Cameron Cox came up by train from Fort Ord, California and detrained with the rest of the 35th Engineers into bitter cold at the Dawson Creek depot. They travelled to Fort St John and started building road northwest from there. Cameron remembered moving constantly, taking down pyramidal tents, moving a few miles, setting them up …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway
The Climax of the Alaska Highway Project
The climax of the Alaska Highway Project approached as October turned to November in 1942. On the southern portion of the Highway, two regiments had met at Contact Creek in September and opened the road from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse. Work all along that stretch of the Alcan transitioned from building to improving. Up north, …
Ice Posed the Biggest Problem in the Winter
Subarctic Cold and Vehicles Ice posed a much bigger problem than snow to the soldiers working on the Alaska Highway into the winter of 1942. When snow came, bulldozers and graders could remove it relatively easily. Ice was a different matter. At more than 250 places between Watson Lake and the Alaska border frequent icing …
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We Fought the Road for Christmas
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 …
Ten Mutineers
Ten young black men from the hot and humid South, Sgt. Heard and his squad had endured the spring and summer of 1942 building Alaska Highway through the wilds of Alaska. In late fall Company F and the squad had crossed into Yukon Territory to work on south through piling snow and plunging temperatures. Back …
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 …
Balmy Above Zero to Thirty-six Below
From balmy above zero the temperature plunged to 36 below at Big Gerstle, Alaska on March 29. Sergeant Heard and his nine men spent that morning loading three deuce-and-a-half trucks with supplies for Fairbanks. Ten shivering black men in worn and ragged uniforms lifting and packing, working around the snow in the truck beds, …
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 …