st moved much too slowly.

In March, when he ordered the 35^th to rush to Fort Nelson before the winter road thawed to impassable, General Hoge bet that Colonel Joe Lane’s 341^stEngineers could create a road across the rivers and through the gumbo to Fort Nelson before the 35^th’s supplies ran out.

No pressure!

The men of the 341st came across the platform at Dawson Creek on May 1, and they struggled. They pushed a few miles through the gumbo to Fort St John and on to Charlie Lake, but they pushed much too slowly. Up north at Ft Nelson the soldiers of the 35^th suffered from serum hepatitis, and they got hungry.

Sick Soldiers

The Soldiers of the 35th Went Hungry

Increasingly desperate, Lane explored the path through the sucking mud. Twelve miles out of Fort St. John he climbed a tree to get a better look at his surroundings, and he realized that the upper end of Charlie Lake lay but two miles away. The lake, twelve miles long and about a mile and a half wide, paralleled the muddy supply road—and offered a bypass!

Peaceful Charlie Lake, sailboat — Placid Charlie Lake

Lane would leave half his men to corduroy Muskeg Flats, but he would move the other half, his 2^nd Battalion, to the upper end of the lake, use the lake to transport its equipment, and start them working north from there.

To get things started, he ordered Company E to march to the head of the lake and begin work with hand tools. Two days after they moved, Lane came up to inspect their progress. Company E had completed three miles of road. And Lt. Strain had shot a bear—had its meat barbecued on an outdoor pit. Relatively happy soldiers—and a happy regimental commander feasted on fresh bear meat.

To Colonel Lane placid Charlie Lake offered easy passage for the rest of 2^nd Battalion. The 74^th Pontoon Company built him a broad, flat raft, equipped with several 22 horsepower outboard motors, riding on three pontoons. And on May 14, loaded with a radio car, a small angle dozer, two officers and fifteen enlisted men, the ungainly craft motored out onto the lake and headed north.

The North Country was about to teach Colonel Lane and the rest of the American commanders on the project an important lesson. What they didn’t know posed difficult problems. What they didn’t know they didn’t know could lead to catastrophe.

John Hajdukovich

Hajdukovich captured Judy Ferguson.

I’ve recently shared the stories of two remarkable ladies of the far north—Mary Hansen of Alaska and Martha Black of Yukon. The North Country attracts and produces people like these ladies—resilient, independent, incredibly tough. Researcher recently discovered a writer named Judy Ferguson who has made a specialty of documenting the lives of these people—especially those who made their homes in Big Delta.

Alaska Lady, Mary Hansen

Martha Black

Judy grew up in the lower 48—in Oklahoma; moved to Big Delta in 1968; met and married Reb Ferguson. The Fergusons raised three kids in isolation along the Tanana River. Home schooled their kids. Travelled by dog sled in winter and by boat in summer.

Judy’s first book, Parallel Destinies, An Alaskan Odyssey, documents the remarkable lives of the early Alaskans. It’s fascinating.

A member, herself, of that incredible fraternity (sorority?) Judy knows whereof she speaks.

https://judysoutpost.com/

Tempted by the idea of learning and writing the stories of remarkable Alaskans, but hesitant, Judy ran across the story of John Hajdukovich. Her hesitation ended.

John, born and raised in Montenegro, came to Alaska in 1903. Like so many others he came to find gold; and, like a very few others, he found a home and a life. Coming into the country John’s steamboat went aground. Cold and wet he walked to Fairbanks.

John left a wife and daughter in Montenegro, and as the years passed they became increasingly estranged. World War I devastated the tiny country—and John’s family. John trapped and hunted and freighted supplies, bought and rebuilt a roadhouse at Big Delta. And he dreamed of bringing his wife and daughter to join him. In 1932 he wrote his daughter, begging her to come. His wife refused.

John Hajdukovich Far Right
Photo Courtesy Judy Ferguson

John lived among Athabaskan natives and, perhaps out of loneliness, he adopted them. Relating to the natives as few white men ever could. Hardy, independent and tough as only an Alaskan can be, John Hajdukovich may also have been, quite simply, the nicest man who ever lived there.

If the natives needed something, they contacted John, and he got it for them. They called him “Praise the Lord, John”. He had stores and caches everywhere and people in need simply signed out goods as they needed them.

In a time and place that treated the natives abysmally, John Hajdukovich protected and defended them.

The Soldiers of the 35th Went Hungry

And the soldiers of the 35^th went hungry–the ones who didn’t have serum hepatitis.

Read about the Serum Hepatitis

When, in March, their commanders dispatched the soldiers of the 35^th over the 250-mile winter road to Ft Nelson, they took a hell of a chance. The road behind them would soon melt into impassible muck. And the Army would have no way to supply them. Food could come up by air or by cat, but not in the quantities a full regiment needed.

soldiers gathered in front of tents — Hungry Soldiers

The commanders, of course, had a plan. The 341^st Engineering Regiment would come in country right behind the 35th and upgrade the winter road enough to make it passable. And, indeed, the 341^st arrived in Dawson Creek on April 31. But the history of the Alcan Project makes two things eminently clear. First, when a commander proposes; the North Country disposes. Second, when commanders get it wrong, their soldiers suffer the consequences.

