April 30, 1942. The SS David Branch has partially demolished the Valdez Dock; lashed to it anyway; is about to disgorge the black soldiers of the 97th Engineering Regiment. Anything or anybody coming off the David Branch would come to the narrow wooden dock and the warehouse, would traverse the long dock to where it turned into Alaska Avenue, would follow the Avenue past the Village Morgue Bar and the Merrill Mercantile Company and the other frame buildings of Valdez out to intersect the Richardson Highway.
Three feet of snow covered the ground in Valdez. More, Valdesians had been plowing and shoveling all winter, piling snow from sidewalks on one side and Alaska Avenue on the other into a massive wall between them. Wood smoke and coal soot had stained the crusted snow brown and black. From the sidewalk, one could hear street traffic but couldn’t see it. The snowbanks compressed the already narrow street to barely one lane.
A company of approximately a hundred men, each carrying two barracks bags, trying to negotiate the avenue created an impressive traffic jam. Throw in a few trucks and vehicles and the local population trying to use the avenue and jam turned into gridlock. The men of the 97th wouldn’t come quickly off the Branch.
The Headquarters and Service Company, Whipple’s staff, came off first. Climbing to the deck, the soldiers of H&S got their first look at snowbound Alaska and the towering glacier. They wormed their way along Alaska Avenue to the airstrip just across the Richardson Highway where they found some room to shovel snow away and began pitching tents.
Company E troops came off next, leaving the rest of the regiment in the hold. The soldiers hoisted their barracks bags and filed through the maze of hatches and companionways to the deck. Still in file, they walked down to the dock and over its planks into Alaska, shivered in the snow as they assembled in platoons then wormed their way through town out to the Richardson Highway.
Company E didn’t stop at the airfield. They marched out on the Richardson between steep banks of plowed snow. In two columns, one on either side of the highway, they trudged away from the Alaskans, their boots sliding on the packed snow under their feet. Occasionally glancing up at the dramatic landscape, they mostly concentrated on the man in front of them and their slipping feet. Five hours later, thirteen miles out, Company E found a relatively flat area that could accommodate a camp. They fell out; began shoveling snow out of the way and pitching tents.
On that first day of unloading, April 30th, morning turned to noon and then afternoon. Most of the regiment remained in the hold. But Company B, including Sgt Monk would remain aboard for a few days as temporary stevedores and security guards so some of them scrambled topside to begin unchaining trucks. They got their first look at “hell on earth”, winter in Alaska.
Simply getting everybody and everything off the ship took a full four days. One company at a time, the men made their way to the deck then the dock, got their first look at Alaska, and marched to wherever their commanders could find a place. Sgt Monk and Company B came off last on May 3.
For more on the history of the 97th
For more on race in the construction of the highway