DEEP IN THE JUNGLE THICKETS OF BURMA, ENGINEERS WORK HARD TO COMPLETE THE LEDO ROAD. BOGGED DOWN IN THE SLIME, A JEEP IS DISCLOSED BY TROOPS ANXIOUS TO CLEAR THE ROAD SO WORK CAN CONTINUE.TWISTING AND TURNING, THIS SECTION OF THE LEDO ROAD WORKS UP A MOUNTAINSIDE TO AN ELEVATION OF 4,300 FEET.

OMAHA, May 26 - Search the histories and the geographies and the military textbooks. You'll find nothing in them that parallels the building of the Ledo road.
  This historic route punched and squirmed and paddled and chewed its way across a Himalayan mountain range, to break through the jungle barrier that had always separated the West from the East.
  Now the twain have met. The man who engineered the meeting is Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, United States army engineers, formerly chief of the Missouri river division headquarters at Omaha, and author of the famous Pick plan for comprehensive development of the Missouri river basin. General Pick is back in the United States on leave.
  The United States, with all its geographic variety, has no comparable terrain or climate in whose terms the Ledo project could be described.
  Much of the road was built through mountainous jungles never before traversed by white men. It climbed steep mountainsides to reach passes 4,000 and 4,500 feet high. It bridged ten major rivers; the level of at least one of these fluctuates as much as forty-five feet.

Rain 8 Inches a Day.

  During the 5-month monsoon season the men worked in rainfall that averaged 45 to 50 inches per month, and sometimes measured eight or more inches in a day. It is said to be the most malarial infested area in the world.
  On top of such major problems, there were a multitude of minor inconveniences. For example, the purplish leeches which drop from trees, and then bore their way through leggings and socks. Their bites cause ulcerous sores. Soldiers found that a cigarette "hot foot" would pry them loose.
  The British, more familiar with operations in that part of the world, had tackled the job, built four miles of road, and then decided that it couldn't be done. At least, they say, it couldn't be done in time to mean anything in World War II.
  The United States, however, had made lend-lease commitments to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
  There was danger that China might go down for the third time. She had to have more supplies than could be flown over the Himalayan hump. Furthermore, it was mighty important that the Japs be driven out of Burma, and a road was necessary in order to get at them. So, General Joseph W. Stilwell requested Lord Wavell to assign the Ledo road project to the Americans. In December, 1942, just one year after Pearl Harbor, American troops tackled the toughest road building job in the world.
  Roughly, the road was to follow the so-called Refugee route, along which some 30,000 Chinese and Burmese had tried to escape the Jap aggressors in 1942. It was estimated that 20,000 of them died on the 102 miles between Shingbwiyang and Ledo.

Ledo Then Insignificant.

  Ledo was an insignificant bazaar, or village, which became the starting point for the road because it was the terminal for a little railroad that carried supplies from Calcutta to the tea plantations in Upper Assam.
  The route was to cross the Patkai range of the Himalayas, dip into the Hukawng valley, span the Irrawaddy river, then latch on to the original Burma Road at Wanting, China, 478 miles from Ledo.
  It was a tragically small detachment of American troops that started construction. There were three battalions of Negro engineers and a few others. Their equipment consisted of a "handful" of bulldozers and a dilapidated fleet of British trucks which even then would never have compared with American equipment.
  The rainy season had just ended. The plan was to drive the road point forward as hard and as fast as possible before the monsoons started in May. From Ledo, whose elevation is 460 feet, they managed to cover forty-two miles, reaching the 4,000-foot Pangsau pass by June, 1943, when they became stalled.
  It began to look as though the British were right after all. The bulldozers - those that hadn't been lost over the mountainsides - were buried in bottomless mud. Cave-ins were burying portions of the completed road faster than they could be cleared. Only one shift per day was being worked. The men were wet all of the time - not even their beds were dry. Eighty percent of the engineering company personnel were hospitalized because of malaria. Morale had hit bottom!

