Mild-mannered hero, Staff Sergeant Charles Davis, turned up in a story in the Pittsburgh Courier in early 1944. The reporter actually described him as a “slight and mild-mannered” black soldier and then went on to relate not one, but two incredible stories about mild mannered Sergeant Davis. Link to another story “Rough Draft of …
Tag Archives: black soldiers
Big Devil Swamp Ate a Dozer
Big Devil Swamp swallowed a Company B bulldozer whole in June 1942 and immortalized the Company’s commander, Captain Pollock. Commanding General Hoge had assigned the Black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers to create a path from Carcross to the Teslin River. The white soldiers of the 340th Engineers would use it to get to their …
Motor Pool
Motor Pool–the soldiers of the 93rd Engineers needed one desperately. And locating one and getting heavy equipment to it presented a problem. In May 1942 the black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers plunged through Yukon’s forbidding wilderness working with a couple of borrowed bulldozers and hand tools. But Ships carrying their heavy equipment steamed out …
Christmas 1942
Christmas 1942 found the black soldiers and the white officers of the 93rd Engineers deep in Yukon. In our book, We Fought the Road, we shared two memories from that day. For December 25, 2020 my Christmas present to all of you is to share those memories here. Link to another story “Dear Pop” For …
After the War
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” …
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 …
Disaster Loomed
Disaster loomed in the back of a 2 ½ ton truck parked at the Headquarters Company camp at Big Gerstle, Alaska. A young lieutenant proposed to haul ten soldiers, Sgt James Heard and his squad, 130 miles in the back of the unheated truck. The day’s extremely low temperature, combined with the wind chill effect …
Mutiny?
Link to another story “Send Food or Send Coffins” Mutiny, the Army’s most serious crime, visited the 97th at Big Gerstle, Alaska in March 1943. Or did it? The answer depends on your perspective and how you define mutiny. In March at Big Gerstle, Headquarters Company commander Lt. Dewitt Howell received a routine order to …
Uniforms
Uniforms presented the soldiers of the 97th their single worst problem during the awful Alaska winter of 1942/43. Senior commanders, the men ultimately responsible for providing adequate clothing and equipment apparently had other things on their minds—until the Washburn Report landed on their desks and the desks of their superior officers back in Washington. H. …