Defending America. Our two-book series We Fought the Road and A Different Race tell a story you’ll want to read. We Fought the Road on Amazon A Different Race on Amazon In 1942 black and white soldiers built a land route 1600 miles long through the most difficult country on earth in just eight months. The …
Continue reading “Defending America, Building the Alaska Highway”
The Tuskegee Airmen, a segregated unit of black pilots, commanded by Major Benjamin O. Davis, one of that rarest of beings in the WWII Army, a black officer, came, early in 1942, to Eglin Field in Florida. More on the Tuskegee Airmen And they came to Private Thad Bryson. Thad had known little beyond his …
Fighting water came next for the soldiers of the 97th coming out of Valdez to the Alaska Highway. Soldiers driving dozers and trucks negotiated the narrow dirt road and the breathtaking cliffs of Keystone Canyon. Beyond the Canyon they passed through the narrow walls of packed snow that choked Thompson Pass. Link to another story …
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For the 93rd Engineers in Yukon in June the motor pool’s first frantic mission, getting heavy equipment through and out to the road, rapidly morphed into an equally frantic ongoing mission—supporting the line companies in maintaining and fixing it once they got it. With heavy equipment, especially the big Caterpillar bulldozers, finally in hand, the …
“That’s my grandpa” the comment on my post read. May Kaela Lavelais included a screenshot from google of the page in our book We Fought the Road that talked about Willie Lavelais. Link to another story “Men of the 93rd” When Captain sent Willie with Lt. Dudrow’s platoon on a quick side job, he …
Heat, on the Alcan Project, came from fire. And God knows, the soldiers needed heat. But the soldiers lived in canvas tents. An escaped live coal smolders on canvas and then ignites it with obvious consequences. Link to another story “Bivouac in the Woods” From a company bivouac, soldiers ‘commuted’ daily to their work …
Making mistakes in Louisiana instead of in Europe in the face of a real enemy made a lot of sense to Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. His Texas-Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941 dispatched nineteen divisions, over 400,000 troops, to engage in mock conflict over 3,400 square miles of Southern Louisiana turf. Marshall fervently …
“Do you see it?” An exasperated black soldier dropped his pants. A few residents of Skagway, checking the credibility of some white officer, had asked if black soldiers had tails. White residents of Skagway didn’t know quite what to make of the Army’s segregationist policy. They reacted to the black soldiers with curiosity—cautious curiosity. Link …
Like dirt in front of a dozer blade, the problems that plagued the Alaska Highway Project piled high in May and the hell-bent advance into the wilderness threatened to dissolve in chaos and confusion. Three entry points, Skagway, Valdez and Dawson Creek, swarmed with confused troops trying desperately to get organized. Getting equipment to the …
Turner “Tim” Timberlake passed away in 2001, devastating his daughter (and my wife) Chris. We missed having him in our lives. Chris came to realize how little she really knew about his life. Daughters know fathers as larger than life figures. The man behind the father? Not so much. Link to another story about Tim …
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