Portraits of Courage: Ed Walker

Photos of Ed Walker are on display at the Anchorage Museum as part of its “Castner’s Cutthroats: Forgotten Warriors” exhibit.

Yet, Walker almost didn’t get transferred to the scout unit. He applied twice while in an infantry division in Haines, but was turned down. Then one night at the canteen his sergeant major approached him and asked if he still wanted to be in the scouts.

“He said the colonel is in Washington, D.C., getting a medal and the lieutenant colonel that took his place was signing anything he put in front of him,” Walker said. “I told him he could have beer and hamburgers the rest of his life free.”

Walker had originally served three years in the Army in Hawaii and had gotten out. However, after reading a Saturday Evening Post article about Alaska and reading the one book in his local library about the state, he decided to re-enlist as a way to get to Alaska. He was living in San Francisco and owned a boat stake. He sold his business and went to re-enlist.

“I told the sergeant in San Francisco that I wanted to go to Fairbanks, Alaska, and they’re building a field called Ladd Field and I want to go there and be in the Air Corps,” he said. “‘Anything you want soldier, you got it. Raise your right hand and I’ll swear you in,’ and he did.”

However, the Army sent Walker to the infantry at Chilkoot barracks in Haines. That was the only established military base in Alaska at the time. After his reassignment to the Alaska Scouts, he reported in at the tents of Fort Richardson and was told to sit down and type out some passes. Never having sat at a typewriter before, he banged them out key by key with some help and then asked who needed to sign them.

“I was told, ‘You typed them, so you sign them,’” Walker said. “If it had to be done, you would do it. We didn’t do things by the book. We didn’t even have a book. … What a difference!”

When Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner came to Alaska to lead the war on that front, he wanted to know the terrain. So, Walker blew up a map of Alaska to 14 feet by 35 feet and put it on a wall. Gen. Buckner looked at it and asked where everything was. A couple roads were marked and pointed out to him.

“Where are the airports?” he asked.

“Oh, we have lots of airports. We just don’t put them on the map because they could move next week,” was the reply.

So, Col. Lawrence Castner asked to form a group of scouts who could live off the country based on what his father did in the Philippines.

“And the general says, ‘Do it!’” Walker said.

The group was dubbed Castner’s Cutthroats since it could live off the land.

“We ate quite well off the country,” he said. “We lived well.”

Members of the group all carried their own provisions and supplies, including their own frying pans, pots and cups. They caught fish and crab.

Walker said that while the natives helped, they weren’t as important as they are sometimes played up to be. Their survival was never dependent on having natives in their group.

“Only one native was ever a leader out of the 10 we had, and that was when it came to boats — he was the boss,” Walker said.

Besides that case, rank or position was never an issue in the unit. In fact, Walker said the only time the officer (a lieutenant) in the unit wore his rank was when he went to report in to the colonel or the quartermaster.

Walker is working on a book about his experiences in World War II. A book about the scouts is available in the library network: “Castner’s Cutthroats: Saga of the Alaska Scouts” by Jim Rearden.

Editor’s note: This is the last installment of Portraits of Courage.