The Army activated the segregated 97th Engineer Battalion on June1, 1941 at Camp Blanding, Florida. In November they moved to Eglin Airfield, Florida to construct and maintain roads, bombing ranges and auxiliary landing fields.
In early 1942 the urgent Alaska Highway project needed more regiments. The Corps of Engineers, with no white regiments to spare, reluctantly decided to create and send segregated black regiments. Accordingly, on February 22, 1942, the Army turned the 97th Engineer Battalion into the 97th Engineer Regiment; and, even as the new regiment rushed to incorporate cadre and hundreds of
new soldiers, the Army ordered it to Alaska.
The men of the 97th loaded their equipment onto flatcars and themselves into crowded passenger cars; departed Eglin Airfield in sunny Florida on April 14, 1942. The last of the regiment arrived at the Port of Seattle six days later on April 20. They paused there for just two days to move their equipment and themselves onto the SS David Branch. And the David Branch left the harbor, headed north, on April 22.
Seven days later, on April 29, the David Branch dropped anchor in frigid Valdez Harbor, a long, long way from sunny Florida. Staring in awe and consternation at the
surrounding glaciers, heaping mounds of snow and monster icicles, even the officers had only a vague idea of their mission. The men had none.
To the regiments piling into Skagway and up to Carcross and Whitehorse, British Columbia and Yukon offered virtually no existing road network. The engineers would build their highway through wilderness. The 97th , piling into Valdez, faced very different problems.
Alaska had a primitive road network in place; and, well before military planners in Washington decided they needed a land route to Alaska, civilians in the Alaska Highway Commission and the Public Roads Administration had initiated a welter of projects to improve and expand it. In Alaska the Corps of Engineers had to coordinate with the civilian agencies and their contractors.
The Richardson Highway ran 360 miles from Valdez east to Fairbanks. The proposed Alaska Highway, coming north from Yukon,
could end at Delta where it would intersect the Richardson. The Richardson would provide passage for the last 115 miles to Fairbanks.
More, civilian contractors, already getting their men and equipment in place, would build 50 miles of road south from Delta along the Tanana River. At the point that would be known as Tanana Crossing, the 97th would take over and build the Alaska Highway south to the Canadian border. At the border they would meet the 18th Engineers working north through Yukon Territory.
Before the men of the 97th could build Alaska Highway, they had to get themselves and their heavy equipment through 266 miles of the ruggedest terrain on earth from the Valdez dock to the Tanana–and keep themselves fed and fueled as they moved inland.
And, by the way, the commander of American forces in Alaska, General William Bolivar Buckner, had decreed that black soldiers had to be kept away from white civilians. When the men of the 97th unloaded themselves and their equipment from the David Branch on April 3, their white officers bivouacked in Valdez. The men scattered, marched inland to pitch their tents in the snow.
Valdez rests in a bowl of glaciers and the first 30 miles of the Richardson Highway climb from sea level to two thousand eight hundred feet at Thompson Pass. Thompson Pass routinely receives epic amounts of snow, and avalanches from the towering cliffs on either side of the pass routinely bring down even more. In early April, 1942 the men of the 97th confronted a Thompson Pass full of snow and a closed Richardson Highway.
They labored for weeks to move their equipment out to Thompson Pass, to clear the snow, and then to negotiate 161 miles of Richardson Highway curves and bridges to Slana, Alaska. On the road to Slana, the spring thaw turned the highway into soup, and the builder of the Richardson had never intended his timber bridges to support the weight of a D8 bulldozer.
At Gulkana, the 97th left the Richardson Highway and angled northeast toward the Tok and Tanana Rivers. Their road, known today as the Tok cutoff, didn’t exist in 1942, so the men of the 97th had to build it for themselves–130 miles. Temperatures warmed. Mud began to dry. And mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds moved in. The lead companies of the 97th made it to Slana on June 1.
North of Slana, the men of the 97th met Mentasta Pass; forward progess all but stopped. They could stay along the Slana River and deal with sand and flooding or they could follow the path of the old Valdez-Eagle Trail and gouge their passage out of cliffs of glacial morraine, rock ground to fine silt by moving glaciers. They chose the cliffs, and they carved a narrow ledge, barely wide enough to let a dozer or truck pass. Dozers doing the carving clung to the the treacherous cliff but the outside of their ledge constantly threatened to slide away into the depths. Bulldozers routinely wound up with a few inches of their outside tread literally turning in thin air.
From June 7 to August 7, the 97th moved thirty miles.
After Mentasta Pass, they finally made progress; crossed the Tok River on August 14 and moved on to a base camp on the Tanana River. After three and a half difficult and dangerous months in Alaska, they turned south and started building Alaska Highway.
They reached the Canadian border on October 17; and, since the 18th Engineers working north from Yukon hadn’t got there yet, they kept going; pushed on to Snag Creek. On October 25 at Beaver Creek Corporal Refine Sims, operating his D8 near Beaver Creek found trees falling toward him instead of away… Sims and his dozer met Alfred Jalufka of the 18th and his dozer that day to complete the last link in the Highway.
In fact the meeting of the two bulldozers completed only the trail of two bulldozers. The 97th continued into November turning that trail into road all the way to the White River in Yukon. From there they moved back into Alaska, spreading
out to work through the bitter winter, living in icy tents, upgrading and clearing road, waiting for their next assignment.
Early in 1943, back in Washington, the Army had decided it needed a road to connect Fairbanks with Nome. The road as far as Livengood would do, but the 97th would assemble there and, in the spring, build a road on to Nome.
That plan got cancelled, but the men of the 97th remained in Alaska through the winter. And the most dramatic story in the history of the 97th in Alaska occurred months after the completion of the Highway.
On March 29, 1943, at Big Gerstle, Alaska, the young white lieutenant commanding the H&S Company ordered ten black enlisted men into the back of a ragged deuce and a half, proposing to haul them 130 miles to Fairbanks. At 30 below zero the proposed trip was life threatening. The men didn’t refuse, exactly, but they complained and stalled. Their squad leader pointed out the danger. The lieutenant dismissed his concerns and ordered him to get his men aboard.
When the men continued to mutter and stall, the Lieutenant called them into the orderly room, one at a time; portentously recorded their names and serial numbers. Calling them into formation next to the truck he informed them that they were committing mutiny–punishable by death; gave them 10 seconds; stared ostentatiously at his watch; turned and stalked back into the orderly room. Four men boarded and the rest moved reluctantly in that direction… Too busy fuming to notice, the Lieutenant cancelled the trip, put them all under arrest and confined them to quarters.
Four days later 1st Lt DeWitt C. Howell charged all ten men with mutiny–with the full support of his regimental commander. And in June, a court martial convicted nine of the men and sentenced them to terms from three to eighteen years at hard labor.
Subsequent reviews reversed the convictions of four but five went on to serve time at a correctional facility in Michigan until May of 1944 when the Army officially declared them rehabilitated and returned them to active duty.