And the soldiers of the 35th went hungry–the ones who didn’t have serum hepatitis.
Read about the Serum Hepatitis
When, in March, their commanders dispatched the soldiers of the 35th over the 250-mile winter road to Ft Nelson, they took a hell of a chance. The road behind them would soon melt into impassible muck. And the Army would have no way to supply them. Food could come up by air or by cat, but not in the quantities a full regiment needed.
The commanders, of course, had a plan. The 341st Engineering Regiment would come in country right behind the 35th and upgrade the winter road enough to make it passable. And, indeed, the 341st arrived in Dawson Creek on April 31. But the history of the Alcan Project makes two things eminently clear. First, when a commander proposes; the North Country disposes. Second, when commanders get it wrong, their soldiers suffer the consequences.
Isolated in Fort Nelson, the soldiers of the 35th suffered while their commanders struggled.
Water bearing food, brought up in March, froze. The cooks could thaw eggs, potatoes and onions, but they couldn’t make them palatable. The storage building, constructed at Ft. Nelson to hold frozen meat, didn’t allow enough air space and the meat spoiled. Without vegetables or meat, the cooks didn’t have much to work with. Chester Russell recalled that, “they ate pancakes three times a day”.
Pvt Navratil, one of the topographical engineers attached to the 35th, complained bitterly to his diary that the Army under-estimated the amount of food a regiment would need. The soldiers in Fort Nelson faced a “man sized job” and “the stuff” and the “quantity of the stuff” fed to them was ridiculous. The men craved sugar, and, on one occasion, a cook gave the surveyors a gallon can of fruit cocktail to take out on the line. They opened it to discover canned beets… Navratil never ate beets again.