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: History
Jerry Potts, A Mountie’s Mountie
Jerry Potts, born to an Indian mother and white father in Montana, learned to fight early. Good thing. Tough, smart, expert with pistol rifle or any other weapon that came to hand, he lived at the heart of a violent and murderous time in the Canadian and American northwest. Link to another story “A Quest …
Bill Miner—Canada’s Most Polite Bandit
Bill Miner—or “Grey Fox” or ‘Gentleman Robber” or “Gentleman Bandit”—invented the phrase, “Hands up”. A claim to immortality? I would say so. Link to another story “Sleeping Standing on their Heads” Born in Michigan he made his way to California and began his sterling career, finding himself in prison three times between 1866 and 1901. …
Heat Meant Fire
Heat, on the Alcan Project, came from fire. And God knows, the soldiers needed heat. But the soldiers lived in canvas tents. An escaped live coal smolders on canvas and then ignites it with obvious consequences. Link to another story “Bivouac in the Woods” From a company bivouac, soldiers ‘commuted’ daily to their work …
Stop a Steer Head On?
Stop a steer head on and wrestle it to the ground? That’s just one story from the legendary life of Canadian cowboy John Ware. He could ride, shoot—and eat–as befits a legend. Some said he could cross a herd of cattle on their backs and easily lift small cows. No wild horse could throw him …
River after River
River after river crisscrossed the path of the Alaska Highway. Smaller streams got quick timber bridges, larger ones brought out the barges and Ferries. Link to another story “Barge “Bridges” The black soldiers of the 93rd Engineers, tasked with building an access road for the white soldiers of the 340th from Carcross Yukon to the …
Winding in and Winding Out
Winding in and winding out… Retired Sergeant Troy Hise summed up his 1942 experience in northern Canada, “The Alaska Highway winding in and winding out, fills my mind with serious doubt, as to whether the lout that planned this route, was going to hell or coming out.” Sgt. Hise, referred to a potentially deal breaking …
Midway —and Alaska
Midway —screaming fighters, torpedo bombers, dying sailors and pilots, changed the course of WWII in the Pacific. But the great battle in the central Pacific had moving parts far to the north on the boundary between the North Pacific and the Bering Sea—Alaska’s Aleutian Island Chain. Even as a Japanese fleet tried to trap the …
Making Mistakes in Louisiana
Making mistakes in Louisiana instead of in Europe in the face of a real enemy made a lot of sense to Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. His Texas-Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941 dispatched nineteen divisions, over 400,000 troops, to engage in mock conflict over 3,400 square miles of Southern Louisiana turf. Marshall fervently …
The Land of the Midnight Sun
The Land of the Midnight Sun could offer a traveler the spectacle of a golden lavender sunset in the west and a rising moon, dusted with the same hue in the east. Oversized and spectacular, the land dwarfed every living thing in it—mosquitoes, moose, grizzlies and, very occasionally, men. Winters surrounded everything in this country …