Bonner and Bess Cooley live at the heart of Teslin, Yukon. They may, in fact, be the heart of Teslin, Yukon. More on Teslin Today A few years ago, we travelled through Yukon researching the book we would title, We Fought the Road, and in Teslin we met Bess and Bonner They helped us, taught …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway in WWII
Chickens by the Truckload
More about Dawson Creek in 1942 Delivering chickens? The number of jobs that had to be done to build the Alaska Highway staggers the imagination and most of them never occur to us. Leo Perra’s dad delivered food to the soldiers on the highway, and several months ago Leo commented to that effect on one …
They lose Private Banks Remains
How do you lose the remains of an honorably buried soldier? It’s not easy. Last night I posted about Private Major Banks who, along with thousands of other soldiers, received a contaminated yellow fever vaccine in March 1942. In June Private Banks contracted serum hepatitis and at the end of June he passed away in …
The fate of Private Major Banks.
Private Major Banks, a young black soldier in the 97th Engineering regiment reported for sick call on May 20, 1942. The medics sent him to the little hospital in Valdez, Alaska. Port of Valdez in 1942 Banks grew up in New Canton, Virginia. He didn’t enter the Army until January 1942, so he came late …
Soldiers and Civilians
For More on the Effort in Alaska The Army sent both soldiers and civilians to the Alaska Highway Project. The Army can dispatch soldiers, organized into military units with equipment more or less in hand, relatively quickly in an emergency. Soldiers in wartime face danger and endure hardship. Speed trumps quality. In 1942 at the …
New Plan and new route
General Hoge’s new plan and new route would absolutely get the Alaska Highway completed on time or he and his soldiers would die trying. For more on Hoge’s Reassessment https://www.chrisdennis111.com/struggle-in-july/ On July 15, the point where the men of the 340th Engineers needed to meet the oncoming men of the 35th lay a very long, …
Struggle in July
With 1800 miles of Alaska Highway to build and the summer half over, General Hoge took stock. Up in Alaska the 97th Engineers had struggled to get in place. They got going and then ran into Mentasta Pass. In Yukon it had taken the 340th Engineers the first half of the summer just to get …
Malevolent Mentasta
A vaguely malevolent sounding name, “Mentasta”. It describes a precisely malevolent stretch of road through the mountains of the Alaska Range. Through late June and early July, the black soldiers of the 97th Engineers had finally begun to build road. The men of Company B forged out front clearing a rough right of way. The …
Troopship
The troopship USS David Branch met the young black soldiers of the 97th at the Port of Seattle. They got off their trains at Ft. Lewis and one company moved directly to the port to deliver their few small trucks for loading on the ship. More on Getting to Seattle Through the day on April …
Lt. Mike Miletich, Forgotten Hero
A true hero of the Alaska Highway Project, Lt. Mike Miletich has managed to fade into anonymity. Not fair. The ‘go to’ guy for the 35th Combat Engineering Regiment, Lt. Miletich turned up at every challenging point in their work on the Highway. He led, for example, the advance party to Dawson Creek in March …