In 1957 the Canadian Army stationed Marl Brown on the Alaska Highway; put him to work fixing its new vehicles. But Marl fell in love with the old vehicles scattered along the road, rusted hulks with trees growing through them. The waste bothered him, so he devoted his life to rescuing them. Sixty odd …
Continue reading “Marl Brown, At the Heart of the Alaska Highway”
Work, damned hard work, and the occasional young officer who got in the way. That’s the Alcan project that dominated Chester Russell’s memory. “We was running cats. We was doing our thing, and the other fellows doing the culverts and the bridges, and… We never looked back. We just kept going.” Young Lieutenants Another Officer …
Hunger permeates Chester Russel’s memory of his first weeks on the Alcan Project. The stuff of legend, his regiment’s race against the spring thaw got them to Ft Nelson in the nick of time—just before the winter trail disappeared from under their rolling dozers and trucks. That meant, as Chester remembered, “no supply line.” Awards, …
Pvt Russel and the other soldiers of the 35th didn’t come alone to the Southern Sector in early March. Private Russel at Ft. Nelson On March 8, Captain Alfred M. Eschbach’s Company A of the 648th Topographic Engineers fell out into an overcast spring morning at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana—to be issued arctic uniforms. That night …
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Ft. Nelson, General Hoge’s goal for Chester’s 35th lay another 230 miles north of Fort St. John on a trail resting on ice—ice rapidly turning to water. The 35th moved over the trail in an endless stream of men, trucks, dozers and other equipment—for three weeks in March while the trail behind them effectively disappeared. …
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 …
Getting in place, for the soldiers of the 35th Engineers, meant getting themselves and their equipment to Fort Nelson before the spring thaw melted their winter road away. The soldiers became the cogs in their commander’s giant conveyor belt. Getting in place via the conveyor subjected the men to an excruciating experience. In a memo …
Cameron Cox came up by train from Fort Ord, California and detrained with the rest of the 35th Engineers into bitter cold at the Dawson Creek depot. They travelled to Fort St John and started building road northwest from there. Cameron remembered moving constantly, taking down pyramidal tents, moving a few miles, setting them up …
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 …