The Sikanni Chief River, glacial, 300 feet across, pours through a canyon between two mountains and directly across the route of the Alaska Highway north of Fort St. John. The grade down to the river and back up exceeds ten percent. And The Alcan builders needed to bridge it.
The segregated 95th Engineers, working north behind the white 35th and the white 341st had serious morale problems and their new commander, Heath Twichell, saw an opportunity to address them at the Sikanni Chief.
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Engineers at their desks in Whitehorse estimated two weeks to bridge the river. Colonel O’Connor, Southern Sector Commander, budgeted five days. And he reluctantly agreed to give the 95th a shot at building it.
Twichell brought his Company A, 166 men, to the site; their mission to build a trestle bridge across in just five days. Company A delighted the Colonel by promptly raising the ante. Each and every man agreed to bet a month’s pay that they could do it in four. Obscure black regiment or not, the 95th got the attention of the rumor mill. Word of the bet buzzed the length of the highway.
The commander of Company A sent two platoons out to serve as point for the effort. Sgt. Tucker and Sgt. Bond took a crew to the south bank. Constructing a raft, logs lashed to empty fuel barrels, Sgt. Brawley and Sgt. Price took a crew to the north bank.
In the surrounding woods, Sgt. Harvey and Pvt. Hickens selected trees—monsters for trestles that would stand up out of the water and support the bridge; long, straight ones for bridging timbers that would run horizontally from trestle to trestle; and an endless number that could be sawed into plank decking that would span the bridging timbers and offer a roadbed.
As fast as Harvey and Hickens could select them, their fellows swarmed to cut them down, lop off limbs and hew them into timbers and planks. And as fast as bridge members emerged from the raw timber, others swarmed to drag them down to the river bank.
The point platoons worked in the water. Anchored to the shore with ropes, they waded, chest deep, icy water surging around them. They built cribs up from the bottom; floated the massive trestles to them and stood them upright; filled the cribs with rocks to stabilize the trestles. The soldiers rotated into and out of the water. Numb and stiff, one group would struggle ashore to warm themselves at roaring fires, while another took their place in the torrent.
When they had trestles in place, the men in the frigid water hoisted bridging timbers to span from trestle to trestle. Then, finally beginning to emerge from the water, they spanned the bridging timbers with decking.
The whole area around the emerging bridge hummed with activity. The men in the woods made music; sang spirituals; kept time with their ringing axes. And the work didn’t stop when the sun went down. At night a line of trucks cast their headlight beams into the darkness to illuminate the site.
And, if the men worked day and night, so did the cooks. They provided warm meals and midnight snacks of hot coffee and biscuits.
Not five days; not even four days; in just three days the frantic activity ground to a halt. The 95th had bridged the Sikanni Chief.
The Long Trail, the published history of the white 341st Engineers contains not a single word to suggest that black soldiers even participated in spanning the Sikanni Chief River.