U. S. Engineers Construct Attu Road
* THIS ARMY TRACTOR ud mwkr «•(•• mitij are a hewn an
road on Attu, where la daya aadar fire army enfiaeera
completed more milaa af road than the lapaaaaa had la alarm
months. Engineer officer in command said work Japs did on air
field bp hand ever long period of time coaid hive been done in
matter ef daps bp United States engineers.
Briq. Gen. Nold Cited For
Work On Aleutian Islands
_i
By CPL. ALLAN MEIUUTT
(Army Correspondent)
HEADQUARTERS, ALASKA
DEFENSE COMMAND — For
completing an airfield “in an area
where the muskeg varied from
Six to 18 feet in depth,” using
two Civilian Conservation Corps
• companies, several hundred civ
ilian employees from the United
States and some native Alaskan
lafcor, as well as his own troops,
* ‘ and for “welding these units into
• an efficient working team,” the
citation said.
The citation weht with the
award of the Legion of Merit to
. Brig. Gen. George J. Nold, staff
engineer officer of the Alaska I
Defense Corpmancl, recently pro
moted from Colonel.
This was in recognition of a
* project at Annette Island, accom
plished in the face of conditions
which would have been consider
ed prohibitive until wartime
ur|pmey changed engineer plan
ning standards. This project is
typical of others in Alaska and
the Aleutian archipelago where
uninhabited tundra-covered areas
have become bustling military
liases.
With the swift conquest of At
tu and the subsequent occupa
tion of Japanese-abandoned Kis
ka, the battle for the Aleutians
ended suddenly, but behind this
lay long, gruelling months of one
of the most incredible construc
* tion programs of all time.
Fundamentally, the battle for
the Aleutians was a battle of con
struction, and here—as was the
case in the skies over the fog
bound islands where Japanese
planes were destroyed almost as
fast as they could be brought in,
and in the fox holes of Attu
where the Japs were routed out
of prepared positions and exter
minated—the American soldier
has done his job well.
The bulk of the big job is the
work of the army Engineers, and
the story of the construction of
the big bases by the Engineers
has never been fully told.
They worked under pressure
night and day, seven days a week,
for the allotted time was short
for the jobs to be done; they
overcame almost insurmountable
handicaps; and they worked in
the worst weather in the world.
4 Together with civilian construc
tion crews, they built the secret
airfields at Umnak and Cold Bay,
credited with turning back the
task force that attacked Dutch
Harbor.
At Amchitka and Adak, they
built air bases that launched the
terrific air assaults on Kiska and
Attu. These air bombardment#,
together with naval bombard
ments. brought the Jap to his
knees and proved for the first
time in this war that he does ipt
always fight to the end.
Few soldiers have faced such
hardships for so long a period as
the Army Engineers in the Aleu
tians and accomplished so much.
Some of these soldiers have bfcen
in Alaska more than three years.
A large percentage of them were
here before the Japanese occupa
tion of the western Aleutians.
They have had few furloughs,
except in a few emergency cases,
and they are still on the islands
—for the job still is not finished.
- Islands that were uninhabited
less than a year ago are buzzing
with military activity today and,
on the basis of the Alaska con
struction schedule, some of them
are already considered old and
established bases.
At Amchitka, for example, it
was only last January that troops
moved ashore to find an old Aleut
cemetary, a few bedraggled birds
and virtually no other signs of
life.
In less than a month, Japanese
planes sent to bomb the island
were shot down by fighter planes
based on a runway which had
been rushed to completion while
the Japanese, based only 60 mile*
away at Kiska, bombed the
American troops an average of
once every three days.
On the Japs’ last raid preced*
ing the afrival Of a P-40 squad
ron, engineer soldiers were kill
ed and three craters blasted in
the landing strip by 500-pound
bombs dropped from six high
flying Japanese planes.
During this early period on the
wind-swept Aland, engineer*
were busy at other tasks. Anti
aircraft guns were manned, tem
porary living quarters were aet
up, a barge dock in Constantine
Harbor was well under construc
tion and vital roads were built.
Soon the engineers had the
rynway extended enough to ac
commodate medium bombers and
the aerial pounding of Kiska and
Attu began in earnest. The army
having established ad air base
practically under the Japs’ ngse,
Allied planes gave the Japanese
no respite from repeated bomb
ings except for periods when -the
islands were blanketed in dense
fog. What had been a few weeks
back a soggy tidal flat was now
a landing field from which as
many as ten separate assaults
were launched in a single day.
Large, more carefully construc
ted nfnways have since been
built at better locations and are
big enough to take care of any
type of bomber. Four-motored
Liberators were operating from
one of these runways weeks Joe- |
fore the battle of Attu.
Construction of this base and
others like it in the short time
allotted was accomplished only
by ’round-the-clock hours by
engineers who worked in weather
that would have stopped all ac
tivity in pre-war times. Working
in shifts^ under floodlights, at
night, they kept the heavy equip
ment rolling.
Gravel and sand suitable for i
runway construction was not'
available in many areas on Am
chitka, and this meant that most
of the thousands of tons of earth
was moved great distances from
the pits to the runway sites.
Where a small mountain once
stood there is now a yawning,
man-made valley in which a sky
scraper could easily be buried.
