Danger and death confront soldiers at war, and make no mistake about it, the Army dispatched the Alaska Highway builders to war. Two soldiers in the 35th died when they rolled their grader over a bank. 1st Lt. Small of the 18th wrecked his jeep getting around a bridge under construction. His men found his …
Tag Archives: Field Medicine
Doctor Stotts, Deep Woods Surgeon
Doctor Stotts, forced to do surgery in the deep woods, cut through his patient’s scalp behind his left ear with a razor blade; drilled a triangle of three holes with a wood brace and a 3/8 inch bit; cut between the holes with a hacksaw blade removed the ‘plug’ and removed a clot. Not a normal …
Maternity Ward–Alaska Style
Maternity ward? A cabin in Eagle Alaska—in January. Obstetrician and nurse? A young husband. New mother? The kind of woman who becomes an Alaskan. If the history of the subarctic north fascinates you, people who choose to live there especially fascinate you. The weather, the terrain, the geology, all downright hostile, draw utterly unique people …
Flight Nurses
Flight nurses in WWII, took frightful risks and all too often paid for it with their lives. When flight nurse Ruth Gardiner’s plane “mushed” and plowed into the ground on Unmak Island, it exploded and Ruth died. WWII, an equal opportunity disaster, killed women as well as men. Link to another story “Marauding Japanese Forces” …
Vaccinating
Vaccinating thousands of young soldiers at a frantic pace before shipping them overseas, the army screwed up. During March 1942, a batch of contaminated yellow fever vaccine made its way into the system. Initially ignorant of the contamination, medics vaccinated several thousand young men from that batch. Two months later, in May, soldiers all around …
Thousands Worked Incredibly Hard
Thousands Worked Incredibly Hard Thousands of men worked incredibly hard in cold and then heat and in incessant rain to build the Alaska Highway. They powered over mountains, through and across streams, through deep woods with bulldozers, trucks, saws, axes… They got injured. A lot. They lived in close quarters, especially when the weather turned …
Henry Horn’s Tonsil
Henry Horn’s sore throat posed little problem to an imaginative Alaska Highway Doctor. Henry’s tonsils had been removed years ago, but one grew back. And every winter he suffered from a constant sore throat. A winter along the Alaska Highway did not help the problem. Link to another story “Injured, Sick or Worse on the …
Danger Followed
Danger followed the soldiers on the Alaska Highway. They drove vehicles with cannibalized parts, sometimes without brakes. They patched broken tools together with wire, tape and ingenuity. They worked brutal hours swinging axes, felling trees, slewing vehicles through mud and along steep mountainsides. Soldiers at war, they got sick, they got wounded and, in the …
Jaundice in Camp—and a Scared Bear
Jaundice, or Serum Hepatitis, whatever you called it Chester and his buddies in the 35th got sick on top of everything else. Interviewer Brown, “Of course, you guys were fighting in the bush, but a whole bunch of you come down with Yellow Jaundice.” Chester, “When we had the yellow jaundice, that was caused from …
Keeping Them Healthy
Keeping the engineers healthy was no mean trick. Thousands of men worked through the remote wilderness of Northern Canada and Alaska in 1942. North America desperately needed a land route to Alaska and the soldiers worked desperately hard to get her one. They worked incredibly hard in cold and then heat and in incessant …