STORIES FROM NORTHERN CANADA AND ALASKA.

Tech 5 Hargoves

Tech 5 Hargoves had no idea, but events in Washington would change his life profoundly. In early 1942, in the near panic that followed Pearl Harbor, FDR and the War Department ordered the Corps of Engineers to create a land route to Alaska—yesterday! At Camp Livingston, Louisiana Tech 5 Hargroves and the other men of the 93^rd Engineers knew nothing of this; had no idea of the frantic decisions coming at them down the chain of command.

Link to another story “Leonard Larkins and the 93rd”

Tech 5 Samuel Hargroves wanted very much to go home and marry the love of his life—the lovely Mayola Pleasants. He snagged a furlough and, back home in Henrico County Virginia, on April 7, he did just that.

That very day, the 93 Engineers received orders to prepare for immediate “overseas assignment”. Mayola’s honeymoon lasted three hours.

In May, when Company F of the 93^rd climbed off the train in Carcross, Yukon, T5 Hargroves climbed with them.

Growing up in Henrico Country, Samuel worked hard and stayed out of trouble. His daughter Shirl explains his good behavior with a big smile. He lost his mother, Courtney, at six and his father, Samuel Sr. at sixteen. When young Sam thought a group of friends might be headed for trouble, he headed the opposite way—he didn’t have parents to bail him out.

The 1940 census found Samuel in Varina, Virginia (Henrico County) working as a farm hand. In 1941 his draft board found him there too. The Army moved him around a bit before dispatching him to Camp Livingston, Louisiana and the brand new 93^rd Engineering Battalion. He arrived there in late summer—a few months before Pearl Harbor.

Explosion in Dawson Creek

Explosion in Dawson Creek? A year or so ago I posted about Dawson Creek, British Columbia, a tightly knit little community, isolated from the rest of the world by distance and geography and weather. The community had no idea that WWII had put them center stage in the war effort. The invasion of the US Army Corps of Engineers stunned and overwhelmed them.

Link to another story “Out of Dawson Creek”

Wayne Wilson commented on that post.

“I was born in Dawson Creek. My dad had a butcher shop. They originally homesteaded. When they had the explosion his shop windows were blown out. I’ve been told many stories about those days.”

“…they had the explosion.”?!!!

I responded to Wayne, promising to post the story. It’s a great one and too few people know it.

February 15, 1943. The Corps of Engineers has been “in country” for a year. The Army has surrounded Dawson Creek with military facilities, storage, repair shops, mess halls, etc. A former livery barn downtown, precious empty space, has accumulated stacks of miscellany. Telephone cable, tools, tires, kegs of nails…

It has also accumulated a truckload of dynamite, stored by one contractor. And a number of cases of percussion caps stored by another.

No one knows how the fire started. And when the volunteer firefighters arrived, no one knew about the dynamite—or the percussion caps. Given their extremely limited resources—Dawson Creek had no water system—the firemen settled for letting the old livery burn, dampening the surrounding buildings to keep the fire from spreading.

People gathered to the excitement. Passengers disembarked from an arriving train and rushed to join the crowd. Word began to spread among the firefighters about the dynamite in the truck they tried to start and back out of the inferno, but the construction men among them knew the dynamite would simply burn, not explode. They didn’t know about the percussion caps which would make all the difference.

The old livery literally blasted into the air, momentarily snuffing out the original fire but scattering fire brands all over the little town.

Dorthea Calverley described the result in an article on the website of the North Peace Historical Society:

“The burning building and its contents — completely red-hot — went hundreds of feet in the air. Where the brightness of flames had been a second before there was a momentary blackness as the fire was snuffed out like a candle. But a few minutes later there were hundreds of small fires as debris came down over a block away in all directions. Worst was the thousands of miles of copper wire which unrolled from its reels and tied everything in its tangled coils. Over a block away a school nurse, driving her car, was startled by a flaming auto tire descending on her car’s radiator to hang and flame on.”

To read Dorothea’s full account, follow this link. It is fascinating and very well written.