MAJOR GENERAL PICK, WITH TWO OF HIS AIDES, COL. W. J. GREEN OF APPLETON, WIS., (CENTER) AND COL. C. S. DAVIS (RIGHT) OF 5344 NORWOOD ROAD, JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS, ON A SECTION OF THE 1,000-MILE WINDING LEDO ROAD. THE HIGHWAY HAS BEEN DUBBED “PICK’S PIKE” BY MEN OF THE ARMY ENGINEERS, MANY OF WHOM WORKED WITH PICK WHEN HE WAS A COLONEL IN CHARGE OF RIVER PROJECTS IN KANSAS CITY.

Lewis Pick Takes Over.

  In September of that year it was announced in Omaha that the then Colonel Pick was leaving the Missouri river division to take over an important military assignment outside the United States.
  When Colonel Pick arrived at the head of the Ledo road on October 16, 1943, he found the job entirely bogged down.
  At the staff meeting in the officers' mess hall that first evening in Ledo, he said:
  "I've heard the same story all the way from the States. It's always the same - the Ledo road can't be built. Too much mud. Too much rain. Too much malaria.
  "But from now on we're forgetting this defeatist spirit. The Ledo road is going to be built - mud, rain and malaria be damned."
  His first attention was directed toward the troops. He checked on the food and the sanitation, the medical service and hospitalization, and learned that there was no recreation program. He had all of these services overhauled and put on a worthwhile basis.
  A concerted effort was begun to control malaria. Camp areas were cleaned up and drained, mosquito bars and repellent were issued. Stoves were provided, the soldiers encouraged to keep their tents dry. From that time on the malaria problem was whipped.
  A recreation program was established, under special service units. Each outfit was shown at least one motion picture a week. Hunting trips were organized for the men interested in bagging deer, tiger, tropical animals unknown to Americans. Fish were plentiful in the streams, and fishing equipment was provided.

Around-the-Clock Schedule.

  From an organizational standpoint, Colonel Pick's first action was to move his headquarters from Ledo to the point of the road. He reorganized the plan for repairing and maintaining the meager equipment. And he decreed that work should immediately be changed from a 1-shift proposition to round-the-clock construction.
  The first requisite for this change was lights for night work. He rustled up all the portable generators and all the bulbs in Eastern India. But the electrical systems were not satisfactory, and the final solution was the burning of Diesel oil in open 5-gallon cans. Construction was on a round-the-clock basis on the third day after Colonel Pick arrived.
  Before leaving the states, Colonel Pick had taken the precaution of stacking his personnel deck with a few aces by arranging to have some of the officers on his Missouri River division "team" follow him to India. Among these were Col. William J. Green, Appleton, Wis., who had been in charge of operations for the Missouri river division, and was field director of the fight against the Missouri's floods at Omaha two years ago. He became the road engineer for the Ledo route. Another was Col. C. S. Davis of Kansas City, who had been executive officer here, and had the same assignment in the jungles. They arrived at Ledo in November.
  Colonel Pick had not been in India long before he hot on one further thing which proved to be a key factor in morale. He decreed that every single construction unit must build a section of road, no matter how small, every single day. If a unit spent most of the day moving it must still do a little construction work - perhaps only twenty feet or so - before turning in for the evening. From this ruling there developed a competitive spirit which was of great importance in getting the job done.

A Visit by Stilwell.

  On October 3, 1943, General Stilwell paid his first visit to Colonel Pick's rain-soaked tent at the road's most advancedpoint.
  He wanted to go after the Japs in a hurry and he needed a highway. How long was the road now? He inquired. Colonel Pick told him it was at the 50-mile point. Then he wanted to know if Colonel Pick could build for him a jeep road to Shingbwiyang, fifty-four miles ahead.

A LATE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MAN WHO, AS COL. LEWIS A. PICK, HARNESSED THE MISSOURI RIVER AND THEN TOOK ON THE BUILDING OF THE LEDO ROAD, EMERGING FROM THE JOB AS A MAJOR GENERAL.