Isolated in Fort Nelson, the soldiers of the 35^th suffered while their commanders struggled.

Water bearing food, brought up in March, froze. The cooks could thaw eggs, potatoes and onions, but they couldn’t make them palatable. The storage building, constructed at Ft. Nelson to hold frozen meat, didn’t allow enough air space and the meat spoiled. Without vegetables or meat, the cooks didn’t have much to work with. Chester Russell recalled that, “they ate pancakes three times a day”.

Pvt Navratil, one of the topographical engineers attached to the 35th, complained bitterly to his diary that the Army under-estimated the amount of food a regiment would need. The soldiers in Fort Nelson faced a “man sized job” and “the stuff” and the “quantity of the stuff” fed to them was ridiculous. The men craved sugar, and, on one occasion, a cook gave the surveyors a gallon can of fruit cocktail to take out on the line. They opened it to discover canned beets… Navratil never ate beets again.

Sick Soldiers

The Army made some of them sick.

In March 1942 the 35^th Combat Engineering Regiment had come first to the road. They flooded into and through Dawson Creek, British Columbia, out over the Peace River and on to Fort St John. The stuff of legend, their race against the spring thaw got them to Ft Nelson in the nick of time—just before the winter trail disappeared from under their rolling dozers and trucks.

The Winter March to Ft Nelson

At Ft Nelson, their equipment all but destroyed, they waited while their commanders struggled to find a route through the Canadian Rockies. And then the soldiers started to get sick.

sick men suffered in these neat tenta — The 35th Encampent at Ft Nelson

In March, back at Fort Ord, the Army had hurriedly vaccinated everybody in the regiment to protect them from Yellow Fever. Somebody must have thought that disease prevalent in British Columbia. Or somebody just blindly followed a procedure. Either way they used contaminated vaccine and in May the soldiers of the 35^th began coming down with serum hepatitis.

As the number of cases mushroomed, the Army hurriedly constructed Ft. St. John hospital from two prefabricated frame buildings and brought a medical platoon from the 58^th medical battalion down from Whitehorse to staff it. Doctors planned to evacuate sick men to the new facility by air. But the Army had far too few airplanes and pilots. After the first 100 evacuees, only the most gravely ill went out to Fort St. John. The rest, as many as 500 men, suffered yellow jaundice, severe weakness and debilitating nausea—in their tents.

The SS Nisutlin Forced the Rivers

SS Nisutlin and its Canadian crew forced the Yukon and Teslin Rivers to transport men and equipment for the 340^th Engineers.

General Hoge had ordered the 340^th to build highway from Teslin through Yukon toward British Columbia. On the other side of the Continental Divide they would meet the 35^th Engineers coming the other way. To do that the 340^th had to get to Morley Bay–a long, long way from Skagway where, in early May, the regiment cooled its heels.

Yukon River Route

A bit more than half the regiment waited for the segregated 93^rd to build them a road. The WP&YR would carry the rest of the men and, if it ever got up the Inside Passage, the regiment’s heavy equipment to Whitehorse. At Whitehorse they would transfer to river boats, travel down the Yukon River the up the Teslin River and over Teslin Lake to Morley Bay.

The Yukon River’s ice cleared on May 22 and some 600 soldiers of the 340^th lined up by platoon and company to board the trains of the WP&YR and invade Yukon. They scattered of course, the train couldn’t carry them all at once. But around midnight on May 26 the first of them boarded the SS Nisutlin and departed for Morley Bay.

A steamboat pulled to a rough dock at a wooded shore — Steamboat Docked at Morley Bay

The Nisutlin carried them 240 miles, and one of them, Leonard Cox, remembered the trip vividly. He and his fellows spent five days hanging out on the boat, enjoying the ride and the scenery. “The crew,” Cox remembered, “treated us like kings.”

The Nisutlin generated steam with a wood fired boiler; made repeated stops at native run wood camps along the way. Downstream on the Yukon became upstream on the Teslin and the swollen river went head to head with the boilers. When the way narrowed, sometimes to as little as 100 feet, the river surged at the boat and the boilers lost the battle. Forward progress came to a halt.

When this happened, the captain would maneuver close to the bank. Men would jump to shore, pull a cable across and tie it to a tree. An on-board winch would wind in the cable, drag the boat a few feet. The crew on board would drop anchor. Men on shore would move the cable to a tree just a little further along and the winch would wind up a few more feet. The Nisutlin moved upstream a few excruciating feet at a time until the river widened and the current slowed.

The soldier passengers, according to Leonard, had it “pretty soft”. They relaxed, played cards, and enjoyed meals served on tables covered with white table cloths.

