You or someone you love wants a copy of We Fought the Road for Christmas. You follow my Facebook Author page, or you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, and I hope that means you enjoy the stories of Northern Canada and Alaska that I post there. We Fought the Road, written with my …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway in WWII
Departing Our World, Samuel Hargroves
Departing our world for a better place on November 21, former United States Army Tech 5 Samuel Hargroves, one of the last survivors of a very special group of men, left it a lesser place. Millions of men stepped up during the catastrophe of World War II to defend their country. But black men like …
Winter and Sergeant Heard’s Squad
Winter, 1942-43, a winter natives and old timers in Alaska and Northern Canada remembered as the worst since 1917, found Sergeant Heard and his men enduring at Northway, near the Canadian border. Temperatures reached 72 degrees below zero and the white officers of Company F abandoned their frigid quarters for days at a time, crowding …
The Squad led by Sergeant Heard
The squad, Sergeant Heard’s ten young soldiers, had, like nearly all the men in the 97th Engineering Regiment, grown to manhood in the hot and humid southern United States. Over the last two years, the Army had hauled them over a bewildering path from Florida, to Alaska, and, finally, to the Big Gerstle River. James …
Cold Soldiers in 1942
What Extreme Cold Does to Equipment—and Beer Cold posed the greatest threat to soldiers on the Alaska Highway Project. And the coldest winter ever recorded across northwest Canada and Alaska commenced in earnest in October 1942. Soldiers working on the Alaska Highway headed into a whole new experience. By December and January, the temperature routinely …
Subscribe for Free to See New Stories
Rika Wallen’s Iconic Roadhouse
Rika followed her brother, Carl, to the United States from Sweden, lived for a time on his farm in Minnesota then moved on to San Francisco where she cooked for the fabulously wealthy Hills Brothers Coffee family. She came to San Francisco as Erica, but an affectionate estate staff shortened her name to Rika. The …
A Box of Rough Planks
A box of rough planks, lined with Army blankets, carried Clyde Hudson home from Yukon Territory in 1943. He had come north, along with thousands of other civilians, because, at the end of 1942, the Alaska Highway, at best a rough draft, needed a lot of improving. When, in the spring of 1943, the baton …
Mushroom Ice
Mushroom ice opposed soldiers in British Columbia and Yukon. In Alaska mushroom ice defeated them. During the winter of 1942/43 commanders positioned regiments along the length of the brand new, rough draft of an Alaska Highway to keep it open for truck convoys from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks. More on Subarctic Ice Against daunting …
Ghosts at Morley Bay
Ghosts would surround us at Morley Bay, but first we had to find them. In late summer 1942 the 93rd Engineering Regiment maintained a motor pool and a supply dump at Morley Bay, Yukon. On a lazy afternoon in 2013 we had come to find it—and the ghosts of the hundreds of men who worked …