Stuff, Mountains of Stuff

Stuff, simple stuff but mountains of it, caused enormous problems for Alaska Highway builders in 1942. Swarming over the mountains and through the woods carving out the Highway, thousands of soldiers consumed mountains of rations. And thousands of soldiers needed underwear, boots, coats, sleeping bags, and toilet paper and an untold number of other things we don’t usually think much about.

Every headquarters, and there were a lot of those, used tables, chairs, filing cabinets, pens, pencils and typewriters.

Every kitchen needed stoves and gas, cookware, seasonings.  Medics needed bandages and drugs, dental supplies and tools, surgical tools, intravenous fluids… Swarming soldiers don’t always get everything they need, but they need at least a bare minimum.

Link to another story “Chow”

To make matters more difficult, back in Washington in August the senior commanders decided to speed up progress by bringing civilian contractors in ahead of schedule. Thousands of civilian road builders joined thousands of soldiers in the deep woods, swarmed all around them. Demand for sustenance, along with demand for parts and fuel, increased exponentially.

Eventually five management contractors and forty-seven construction contractors—a total of 7,500 civilians—worked on the road.  The civilians supplied themselves, but they did it over the same routes and through the same bottlenecks as the soldiers.  Logistical and supply problems increased exponentially.

The contractors found the Corps’ cumbersome supply system intensely frustrating—no surprise, the soldiers in the field felt much the same way.  All too often, using the system meant circumventing it; and, if everybody circumvented the system, that made the system even more cumbersome and difficult.

More on the supply issue in WWII