The squad, Sergeant Heard’s ten young soldiers, had, like nearly all the men in the 97th Engineering Regiment, grown to manhood in the hot and humid southern United States. Over the last two years, the Army had hauled them over a bewildering path from Florida, to Alaska, and, finally, to the Big Gerstle River.
James Heard of the 97th—and of Elberton, GA
Early in 1942, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, America’s leaders had looked north with growing apprehension. The remote territory of Alaska and its Aleutian Island chain offered the Japanese a path to America, and America couldn’t defend itself there. The squad knew nothing of that.
To get soldiers, weapons and materials of war to Alaska, they needed a land route across Northern Canada and into Alaska. The Army dispatched seven regiments of the Corps of Engineers to build the Alaska Highway, and reluctantly included three regiments of segregated black soldiers. Sergeant Heard and his squad served in one of those segregated regiment—the 97th.
In October 1942 two regiments attacked the last gap in the road. The white 18th Engineers clawed their way north out of Yukon toward the Alaska border, the black 97th clawed their way south out of Alaska to meet them.
Snow covered the ground and kept coming. Temperatures ranged from zero to twenty degrees. On the 25th, the lead bulldozers of the two regiments met at Beaver Creek, but the white men of the 18th had bogged down miles to the south, struggling to build a road over permafrost. Colonel Paulis, Northern Sector Commander, ordered the black soldiers of the 97th to plunge on into Canada, building, through falling temperatures and accumulating snow, another twenty miles of road to the White River.
On November 20 about 250 parka clad soldiers, dignitaries and newsmen stomped their feet and shivered through speeches at Soldier’s Summit, celebrating the completion of the Alaska Highway. While the dignitaries shivered, the black soldiers of Company F of the 97th moved back up to Northway to build their own barracks; arrived in snow and a temperature of 10 below zero. In December at 50 below a few moved out of canvas tents and into incomplete and uninsulated barracks. Most stayed in tents.
And their winter had only just begun.