Sikanni Chief Bridge Staff Sergeant Otis E. Lee remembered his time with the 95th Engineering Regiment on the Alaska Highway Project succinctly and pungently. A black soldier, Sgt Lee did not enjoy his time in British Columbia. In charge of first platoon he supervised transportation—trucks, tanks (armored personnel carriers, actually), tractors, road graders… His men …
Tag Archives: segregated Army
Smitty Schmitt’s War—with the elements in Yukon
Smitty Schmitt, early in 1942, received orders to report for duty at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. He and his wife packed up and headed south from their home in Schenectady, NY. In camp, he reported to the regimental adjutant of the 93rd Engineers. 93rd Engineers Making Road “Do you have a car and are you married?” …
Continue reading “Smitty Schmitt’s War—with the elements in Yukon”
Our Book, We Fought the Road
Writing our book, We Fought the Road, started Christine and I on the story telling adventure that led to this blog. Many of you have asked abou the book and where to get it. You’ll find the it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and in your local bookstore. More on We Fought the Road In …
Old Fort, Thad Bryson’s Return
Old Fort, North Carolina. Thad Bryson grew up there, but in the run up to WWII, the Army reached out for him. He wound up with the 97th Engineering Regiment at Eglin Field in Florida where he met the Tuskegee Airmen. Black men had more choices than he had dreamed. Thad Bryson meets the Tuskegee …
Thad Bryson Winter
Thad Bryson, a young black man from Old Fort, North Carolina met the Tuskegee Airmen. Shortly after that his regiment, the 97th Engineering Regiment quite suddenly left Florida—for Alaska! Thad Bryson meets the Tuskegee Airmen Thad’s son Fred shared with us his dad’s stories. Like a lot of veterans, Thad didn’t talk about it much; …
Routine but Not Easy
Life settled into a routine by the first of August. That didn’t mean it got easy. All the soldiers, white and black, had worked in the woods for weeks. The racial issues that plagued the black regiments hadn’t gone away, but by August they lurked in the background–part of the routine. New Plan and new …
Troopship
The troopship USS David Branch met the young black soldiers of the 97th at the Port of Seattle. They got off their trains at Ft. Lewis and one company moved directly to the port to deliver their few small trucks for loading on the ship. More on Getting to Seattle Through the day on April …
Teslin Post
Teslin Post never saw it coming. In July the 93rd Engineers came out of the woods, and the sleepy frontier village with about 130 inhabitants, mostly Tlingit First Nations, found itself dead center in the action. They didn’t know quite what to make of it. Excited by the sudden appearance of a hundreds of …
Sikanni Chief Bridge
The Sikanni Chief River, glacial, 300 feet across, pours through a canyon between two mountains and directly across the route of the Alaska Highway north of Fort St. John. The grade down to the river and back up exceeds ten percent. And The Alcan builders needed to bridge it. The segregated 95th Engineers, working north …
A Failed Command
The segregated 95th came to Dawson Creek under command of Colonel David Neuman. I posted a few days ago about their sad reception . Their commander soon made things incomparably worse. More on Racism and the 95th Engineers When, in wartime, soldiers write letters, Army censors review them. And censors noticed a pattern in …