  "We can't build you a jeep road," replied Colonel Pick, "but I think we can build you a road that will take truck traffic. When do you want it finished?"
  "Can you do it by January 17?"
  "Okay."
  The soil in that area is clay and shale. The shale is no good for road surfacing, so it was necessary to haul gravel out of the beds of the streams - sometimes it had to be hauled twenty-five or thirty miles.
  There were no by-passes, no side roads. It was as though a tunnel were being driven through the jungle. The lead bulldozer blazed the trail. It was followed by clearing crews, who blasted the big trees - often six feet in diameter - and other crews leveled and graded and dug ditches, installed culverts and drains. A detachment of Chinese troops built temporary bridges of hand-hewn timber. And finally the surface was "metaled" with eight to twelve inches of gravel.
  Four days ahead of schedule, the lead bulldozer broke into Shingbwiyang and the Hukawng valley, which are within Burma's border. Within two hours after the road was broken through there arrived at Shingbwiyang the first convoy of fifty-five 2½-ton trucks, bearing combat troops of the Chinese army, headed for the Jap front line, twenty miles forward.
  Later that day the engineering regiment held a celebration, with a stage show, a band, movies, publication of a mimeographed newspaper and the distribution of PX rations.

Troops Using the New Road.

  Shingbwiyang was 102 miles from Ledo. During January many Chinese-American troops moved to the front over the route, and in February Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill's famous Marauders used it to start their campaign that punctured the Japs' myth of invincibility.
  The tactical situation complicated the Job. The road couldn't progress ahead of General Stilwell's troops - the troops needed road-borne supplies. Obviously it must be a boot-strap proposition, with combat and construction moving almost hand-in-hand.
  General Stilwell asked Colonel Pick to build a temporary road which would follow close behind the troops. Many lateral trails would be necessary to supply the combat units spread across the advancing front.
  On December 31, 1943, two armor-plated bulldozers moved out of Shingbwiyang and began to break a trail southward through the valley towards Tanai river, forty-three miles away. Ahead of them and on either side were protecting troops. Frequently they were held up by enemy fire.
  The temporary road followed the old refugee trail through the principal villages of the valley. The engineers developed it into a double-track combat highway. But at the same time construction was started on a permanent route, which made an arc to the eastward along higher ground, and rejoined the refugee trail at the lower end of the valley. Now, instead of cutting shelf paths along mountainsides, the problem was to raise the roadbed above flood danger. It involved much grading, many bridges and causeways.
  At the same time construction of an airfield at Shingbwiyang was begun. It was needed to fly in yet more supplies, and to evacuate wounded. It was one of three all-weather fields and two temporary landing strips that were to be built alongthe route. This was one of the engineers' incidental assignments, but finally, in the aggregate, airport construction represented a seal-coat surfaced runway of approximately seventy-five acres.

Pick Becomes a General.

  In March Colonel Pick was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
  By May the temporary road was at Warazup, eighty-seven miles from Shingbwiyang. The bulldozers had averaged better than a mile a day when they were not held up by the fighting.

THE FIRST CONVOY TO TRAVEL THE LEDO-BURMA ROADS INTO CHINA USES A TEMPORARY BRIDGE TO CROSS THE TAPING RIVER.ENGINEERS ARE CONSTRUCTING NEW BRIDGE TO REPLACE THE ONE DESTROYED BY BOMBING.

  Theoretically the fighting should have stopped with the advent of the monsoons. The Japs probably reasoned that it was impossible to supply 50,000 troops so far from a railroad.
  But "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell had other plans. He wanted to stage a surprise attack on Myitkyina on the Irrawaddy river. Could General Pick, regardless of the monsoon, maintain the road already built and at the same time support a surprise attack in force? It was a vital decision.
  General Pick committed himself to support the attack, and also agreed to provide two combat engineer battalions to assist in the attack, which was to start with seizure of the Myitkyina airfield, and end with the fall of the town after a 74-day siege.
  One of the supporting features needed for the attack was an airfield on the east side of the Hukawng valley. The engineers worked day and night, excavated 50,000 yards of earth and on the morning of the thirteenth day the field was completed to the extent that it could accommodate all types of planes needed for the operation.
  The rains were a bit later than usual, but heavier. The season brought 150 inches of rain for Shingbwiyang.
  All the way back to Ledo, slides were blotting out the highway, and crews fought them day and night. Yet the route was never blocked for longer than ninety-six hours - and that happened but once.
  The time had been insufficient for graveling of the road across the valley.

Six Bridges Lost.

