Disaster loomed in the back of a 2 ½ ton truck parked at the Headquarters Company camp at Big Gerstle, Alaska. A young lieutenant proposed to haul ten soldiers, Sgt James Heard and his squad, 130 miles in the back of the unheated truck. The day’s extremely low temperature, combined with the wind chill effect …
Tag Archives: segregated Army
Youngest Alaska Highway Trucker
Youngest Alaska Highway Trucker? Without any doubt, Owen Ose holds that title. When three-year-old Owen piloted his truck on the Highway, the Corps of Engineers hadn’t even finished it. Owen, when he shared this claim with me a couple of years ago, hastened to add that the truck the youngest driver drove had “Tonka” printed …
Uniforms
Uniforms presented the soldiers of the 97th their single worst problem during the awful Alaska winter of 1942/43. Senior commanders, the men ultimately responsible for providing adequate clothing and equipment apparently had other things on their minds—until the Washburn Report landed on their desks and the desks of their superior officers back in Washington. H. …
Send Food or Send Coffins
Send food or send coffins. Regimental Supply received that message from Company F’s commander at the beginning of January. A joke? Probably. But the 97th Engineers had endured a truly horrific winter and January threatened to take horrific to a whole new level. In November, thinking they had a brand-new land route to Alaska, Headquarters …
Problem with No Solution
Problem with no solution? When the soldiers of the 18th found themselves trying to build road over permafrost–a lake of ice covered by a thin layer of decayed vegation—it looked like they had encountered one. But on the Alaska Highway Project in 1942 the Corps of Engineers could not allow a problem with no …
The Last Obstacle–The Tanana River
The last obstacle, the Tanana River. The soldiers of the 97th had to build access road to it and cross it before they could turn south and finally start building Alaska Highway. At the beginning of August 1942, a new commander launched a fired-up regiment into the Tanana valley with sixty miles to go to …
Reinstalling a Tread
Reinstalling a tread back onto its drive sprocket, relatively routine on flat ground, became something very different when doing it on a 23-ton machine that was teetering on the edge of a crumbling slope of glacial debris. That called for great skill and calm nerves. In a better world, the catskinners of the 97th wouldn’t …
Essential but Not Enough
Essential soldiers in a stream of trucks arrived at the Slana sand hills. And now equally essential heavy equipment, especially bulldozers began unloading at the Valdez dock. Before the soldiers could start building road, that equipment had to get to Slana. To men operating bulldozers, the trip from Valdez out to Slana presented a whole …
Slana
Slana, Alaska lay 190 miles up the Richardson Highway from where the soldiers of the 97th jammed into their tent cities near Valdez. Assigned to start building road at Slana, they first had to get there. The trucks that would haul the soldiers to Slana began to make their way through Seattle, onto a motley …
Twelve Hundred Black Soldiers
Twelve hundred black soldiers jammed the hold as the David Branch pulled into frigid Valdez Harbor on April 29, 1942. The next morning when the ship tied up to the dock and dropped its gangplank, they waited to get off the ship and find somewhere to eat and sleep. To complicate things, strict orders …