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Show Stilwell Road-Land Route to China 687 Army Engineers U. S. Negro Troops Inflate a Rubber Float for a Pontoon Bridge This supply depot is temporary headquarters for their Army Engineers' unit. Negro soldiers, who made up 65 percent of the 15,000 American troops in Burma, did yeoman service building the Ledo Road, night they filled the air with plantation songs and "boogie-woogie." At These Nagas were feted and paid their seven hundred rupees of silver. Then, instead of beginning their hike back up to the hills, the group lingered so long that someone asked why they didn't go home. Their spokesman said they wanted to see the nesting place of the "roaring giant birds" that flew over their country. The Naga delegation was taken by motor to an American airfield. The loinclothed visitors stood with folded arms in complete silence for fully half an hour as they watched the big planes land and take off (page 689). Only visible sign of excitement was the increased tempo of their jaw movements as they chewed betel nut. Then, their curiosity satisfied, they fell again into single file and returned to the jungle. Isolation is ended in Upper Burma, too. Naga tribesmen got a close-up of a B-29 Superfortress while it was still a mystery plane to Americans. Never in all my engineering experience, including Army service in the last war, have I seen anything to match the Ledo project for plain and fancy terrain problems. The road is carved out of earth; its foundations are earth; there is little or no rock to provide a solid roadbed. At numerous points it had to be contoured around mountains, where it resembles an earthen bench with sheer drops thousands of feet below and overburdens towering hundreds of feet above. The Road of 700 Bridges The mountains, devoid in all but rare instances of any rock formation, present pressing maintenance problems during the monsoon period. However, earthslides are easier to contend with than rockslides. Whenever a slide occurs, a bulldozer moves in to cut a new section of the road. Fortunately the slopes are heavily forested, a condition which to some extent retards slides. |