  Six major bridges were washed out in one 24-hour period. The big bridge over the Tarung was lost, and presented one of the toughest problems. This river, according to Colonel Green, is about as wide as the Mississippi at Cairo, Ill. It has been known to rise ten feet in ten hours, and it carries tremendous amount of drift. Only military necessity would cause anyone to try and bridge it during the monsoon season. The job was started at midnight, June 16, and completed in forty days. During the same 40-day period a Chinese regiment of engineers built a corduroy (log) causeway eight miles long, covering a section where three thousand feet of road had been lost. To build the bridge and Causeway 2.550 piling and over 1 million feet of lumber and bridge timber was used. Two small portable sawmills turned out the million feet of lumber in thirty days.
  Despite all the difficulties, the end of the monsoon season found the road better than it had been in May.
  In October clearing weather permitted resumption of field operations along both the old refugee trail, south of Myitkyina, and the new main road, south of Warazup. By January 27, 1945, both routes had connected with an old trail to Bhamo. The intersection is 270 miles from Ledo, and Bhamo is 367 miles from the railroad terminal.

ROUTE OF “PICK’S PIKE” WHICH IS OFFICIALLY KNOWN AS THE LEDO CUT-OFF ON THE BURMA ROAD LIFE LINE TO CHINA. A STUPENDOUS MILITARY UNDERTAKING BUILT IN LARGE PART WHILE THE MONSOON WAS POURING DOWN 150 INCHES OF RAIN IN THE SHORT SEASON.  Click Map to Enlarge

  On January 28 the first convoy crossed the Chinese border, near Wanting, and it reached Kunming on February 4. However, the engineers continued to work on the Namhkan-Wanting section, developing it from a rough, narrow trail to a heavy-traffic highway.
  The completed Ledo road is designed to carry more than 60,000 tons per month, and one military police post has reported the passing of 8,500 vehicles in a 24-hour period. Officials have estimated that by the present time supplies should be moving over the road at the rate of about 13,000 tons per month. It has been said that one ton of supplies in China is worth as much as four tons elsewhere.
  The construction job involved:
  Moving more than 50,000 square yards of dirt per mile for 483 miles - a total of 13½ million cubic yards, or enough dirt to build a wall ten feet high and three feet wide in a straight line from New York to San Francisco.
  Building of 160 bridges over sizable streams; among these were two steel suspension bridges, one with a 380-foot clear suspension and the other with a 460-foot suspension; and the construction of a large steel floating bridge across the Irrawaddy.
  Installation of 105 miles of drainage pipe.
  Hauling and distributing as much gravel as could be carried in 1,100 trains of fifty cars each, or a single train 470 miles long.
  The road is thirty-two feet wide in the mountains and forty-nine feet wide where is crosses the valleys.
  Although the actual construction work was principally done by American soldiers - most of them Negro troops, thousands of natives were employed. They helped build the bases and sub-bases, handled supplies and were employed in malaria-prevention activities.
  Each of India's 200 dialects was represented, and the language problem alone was stupendous.
  Often sign language was the only answer. The quartermaster had to stock a dozen different types of rations for them.Due to caste and customs, strict segregation was necessary.
  As an illustration, some of the workers were "self-feeders;" a self-feeder refuses to eat food prepared by another lest the other become his brother and claim all his possessions.

They Call It “Pick’s Pike.”

  "Pick's Pike" was the name some phrase maker gave to the project, and it stuck. When General Pick hove into sight of the workers - and he was usually in the field - the soldier who first saw him usually announced that "here comes the man with the stick."
  Like many others, he carried a rattan stick, with a hook on the end. Convenient for hooking around a tree and pulling one's self up a bank. When General Pick first got the stick it reached from the ground to his chin. Before the road was completed it had been worn so that it reached only to his diaphragm.
  The soldiers said they could tell how the job was progressing by the manner in which he carried the stick. If it was swung jauntily, then everything was dandy. If it was firmly clutched, then the time had come to batten the hatches for a blow.
  Few people realize that there is an oil pipe line along the Ledo road. But recently Representative Mansfield of Montana told Congress quite a bit about that line. He said it starts at Calcutta with 6-inch pipe, intended to transport gasoline and diesel fuel from tanker ships a distance of 750 miles to a larger storage tank in Upper Assam, from which a pair of 4-inch lines eventually will transport the fuel to Kunming, almost 1,000 miles further.
  The Ledo road, said Representative Mansfield, was General Stilwell's vision, General Pick's job and the GIs monument.