Literally hundreds of thousands
of yards of sand and gravel have
been moved from this pit by
shovels and draglines, big diesel
powered dump trucks and carry
all scrapers, and an area which
was one of the most commanding
heights in the settled area of
Amchitka is now approaching
sea level.
Most of the earth used in con
struction of the big bomber run
ways came from this one area, a
good two miles or more from the
airfields.
AfteT the first landings, ships
could be unloaded only by beach
ing barges—a slow and tedious
job that calls for the most
strenuous types of physical la
bor. There were no roads, and
great mounds of rations, lumber,
fuel drums and other materials
and equipment accumulated along
the beaches.
Trucks were useless in mov
ing supplies inland, Tractors
pulling tread-fitted trailers load
ed with supplies bogged down
hopelessly in the oozing muskeg.
Cargoes from the ships were han
dled as many as five and six
times in being moved to tem
porary supply dumps. Dock pil
ings and lumber sometimes were
merely dumped overboard from
the ships and carried ashore
by the tide.
Some of the pilings became en
tangled in surf-pounded rocks
along the shores and engineers
risked their lives in small boats
to retrieve each piling separate
ly. To be caught between two of
the heavy pilings, cast wildly
about by the icy waters, would
mean death or serious injury to
the soldier, but, without the pil
ings, the docks could not be com
pleted. There are big ship docks
there now, built by army and
civilian engineers, in addition to
the barge dock.
Construction materia^ and
equipment, in many cases, were
selected and procured before is
lands on which they were to be
used were occupied. To do this
without benefit of surveys and
on the basis of meager and often
inaccurate information was no
small job. If supply requirements
had been misfigured, critical
delays would have resulted, 1tor
replacement would have required
long weeks and the time element
was all important.
But the engineers did the
job, and are still doing it, by
making the most of supplies on
hand and resourcefulness.
Facilities for motor repair are
now housed in frame buildings
instead of crude tent shelters,
and electric lights are replacing
lanterns. Troops who have
known only tents as home for
more than a year are moving into
Pacific and Quonset Huts, and
scores of warehouses and other
buildings have been built at this
base. Small carpenter crews put
up these buildings, some of them
100 feet in length, at the rate of
one every four or five days.
All this was done in snow, rain
and sleet driven by winds that
often reached proportions of a
gale. Until roads and paths were
built, nearly everyone wore boots
or shoe pacs, for, after days of
rain, one sank almost knee deep
in the mud.
There were many times when
the soldier could not change into
dry clothes. It settled down to
a selection of those least satur
ated, for the tents were small
and not everyone could get hie ,
cloth.ng around the stove to dry. ;
Placed outside, the clothing ei
ther was drenched by rain or (
blown from now and scattered |
in the mud by vicious bursts of
wind. There were, it is true, a 1
few clear days., tut these were in
the minority.
At Adak. the army engineers
did a job that will go down in
engineering annals. Five days i
af+er the first troops occupied j
that igland an army bomber land- !
ed on a new runway. This was
accomplished only by a master |
stroke of engineering.
The runway was built on a ti
dal flat which was submerged
at high tide and drained by a j
creek at low tide There was no I
time for careful study or plan-1
ning, or even for surveys. A
sand dike was thown across the
lower end of the flat to keep the
I ocean waters out. Bulldozers
sliced an opening in the dike to
permit drainage at low tide.
Low areas were filled with
sand from nearby dunes, the
whole area was levelled and
graded and steel mat laid down.
Within 11 days, the field based ;
large units of bembers and
fighter planes.
The sand dike was eventually
replaced by timbeT gates and
streams were diverted outside a !
dike thrown up along almost hte
entire length of the runway,
which was later extended several
thousand feet.
When the Japanese attadoed
Dutch Rarbor, the silent work of
Army and civilian engineers
proved its worth. Army offi- i
cials believe that a land inva
sion of Dutch Harbor, possibly ,
the mainland of Alaska proper
was the real objective.
But Japanese Intelligence slip
ped up. They had believed there
was no U. S. army air base with
in several hundred miles of the
outpost When planes attacked
the task force from the west, the
Japanese revised their plans, and
after bombing Dutch Harbor,
sneaked back the archipelago tc
occupy Kiska and Attu.
The army airfields at Umnak
and Cold Bay, until that time
known to outsiders only as Blair
Packing Company and Saxton
and Company, salmon packers,
Arere credit'd by Lt. Gen. Simon
Bolivar Buckner, Jr., command
ing general of the Alaska De
fense Command, as having
thwarted Japanese plans.
Col. Benjamin B Talley, who
until recently was officer in
c-narge of Alaska construction,
was the first member of the Alas
K'c Defense Command to be
awarded the Distinguished Ser
vice Medal.
"The speedy and efficient com
pletion of a certain airfield,” the
citation noted, "was largely re
sponsible for the failure of a
Japanese expeditionary force to
penetrate one of our main posi
tions.”
With the assault on Attu. the*
engineers fought the Japs, as
well as the weather and construc
tion problems, and it was an en
gineer unit that checked and
then destroyed a large number
of Japanese who had broken
through the front lines to threat
en the whole campaign.
Construction work was not de
layed while the fighting was tak
ing place. Bulldozers were moved
in behind front lines to build
roads and other facilities.
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