After the war, black men like Thad Bryson came home changed. Black men had more choices than Thad had dreamed. But back in Old Fort the War and the Army had changed nothing except Thad. Jim Crow still dominated his life and the life of his family. Link to Another story “Young Black Officers” …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway in WWII
Young Black Officers
Video About Tuskegee Airmen Thad grew up knowing little beyond his black community in Old Fort, North Carolina. He lived in a two-room house on a small farm. Nobody in North Carolina expected much from a young black man, and it did not occur to young Thad to expect much from himself. He vaguely knew …
A Crow, Flying a Straight Path
A crow flying a straight path would have flown 4,415 miles to get from Eglin Field in South Florida to Valdez, Alaska—assuming a crow would have wanted to do such a thing. Thad Bryson’s 97th Engineering Regiment took a significantly more round about path from trucks to trains to a troopship and finally to just …
Henry Horn’s Tonsil
Henry Horn’s sore throat posed little problem to an imaginative Alaska Highway Doctor. Henry’s tonsils had been removed years ago, but one grew back. And every winter he suffered from a constant sore throat. A winter along the Alaska Highway did not help the problem. Link to another story “Injured, Sick or Worse on the …
The Grizzly vs. the Truck
Video of Bear Attacking Truck The grizzly stood erect at the back of the “small paneled Canadian truck” slapping it with is enormous paws, rocking it in every direction. Rounding a curve in his bigger truck, John Friese spotted the small truck parked by the side of the road, “shaking with movement in the back …
Mushy Spring Ice and Bush Pilot Bob Reeve
Mushy spring ice doth not a runway make. Famous Alaska bush pilot Bob Reeve found that out at Burwash. Willis and the surveyors were there. Link to another story “Stench and Reeve Airways” The Army occasionally hired Reeve to ferry personnel from place to place along the route of the Highway, and about two …
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Burwash Bounce
Burwash Bounce didn’t mean a thing to the Army, but it meant everything to Willis and his fourteen fellow surveyors. Link to Part 1 “Willis Grafe, Civilian Roadbuilder” Needing surveyors for the Alaska Highway Project, the Army blithely ignored the fact that most of Willis’s group of fifteen had exactly zero experience as surveyors. In …
Willis Grafe, Civilian Roadbuilder
Willis Grafe, in early 1942, had a job he didn’t like in Salem, Oregon. And he heard a rumor. The United States Public Roads Administration wanted to hire surveyors to send north to Canada and Alaska to help the Army build a Highway. Link to another story “Civilians on the Alaska Highway Project” In his …
Equal Opportunity Torture
Equal opportunity torture. The subarctic north offered cold and mud and cliffs to anybody who challenged it. And, as the black soldiers of the Corps would learn when they came in 1942, the mosquitoes and the no see ums landed and feasted on skin, utterly indifferent to whether it was black skin or white. Link …
Nature, Dictator not ‘Mother’
Nature, a dictator, not a ‘mother’, rules the rugged, remote, austere, breathtakingly beautiful, and viciously inhospitable subarctic north. In 1942 the Corps of Engineers had no choice. A land route to Alaska, an Alaska Highway, would have to span this portion of nature’s turf. Link to another story “The Only Possible Route” To this day …