Dorothea’s Story

Chaplain and Lonely Black Officer

Chaplain and Lieutenant Finis Hugo Austin came to the 93^rd at Camp Livingston and served with the regiment throughout its struggles in the Yukon wilderness. Austin, 35, had grown up in Virginia, earned a B.A. from Virginia Seminary College and an M.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio.

Link to another story “Chappie”

It’s hard to imagine his life in the regiment and the courage it took to live it. The only black officer in the 93^rd, Austin ministered to the regiment. More important he mediated between the white officers and the black men—helping bridge the cultural divide that separated them.

As a black man, he couldn’t mingle and associate and form friendships with his fellow officers. As an officer he couldn’t mingle and associate and form friendships with black enlisted men.

Former Lt. Squires recalled that “the whites had to be careful about what they said around the blacks and you especially had to be careful what you said around the Chaplain.”

Gently pressed on this subject, Squires struggled to describe a man who had nothing in common with his fellow officers but had even less in common with the black troops of his ministry. Austin struggled to help the officer cadre maintain order among the black troops while, at the same time, effectively represent the interests of his fellow blacks in officer country. Totally isolated and surely terribly lonely, Austin’s courage and indomitable will are beyond question.

Chaplain Austin In Later Life National Archives Photo

Out of Dawson Creek

Out of Dawson Creek, one man, Colonel William Hoge, started the Alaska Highway Project when he left on February 12, 1942 in a car, driven by Homer Keith, his Canadian escort. Nearly a month later Lt. Miletich and his men took themselves out of Dawson Creek in a small convoy of trucks, headed for Fort St. John and points west. A few days later the twelve hundred men of the 35th Engineering Regiment, their D8 and D4 bulldozers, their Osgood steam shovels on flatbed tactical trucks, their rumbling deuce and a half trucks got out of Dawson Creek any way they could.

Link to another story “McCusker and Minaker”

Working on Canada’s string of airfields known as the Northwest Staging Route, a Canadian pathfinder named Knox McKusker won a contract to deliver fuel and supplies to the airfield at Ft Nelson. McKusker couldn’t build a road, but he created a two-track trail that wound its way from Dawson Creek to Ft Nelson. His road took the path of least resistance through the woods and could carry vehicles in winter when the ice instead of water supported it’s bed.

Another Canadian expert, E.J. Spiney, figured out how to move truck convoys over McKusker’s “road”. He set up a series of rest and resupply stations along the route.

McKusker gave Colonel (now General) Hoge his route, E. J. Spiny gave Colonel Ingals, commander of the 35^th, a method for getting his soldiers and their equipment over it. The 35^th moved over the trail from rest stop to rest stop in an endless stream—for three weeks in March. Spiney’s winterized equipment, piloted by experienced Canadian drivers found the trip difficult. Ingals’ California equipment, piloted by scared young soldiers who had never seen anything remotely like the McKusker trail found it damned near impossible.

At the Peace River where rotting ice undulated under the weight of passing vehicles, Chester Russel drove a flatbed carrying an Osgood Shovel down the 10 percent grade to the river. The Shovel and the flatbed rolled over into the icy mud along the trail.

Dieppe

Dieppe, a port city in Northern France, offered the Allies an opportunity. Their German enemy controlled the entire continent, and to win the war the Allies would sooner or later have to make a successful amphibious attack. A raid on Dieppe would test equipment, teach valuable lessons, and make a serious dent in Germany’s continental defenses.

I posted recently about Canada’s role in WWII. and I mentioned the Dieppe raid. That paragraph read, in part, “A combination of strong German defenses and haphazard planning by the Allies made the raid a disaster.”

Link to the story in question “Canada Went to War Early”

I received the following comment from RandyO.

“Hi Dennis, the Dieppe raid wasn’t a total disaster though was it? Didn’t Canadian troops also attack the main offices of the German u boat command right there? Didn’t they come out of there with radio and enigma machine info that helped the overall war effort? Wasn’t Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame later) also involved, sitting offshore on a British warship waiting specifically for the info to be brought directly/personally to him?”

I answered with a promise that I would do a little more homework and write a post on the Dieppe Raid. And here it is.

