Ordinary Men Build A Legendary Road
Black Engineers & The ALCAN Highway
African American, Alaska Highway, Corps of Engineers, Company A. Born: 1919, Louisiana. Died: unknown. Enlisted in the Army on 13 Jun 1941 at Jacksonville Army Air Field, Florida. Education: two years college. Civil occupation: mechanic. In 1940 census he worked as a janitor.
Both the 93rd and the 340th Engineers invaded this small Tlingit fishing/hunting village. They brought ‘white man’s diseases’ to the unvaccinated Tlingits—with devastating results. This small village of Tlingit Indians remained quarantined due to illness. Physicians from the 58th medical battalion arrived to vaccinate those natives who were not ill and care of those you were.
Arguably the single most important support function in the Northern Sector was the government liquor store in Whitehorse. When the store was open, an endless line of people wound from its door.
Gertrude Baskine, famed Highway Hitchhiker, described this line as “the snake-trail that wound around the corner and up the block and all but bit its own tail coming back.” The liquor store opened when a shipment arrived and closed when it sold out. Booze cost $35.00 a quart.
For the 93rd, Lt. Frank Perrin’s Saturday night poker games featured liquor as much as cards. Lt. Squires remembered that any officer who went to Whitehorse was expected to return with a case of Canadian whiskey.
A platoon from a regiment or a pontoon company would operate sawmills. The sawmills made three foot long firewood for Welling or Sibley stoves. More importantly the sawmills turned logs into boards and planks for barges and bridges.
A sawmill for the 93rd was located at Tagish and Teslin Rivers. The pontoon company built a dock, bridge and ferry to transport men and equipment over these large rivers.
Some support activities were actually part of the regimental organization. A prime example was the regimental Motor Pool. An engineering regiment’s standard equipment included twenty D8 Caterpillar bulldozers, ten D4 Caterpillar bulldozers, three half cubic-yard shovels, six LaTourneau 12-yard carry alls, six Adams leaning wheel graders, six Rooters, three Galion road graders and six additional caterpillar leaning wheel graders. They also received sawmills and pile drivers.
Les Cook, a “cracker jack” bush pilot amounted to a one man support unit for the 93rd and 340th. He ferried food, supplies and mail to their camps, landing on water with his pontoon plane if he could or flying low over a clearing, dumping cargo out as he passed.
This didn’t always work out. On one occasion Les, his plane loaded with 25 pound boxes of drift pins and cases of canned vegetables – mostly beets, made a ‘pass and drop’ delivery to the 340th. Drift pins from burst boxes scattered everywhere, even impaling trees, and the trees looked especially macabre with gallons of blood red beet juice dripping from their limbs.
The PRA coordinated and supervised road construction in the United States. They worked through contracts with large construction companies – experienced in road building, equipped with the necessary heavy equipment and staffed by people who understood the complexities of the process.
The men of the highly specialized 73rd maneuvered strings of pontoon rafts across waterways and connected them to provide temporary bridges. In water-logged Yukon Territory their services were essential to the road builders. The men of the highly specialized 73rd maneuvered strings of pontoon rafts across waterways and connected them to provide temporary bridges. In water-logged Yukon Territory their services were essential to the road builders.
Among the Corps specialized topographic units, the 29th was the oldest. Company D had detachments with all of the regiments in the Northern Sector. Knowing that the tribes of the First Nations had followed trails through this wilderness for a millennium, the lead elements of the 29th turned to them for help.
The Quartermaster provided food, clothes, shoes, mosquito nets, parkas, washing machines, tools, trucks, tires and toilet paper – you name it and they supplied it.
Colonel Johnson, 93rd commander, wanted a Post Exchange at each of the company headquarters. He appointed Lt. Donald Schmitt 93rd regimental PX Officer, because Schmitt had taken bookkeeping in high school. Schmitt ran seven PX’s spread over 400 miles of the Highway.
Capt. George Egge, “Smitty’s” boss, had an even bigger job. Egge was in charge of ordering and delivering materiel to seven full companies spread out along the highway.
