Too heavy, almost any piece of equipment could sink into British Columbia muskeg. After the war Chester Russel made a living during summers as a commercial fisherman, but in winter he returned to catskinnning. Over the years as technology changed and new tractors and dozers came available, he often thought about how the new equipment …
Continue reading “Too Heavy for Muskeg—And the Statute of Limitations”
Dumb going up there, the soldiers of the 35th learned. Master Sergeant King of the Motor Pool carried an old 45 to British Columbia; kept it in a holster at his side. With his 45 King could fix anything. At Dawson Creek a civilian warned King about muskeg. Chester laughed. “And old King, he… padded …
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Major problem number one, confronting Chester Russell and his fellows in the 35th, as they tried to build road away from Ft. Nelson? Their leaders ordered them to build road but couldn’t tell them where to build it. Young Lieutenants in Chester’s Memory General Hoge had tasked the 35th to build Highway north over the …
Young lieutenants often need, in addition to formal Army training, serious training from their enlisted subordinates. Chester Russell’s memory yielded a story for interviewers Brown and Bridgeman that describes how that training happens. Enlisted Soldiers like Chester Earl Brown asked how many miles a day they built; did they have a quota? No quota, but …
Enlisted soldiers like Chester fought the mud, mountains, cold and mosquitoes; did the actual work of building the Alaska Highway in 1942. The stories that pour from Chester Russell’s memory tell us what it felt like to actually do the epic job. The Most Colorful Soldier Speaking of Chester Russel In the last episode, Chester …
Private Russel and his fellows at Ft. Nelson not only struggled to find food to eat, they also struggled to fix the trucks and tractors that their winter road trip up from Fort St. John had all but destroyed. Ft. Nelson, Chester Russell’s Passage The army rushed mechanics from Union Tractor Company in from Edmonton …
Charlie Lake saw the deadly consequences of an enormous gamble. In March General Hoge had ordered Colonel Robert Ingalls to race his 35th Engineers over the ice road to Fort Nelson. The road thawed to rivers and gumbo right behind them. The General had gambled that Colonel Joe Lane’s 341st Engineers could build an …
Moving west from the Gulf of Alaska into the interior means cresting a rugged range of mountains that separate two great drainage systems. One system drains from their crest back to the Gulf. The other drains north through the Yukon River System to the Bering Sea. The generals who routed the Alaska Highway through Alaska …
Pushing a tree over isn’t a skill most of us need to acquire. But then most of us aren’t working as “catskinners” on the Alaska Highway Project in 1942. If you know which levers to pull and which pedals to stomp, you just line the big cat up with its blade out front, pile in …