Two bulldozers parked nose to nose. Two operators reached across between them to shake hands. Their picture went out on the news wires, and the army’s publicity machine launched.
Link to another story “The Press and Beaver Creek”
Two bulldozers and the photo be damned, a significant piece of the road still did not exist. The increasingly miserable soldiers of the 18th and the 97th struggled to finish it while staff officers at desks next to roaring stoves in Whitehorse busily planned a grand opening ceremony.
Fred Rust of the 18th remembered those last weeks on the road for every soldier in both regiments.
The increasing bitterness of the weather was effecting us more every hour… Swift-moving Yukon streams resisted freezing and the undersides of trucks that crossed them soon became ice coated… ice would lock the wheels of a truck or car with wet brakes that stood still for a few seconds (not minutes, but seconds), and any attempt to move forward would snap an axle.” Sometimes the… brakes could be smashed free with a sledge, sometimes gallon cans of burning gas or diesel had to be set under them.
Gravel froze in solid masses in the beds of trucks and men were stationed at the end of the haul to beat it out with picks and sledgehammers…
Vehicles frequently sputtered and stopped dead on the road when water froze in the gas lines. The copper lines had to be disconnected and blown out by mouth… A mouthful of sub-zero gasoline is not exactly tasty…
Trucks used to snake logs through the woods when cats were not available emerged without bumpers, fenders, mufflers, or running boards.
Trucks with bent frames and beds and distorted springs moved crabwise up the road. Some trucks broke in half, were left beside the road as derelicts.
Men suffered but held up better than equipment…
The soldiers had barely made it to the White River when the staff officers had their opening ceremony at Soldiers Summit on November 20. The dignitaries heard speeches, awarded awards, listened to a band playing “God Save the King” and “The Star Spangled Banner”.
In September two young soldiers had piloted a Dodge half-ton weapons carrier from Dawson Creek to Whitehorse—the first vehicle to make the trip. Now their Dodge led a convoy of trucks past Soldiers Summit, headed for Big Delta and Fairbanks. Their convoy didn’t include two bulldozers, but it probably should have.
By the time the convoy reached the mess beyond the Donjek River, the dignitaries were enjoying a feast of moose steak.
The dignitaries went home, and the soldiers of the 18th moved to winter quarters in Whitehorse.
Soldier’s Summit is part of a park today
The soldiers of the 97th, though, scattered through frigid Alaska tasked to keep the road passable through the winter. A few of them found uninsulated, partially finished barracks, but most of them headed into an Alaska winter in tents.