I constantly search various sources – especially Ancestry.com – for relatives of soldiers who were in the 93rd Engineers in 1942. And a couple of months ago I found an Alfred O. Spencer, Jr. who lives in Sweetwater, Tennessee. An Alfred Spencer had served as a line officer in the 93rd. I copied a photo of Alfred Senior and mailed it with a letter to the address in Sweetwater. Some weeks later, I received a call from Elizabeth Spencer, Albert Sr.’s daughter-in-law. He was, indeed, with the 93rd on the highway. And the family had a few photos and documents in storage. On a slightly nicer than typical January Saturday, my husband and I drove to Sweetwater to meet the Spencers. She had a few photos, a retirement article and other documents. But, most of all, she had a husband whose father had been there – with mine.
Alfred actually travelled to Alaska with his father in 1977. He remembered dust and rocks kicking up to strike the car, threatening headlights and windshields. The road was still mostly gravel in 1977. They travelled in a van, converted to a camper – sleeping in sleeping bags and cooking out of a ‘cook box’. Not surprisingly Alfred’s strongest memory is of distance. “You know it took us five days just to get to the Canadian border.” Watson Lake stuck in memory – probably because of its proximity to “Spencer’s Creek” and “Spencer’s Bridge”. Both were, in fact named for Alfred Sr. In 1988, when Alfred Sr. returned one last time, with his wife, the bridge had been replaced by a culvert.
Alfred Sr. was a mechanical engineer from the University of Alabama, and he married Martha Henson of Florence just before he enlisted. Stationed at Camp Claiborne in the 388th Engineering Battalion, he was ‘grabbed’ by the 93rd when it expanded from a battalion to a regiment in April of 1942. Very shortly after he was grabbed, Alfred found himself aboard the Rock Island Railroad on his way to Camp Murray, Washington and Skagway, Alaska.
I shared a photo of Alfred from my collection – he is pictured standing at a river crossing with Capt. Milton Anker, a dentist, and Lt. Leslie H. Schnurstein. And I shared my ‘under construction’ web site. Albert shared coffee. Most important, Elizabeth shared her deli-cious chess pie.