First of all, Ian Fleming did take part in the intelligence gathering from offshore on a British Warship. Moreover, the capture of an enigma machine gave British code breakers invaluable information. I couldn’t find information about an important German Uboat command.

Canadian forces led the way into Dieppe and they suffered major casualties. Four thousand nine hundred sixty-three Canadians raided Dieppe. Two thousand two hundred ten of them returned to England.

Veterans Affairs Canada sums it up this way.

You Tube on Dieppe

“By early afternoon, August 19, 1942, Operation Jubilee was over. Debate over the merit of the raid continues to the present day. Some believe that it was a useless slaughter, others maintain that it was necessary for the success of the invasion of the continent two years later on D-Day. Without question, the Raid on Dieppe was studied carefully in planning later attacks against the enemy-held coast of France. There were improvements in the technique, fire support and tactics, which reduced D-Day casualties to an unexpected minimum. The lessons learned at Dieppe were instrumental in saving countless lives on June 6, 1944.”

Canada Went to War Early

Canada declared war on Germany when Great Britain did in 1939. And the first important Canadian contributions happened in the air. The Royal Canadian Air Force established an air training command in Canada to train pilots from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand—and, of course, Canada. And Canada paid hundreds of millions to support it.

Link to Another Story “History Neglects Canada’s Role in WWII

By 1944 200,000 men served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. More than that, nearly half of the ground crews and a quarter of the pilots in the Royal Air Force had come from Canada.

Canada effectively had no navy in 1939 but by the end of the war the Royal Canadian Navy had a fleet of 700 ships and about 95000 sailors to man it. They took part in the heroic emergency evacuation at Dunkirk and over the course of the war Canadian vessels made up over half of the warships guarding convoys across the North Atlantic. By 1944 most of the warships performing that duty came from the Royal Canadian Navy.

The Battle of the Atlantic–the war long effort to convoy material to Europe.

Early in 1942 when Allied leaders felt they had to placate the embattled Russians by attacking Germans somewhere, they ordered Canadian forces to raid the port at Dieppe in Northern France. A combination of strong German defenses and haphazard planning by the Allies made the raid a disaster. It cost nine hundred Canadians their lives and wounded many, many more. But Canadians kept enlisting. By 1944 the Canadian Army had fielded a half a million soldiers.

Carcross Met the Black Soldiers

Carcross with Mt. Nares behind it–peaceful for awhile.

Carcross had seen trainloads of soldiers pass through and on to Whitehorse. Now, to little Millie Jones’ delight, the black soldiers of the 93^rd Engineering Regiment stopped and climbed down in Carcross. Lt. Price’s platoon came first, brought up the Regimental Chaplain, Lt. Finis Hugo Austin, and set up a post office.

Millie Jones and Carcross

Within six days the rest of the soldiers arrived and the 93^rd fully occupied the little town. Regimental Commander, Colonel Johnson, put his men in camp a mile outside the village near the Northern Airways airstrip at the base of Caribou and Nares Mountains.

Geoffrey Sheldon, a Tlingit living in Carcross, remembered, “The war broke out and then the army comes in and starts building the highway… Quite a thing to see, the time, when the first army was coming through Carcross. You know that airport in Carcross? There were tents all over there, army tents and hundreds of people [soldiers].”

The 93^rd ‘s canvas city, featured long rows of sixteen-foot pyramidal tents—enough room between the rows for a jeep to pass. Enlisted men bunked five to a tent, officers two. Leonard Larkins’ memory casts doubt on those numbers.

Leonard’s Memory

Similar tents, equipped with makeshift tables, chairs, boxes of files and typewriters, housed offices such as the Motor Pool, Payroll and the Commander.

A field hospital and dispensary sprouted among the tents at the airfield. From there, as the companies moved out into the Yukon wilds, doctors and aid men would travel up and down the line inspecting camps and holding sick calls, dentists would travel with them, pulling and filling teeth.

Company B’s first platoon relieved the 29th Topographic Engineers from guard duty on the Swivel Bridge at Carcross narrows. One NCO and five privates, wearing parkas and huddling next to a roaring fire on the beach, guarded the bridge. On a visit catholic Bishop Coudert introduced himself to one of them.

