The couple, Lucky Donald Hall and his new wife, Zellma, moved into an apartment in Dawson Creek—a one bedroom, furnished with a bed and a footlocker. The lovebirds lived there very happily until spring. That, of course, means the spring of 1943, so the couple got to endure the great Dawson Creek explosion and …
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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 …
The Army made some of them sick. In March 1942 the 35th Combat Engineering Regiment had come first to the road. They flooded into and through Dawson Creek, British Columbia, out over the Peace River and on to Fort St John. The stuff of legend, their race against the spring thaw got them to Ft …
Four separate trains hauled the 43 officers and 1230 enlisted men of the 35th Engineering Regiment to Dawson Creek. The last train arrived in late afternoon on March 16. Everyone confronted the Peace River. The First Soldiers on the Highway Colonel Hoge had flown to Fort St. John and set up temporary headquarters in a …
The soldiers coming through Dawson Creek in March 1942 got cold, really cold. They would pitch a tent as best they could and bring in a wood fired Sibley stove. Fired, the stove brought warmth, but the warmth proved elusive. A soldier had to be within a foot of the stove to feel it. And …
Hoge’s recon was revealing the breath-taking scale of the problems he and his soldiers were about to take on. Elsewhere, especially in Washington, the Corps of Engineers was convulsing. The chaotic storm of planning and planning again, of organizing and reorganizing intensified accordingly. The telephone lines burned with requests and orders and fingers bounced over …
Continue reading “The First of Hoge’s Soldiers Arrive in Dawson Creek”