Trash worried no one. In the summer of 1942 seven regiments powered through the North Country woods. Equipment broke. The regiments chewed through axles, rollers and tracks. One cat broke down, then another, parts from one fixed the other and the cannibalized tractor sat at the side of the road. A truck sunk in the …
Tag Archives: Alaska Highway
Food on the Highway
Food topped the list of sources of unrelieved misery on the Highway in 1942. Other things on the list From day one, everybody, officers and enlisted, white and black, everybody ate C-rations. Gray boxes, C-rations had contents that resembled food you might have had before, strange things that looked sort of like chocolate, olive …
Military Support Network
A vast support network came to the far north in early 1942, right behind the seven engineering regiments. By July the regiments worked in the wilderness building road. The support network had mushroomed, and its parts and pieces worked all around the engineers. Topo Engineers surveyed routes through every kind of terrain the path …
Mentasta
At Mentasta Pass the black soldiers of the 97th met their toughest, most dangerous problems; met them and solved them. Back in March, Generals Sturdevant and Hoge hurriedly planning their assault on the North Country wilderness, ordered the 97th from Florida to Valdez, Alaska. From Valdez they directed them up the Richardson Highway to Slana, …
Young Black Soldiers of the 97th
Young black soldiers from the Carolinas and Georgia who came to Valdez, Alaska with the 97th Engineering Regiment weathered the shock of an Alaska winter. They worked between the snowbanks on Alaska Avenue out to tent cities, bivouacs, thirteen miles out of town on the Richardson Highway and near the crumbling ruins of Wortman’s Roadhouse …
Slims River Bridge
Slims River threatened to stop the soldiers of the 18th cold in July 1942. At the southern end of Kluane Lake, Slims River feeds it with melt water from the Kaskawulsh Glacier. The road the soldiers built rounded the southern end of the lake, eight miles of deep muskeg and mud, to the mouth of …
Challenge in Series
Challenge one for the epic Alaska Highway Project in 1942 had been to mobilize thousands of men, acquire their equipment and move everybody and everything over vast distances to the Far North. More on Challenge 1 Meeting that challenge had immediately created challenge two. Thousands of men and massive stocks of equipment and supplies jammed …
Racism and the 95th Engineers
Racism complicated the management of the Epic Alaska Highway Project. Skin color repeatedly trumped every other consideration. In June 1942 thousands of United States Army soldiers and thousands of civilian contractors from the United States and Canada sprawled across Northern Canada and Alaska; struggled to get organized and make progress on the desperately needed land …
Into the Muskwa Range
The Muskwa Range loomed in the Southern Sector. On the Alaska Highway project progress happened in June 1942 in Yukon. In Alaska and British Columbia, not so much. Down in Yukon In Alaska the 97th had struggled to get over Thompson Pass, still waited for their heavy equipment to make its way to Seattle and …
Traffic Jam in the Woods
In June 1942 a traffic jam followed the black soldiers of the 93rd Engineering Regiment as they raced through woods and mud toward the Teslin River, building a road to get the white soldiers of the 340th Engineers into the interior. More on the Race to the Teslin River Colonel Lyons, commander of the 340th, …