Said the Bishop, “What do you think of the Yukon?”

“Yukon? Yukon have it!”

Doug Bell

Ft Nelson Airport–the four poster bed was nearby.

Doug Bell worked the length of the Alaska Highway from its earliest days. When I first met him, I thought him one of the most fascinating and funniest men I’d ever met. Doug’s memories made life on the early Highway come alive. His eloquent stories made it real.

Doug passed away on April 18.

His obituary comes from a large and loving family who, of course, knew him much better than I did. I’m including a link to that obituary.

Doug’s Obituary in the Yukon-News

But over the past few years, Doug has contributed to our research. I’ve posted stories about him… As my personal tribute to a man I remember vividly and liked very, very much, I’ve pulled those together into one post for tonight.

Canada, already in the war in 1940, reacted to the Japanese threat to America through the Aleutians before the United States did. The war, raging over much of the world, had taken Canada’s young men and much of her treasure. A land route would wait until the United States came to the table after Pearl Harbor. But Canada could and did construct a string of airfields, the Northwest Staging Route, from Fort St John to Whitehorse. And they kept working on them and improving them throughout the war period

In Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan young Doug Bell planned to enlist in the Army, wanting to get into a railroad transportation unit and learn the trade. Before he held up his hand to take the oath, though, the recruiter informed him that the Army had disbanded its railroad units! Disgusted, Doug kept his hand at his side and followed his patriotism and his thirst for adventure west to where the Department of Transport recruited him to help maintain radio communication between the airfields of the Northwest Staging Route.

Driving the Alaska Highway in 1943 offered adventure. A heavy truck on the old highway stirred an unbelievably thick cloud of dust. No way a driver behind could see around to know when he could pass. Truckers equipped the back of their trucks with lights; turned them on when the way ahead cleared. Seeing the lights, a brave driver accelerated ahead into the opaque cloud.

Link to another story “Rough Draft of a Highway”

Before he left Moose Jaw Doug met and married the love of his life, Pearl Gray. He missed her terribly; decided, a bit nervously, to build a “shack about big enough to swing a cat” near Fort Nelson then go back to civilization and get her. A friend who was a welder took two standard metal military bunk beds and welded them together to make a double bed. Doug placed the four corners of the bed on chopping blocks.

Pearl’s trip to meet Doug at Fort St. John went pretty smoothly, but heading west from there in Doug’s old truck introduced her to the Alaska Highway. A few miles out the truck suddenly kicked out of gear. Looking under the truck to check, Doug found his transmission on fire—a few inches away from the gas tank!

He smothered the fire with a blanket then the couple sat in the truck to wait for someone to come by who could offer help. Not that many people traveled the Alaska Highway in those days. They waited for five hours.

And, then, Fort Nelson. He delivered her to her new home and the welded together bed with his heart in his mouth.

Her reaction?

She’d always wanted a four poster bed.

“Now there,” Doug remembers thinking, “is a keeper”.

I don’t have pictures of those early days other than the ones his wonderful stories created in my mind. But Daphne Spackman Hayes, shared photos her father took along the NWSR at that time. The photos here are from the Spackman Hayes Collection.

Thank you, Doug Bell, for meaning so much to so many. The world will miss you.

Racism

Racism, not simply wrong but also incredibly inefficient, visited the commander of the Alaska Highway Project, General William Hoge on a regular basis, but never as dramatically as when he put together his plan to get two of his regiments out of Skagway and onto the Highway.

Link to another story about Hoge

After much effort, Hoge finally had heavy equipment on the way. Now he turned to address problem two. He had the 18^th Engineers building north toward Alaska. Now he needed to get the 340^th Engineers building south and east from the southern end of Teslin lake toward the Continental Divide and the oncoming 35^th.

Problem.

Teslin Lake lay deep in Yukon interior. The 340^th could use the Yukon River system; go roundabout from Whitehorse to Teslin lake. But ice would choke the rivers until near the end of the month. Worse, the Corps had commandeered every river boat and barge in sight and still had far too little capacity to move an entire regiment.

