Descending on Dawson Creek, British Columbia in the early spring of 1942, the Alaska Highway building soldiers of the United States Army came as a complete and very sudden surprise. Link to another story “Dawson Creek and the North Country” Trappers Rose Mould and her husband left their cabin one morning to walk their trap …
Tag Archives: Dawson Creek
Explosion in Dawson Creek
Explosion in Dawson Creek? A year or so ago I posted about Dawson Creek, British Columbia, a tightly knit little community, isolated from the rest of the world by distance and geography and weather. The community had no idea that WWII had put them center stage in the war effort. The invasion of the US …
Out of Dawson Creek
Out of Dawson Creek, one man, Colonel William Hoge, started the Alaska Highway Project when he left on February 12, 1942 in a car, driven by Homer Keith, his Canadian escort. Nearly a month later Lt. Miletich and his men took themselves out of Dawson Creek in a small convoy of trucks, headed for Fort …
Luck Led to Romance
Luck led to romance, not what you would expect for a soldier on the Alaska Highway Project in 1942. But some men get way more luck than others. Donald Hall had almost blown himself up applying a torch to a gas tank full of fumes. He survived. That should have told us all we needed …
Inexperience and Consequences
Inexperience can have consequences. The fuel tank exploding under his bottom shouldn’t have surprised Pvt. Hall, but it did. Inexperience… Donald L. Hall drove trucks in convoy out of Dawson Creek in 1942. He negotiated the Alaska Highway at the rear of the convoy, piloting a truck full of spare parts and tools. When trucks …
Colonel Hoge
Colonel Hoge, William Hoge, of the United States Army Corps of Engineers stepped onto the platform of the Dawson Creek railroad station seventy-eight years ago this past February. In early 1942, his country, suddenly at war with the Empire of Japan found its Alaska outpost in dire danger. Its Army needed a land route from …
Completely Crazy
Completely crazy, Keith Ingram called the “masters of the air” from my story two days ago. And then he moved on to another group of completely crazy guys, a group he clearly belonged to, truckers on the Alaska Highway. A link to another story “Albert Herda’s Idea” “In the ‘60’s on the highway,” he reported, …
Kiskatinaw
Kiskatinaw Bridge, one of the true engineering marvels of the Alaska Highway did not get built until the Army had moved on. A river just a few miles out of Dawson Creek, Kiskatinaw may have given the soldiers one of their first clues in 1942 that the north country would fight back. But with the …
The Most Colorful Soldier
The most colorful soldier on the Alaska Highway Project, Chester Russel, came with the 35th Engineers to Dawson Creek in March 1942. Colonel William Hoge had come to Dawson Creek, in February. His country, suddenly at war with the Empire of Japan, its Alaska outpost in dire danger, needed a land route from the railhead …