Ordinary Men Build A Legendary Road
Black Engineers & The ALCAN Highway
Officer. Alaska Highway. Company A, E and H&S. WW2, Korean and Vietnam Veteran. Born: 28 September 1918, Pittsburgh, PA. Died: 5 March 1995, Annandale, Fairfax, VA. Enlisted: 13 June 1941, Greenville, PA. Discharged: 22 December 1946. 2 Lt. Engr-Res. 24 May 40; accepted 24 May 40; A.D. 16 June 40; to 29 June 40 and…
Army Officer. Alaska Highway. Joined 97th Engineer Regiment in June 1942 as a Captain. Company F Commander from June/July 1942 to January 1943. Transferred to Northwest Service Command at Whitehorse, YT in February 1943. Born: 8 June 1907, Texas. Died: 24 November 1993, Bryan, Brazos, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1930 with…
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 58th Medical Battalion supplied one platoon to the effort in Yukon Territory. Stationed at Whitehorse, they took care of troops, construction crews, First Nations and Canadians – whoever needed them. Medics stayed in the field following the road work, working out of aid stations housed in tents. By June, the 58th had set up more permanent dispensaries in fixed locations.
Sixteen young radio operators landed in Skagway on 18 May. One of them, Bob Rapuzzi was actually from Skagway and he took the opportunity to visit family prior to boarding the WP&YT. The 843rd distributed operators, two per company through the 93rd and the 340th regiments. Rapuzzi and his partner, Tom Whitsett, wound up with the 93rd Regiment.
Four officers and 118 enlisted men arrived at Skagway on 22 July 1942. They were to be attached to regiments to haul gravel. Unfortunately their trucks and supplies remained in Seattle so the 428th cooled its heels in a hangar at the Skagway airfield.
The Army Transportation Corps even supplied stevedores in the form of the 375th Port Battalion who unloaded cargo from the ships and barges in Skagway harbor and loaded it on trains that would carry it the 93rd, 340th and 18th engineers.
Unloading ships meant jumping into the holds and assembling materiel into loads for crane operators to hoist out and onto waiting railroad cars. Skagway harbor offered daily tides that changed sea level by as much as 30 feet – making it, arguably, one of the world’s most difficult harbors.