In the end the 340^th distributed enough troops along the river route to move heavy equipment, when it arrived, from ship to train to barge. The bulk of the regiment, though, waited to ride the WP&YR to Carcross and then march and convoy overland to the Teslin River, from there barges would float them down to Teslin.

Problem solved?

You know better if you remember that the North Country fights back hard.

By the most direct route, the Teslin River lay 70 long miles from Carcross and the terrain featured the usual suspects, rivers, canyons, muskeg, etc.

Carcross to Teslin today

General Hoge had two regiments in Skagway—the white 340^th and the black 93^rd. The white 340^th would, of course, take the lead south and east from Teslin. White regiments always took the lead.

The 340^th could have come up to Carcross and set out building a supply road to the Teslin River and the Highway. The 93^rd could have followed them, cleaning up widening and bringing the road up to standard. That’s how white and black regiments worked in the Southern Sector. That’s how the 340^th and the 93^rd worked later in the summer. But in May the lead regiment would get out of Skagway right away. The lag regiment would have to cool its wheels there for a while.

An experienced commander and Army Engineer, Hoge was also a thorough racist. And he lived, worked, and made plans in a world permeated by racism. No matter how he played it, a lot of Hoge’s troops would be in Skagway for a while, and Hoge needed those to be white troops.

So he ordered the 93^rd up to Carcross and out to build the supply road. The 340^th would remain in Skagway, doing odd jobs, helping the local ladies with their spring flower beds.

Turns out racism isn’t only just plain wrong. It’s also incredibly inefficient.

Rika Wallen–Roadhouse Savior

Rika Wallen and people like her couldn’t keep motorized vehicles and airplanes from killing off most of the roadhouses along the Richardson Highway. They could, though, save a single roadhouse by improving it and knowing how to run it. Big Delta where travelers ferried across the Tanana River on their way to Fairbanks hosted two of the best and most famous. Tonite, the story of Rika Wallen and her roadhouse.

In Sweden the Wallen’s named their new baby girl, Erika. As a young adult, Erika followed her brother, Carl, to the United States. She lived and worked on his farm for a while but, still restless, she moved to San Francisco. There she took a job cooking for the fabulously wealthy Hills Brothers Coffee family. An affectionate estate staff shortened her name to Rika, and Rika she would remain.

In 1906 a monster earthquake, certainly the most famous in the United States, levelled San Francisco. Her employer moved and Rika tried to get her life going again, but the earthquake had destroyed her prospects along with the city. She heard that the gold camps scattered through Alaska offered plenty of work and she thought Alaska might be like the home in Sweden that she fondly remembered.

In 1916, Rika booked passage for Valdez, Alaska..

If Alaska offered gold, it also offered copper—especially in the vicinity of Valdez. Rika made her way up to the Kennecott Copper mine; cooked there for the crew. But oncoming winter stopped Kennecott Copper activity in October.

Rika headed up the Richardson Highway toward Fairbanks, but she didn’t make it that far. Alaska winter took cold to a whole new level, and after a miserable four days she vowed to winter at the next roadhouse. Yost’s Roadhouse needed a cook so there Rika stayed—for seven long, dark months.

Finally, spring…

In June she made her way on north to Fairbanks and there she met John Hajdukovich. John had just opened a roadhouse at Big Delta, but he wanted to go prospecting. He needed someone to tend the roadhouse for the winter. Rika had just endured an Alaska winter along the Richardson, so it took John a while to talk her into his proposition, but she finally agreed to try one winter.

John went prospecting and Rika took over the roadhouse.

News of her cooking ability quickly spread among the local prospectors and trappers—she shot rabbits and turned them into a thoroughly delectable stew. She hired Butch Stock to cut her winter’s wood and through the winter Butch and other local bachelors brought In Moose that she cooked and served to travelers passing through.

At the end of a year, John had a problem. Prospecting hadn’t worked out really well and he had no money to pay Rika’s wages. But John also had a solution. He didn’t really want to run a roadhouse. And Rika did. John just gave her the place.

Rika became an institution in Big Delta and ran her roadhouse there for the rest of her life.

Judy Ferguson helped preserve the memory of both Rika and John in her book Parallel Destinies, and Alaska made Rika’s roadhouse an Alaska State Park.