Gouging a Road through Yukon

Truck loaded pontoon prepares to cross a river — Pontoon

The soldiers of Company A, finally gouging a road out of the wilderness powered through Yukon in May. The soldiers of Company B came right behind.

For more on the 93rd

On May 19^th the North Country threw a curve at Company B when a forest fire flared about seven and a half miles from Carcross. In the North Country woods forest fires spread rapidly. The dense growth made it easy for fire to climb to the dry tree tops, where it moved with breathtaking speed and proved almost impossible to extinguish.

John Bollin of the 93^rd remembered, “The propaganda was the Japs were letting off fire balloons to deter what we were doing”.

The men of Company B brushed it off and kept going, keeping up with Company A.

Commander Johnson called it a train. Company A knocked down and cleared trees. Company B came right behind, grading the path into a semblance of road. Company C came next, laying corduroy and building culverts.

The train moved. Then it moved faster. And as they raced toward Tagish and the Tagish River, Commander Johnson faced the problem of getting them across.

General Hoge dispatched the 73^rd Pontoon Company.

The 73^rd fought their own battle with the North Country wilderness. They carried a very large ferry and a lot of equipment; fought to move it over the rough road Johnson’s companies left in their wake. The 73^rd won the battle; reached Tagish with the lead companies and immediately set about creating their temporary 1,275 foot ‘bridge’ over the Tagish River.

The ferry consisted of a large flat platform, fourteen feet wide by forty feet long, fastened to the top of five 4 x 24 pontoons. The outermost pontoons mounted twenty horsepower outboard motors. The center pontoon mounted a larger motor for emergency use.

Not a bridge, but a heck of a substitute, the monster ferry could carry one D8 bulldozer, or two large trucks. The ferry could also haul a large crane-shovel—minus its boom. At the end of May this mattered relatively little because the three companies to be ferried across had but little heavy equipment. Hoge expected the first heavy equipment to arrive in Skagway in June and the ferry would remain in place to bring it over when it came out from Carcross.

Bridging the Tagish would have to wait.

Company B’s position in the train changed at the last minute when Company
C passed them. Company A crossed the River on the 29^th and 30^th and kept going. Company C crossed right behind them on the 30^th. Company B crossed on June 1.

Moving Out to Tagish

When I last posted about the Alaska Highway Project, I followed the segregated 93^rd Engineering Regiment into Carcross and out on the road toward Tagish. In early May, the Line Companies of the regiment mingled in confusion in the ten miles between Carcross and Crag Lake; and Commander Johnson, his staff and his company commanders worked furiously to get organized and move out toward their first goal, Tagish.

Bivouac in the Woods

The soldiers, black and white, in bivouac through the North Country wilderness building the Alaska Highway in 1942 achieved something epic, accomplished something nearly impossible. But to do that they first had to live there.

For More on the Need for the Highway

For More Highway History and a Map

Bivouacs moved frequently, following the work, so tents, usually tied to trees, scattered informally. Army field manual descriptions rarely applied—except in the case of latrines. Troops located and prepared these critical facilities–twelve feet long, eighteen inches wide and six feet deep—with care.

bedraggled tents house a company aid station on the Alaska Highway in 1942 — A Company Aid Station

Officers didn’t perform their most basic and personal biological functions in the presence of mere enlisted men. Whites didn’t poop alongside blacks. For the segregated regiments this amounted to double coverage.

A company bivouac featured a headquarters tent– for the commander, his first sergeant and clerk–along with a mess hall and kitchen tent and numerous five man sleeping tents for the men.

Regimental headquarters and the H&S Company travelled with generators. Company bivouacs made do with lanterns. The orderly room might have one. The mess tent, larger, might have five. The supply tent would have one. And officer’s tents would have one apiece. Enlisted men undressed, slept and dressed in the dark.

The lanterns used cloth mantles – always in short supply. At least one Company Commander got his dad to ship him a dozen every month from down in the states.

The Corps fed its troops. But not well. Few of the men who worked on the highway remembered the food with pleasure. The mess section also supplied its company with water from streams and lakes, purifying it with chlorine tablets. Mortimer Squires remembered containers labelled “White” and “Black”…

A typical kitchen tent came equipped with four white gas ranges and a fifty-five-gallon galvanized “dishwasher”. A large open tub, the dishwasher used a submersible heater which, given enough time, heated the water so men could come by and clean their mess kits. Joseph Prejean who worked in one of those kitchens remembered having to start the white gas burner by throwing gas on it.

The Corps of Engineers didn’t have to answer to OSHA.

Soldiers got hurt and they got sick, so aid men and, occasionally, even doctors and dentists accompanied companies into the field. Aid stations and dispensaries operated out of tents at the bivouac.

And soldiers get paid, even in the North Country wilderness, and this responsibility fell to the Company Commander. Privates received $21.00 to $28.00 per month, PFC’s $32.00 per month, Corporals $42.00, Sergeants $56.00, Staff Sergeants $76.00, Tech Sergeants $110.00 and a First Sergeant $150.00 per month. The commander picked up and distributed cash pay for the whole company.