INTERVIEW WITH HELEN NAVRATIL

Date of Interview: June 26, 2004 in Fort Nelson, British Columbia

Interviewer Hank Bridgeman
Transcriber: Case Mond

Hank Bridgeman:
Now. I’m just gonna get my fact sheet. Okay, We’ll just start by telling me your name, and spelling it.

Helen Navratil:
All right. My name is Helen Navratil. That’s N.A.V.R.A.T.I.L.

Hank Bridgeman:
And, okay. And your husband’s name.

Helen Navratil:
My husband is Sidney J. Navratil. He was born in Czechoslovakia. He came to the United States at the age of 13 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was actually born in Oklahoma and arrived in Pittsburgh at the age of four. So... And we met December 31st 1940, at a New Year’s Eve party. (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
(laughs) All right. What happened then?

Helen Navratil:
Well, I was 19 years old and we went together until he graduated from college and went away for the summer, to an art school. And then we received this letter from Uncle Sam. He was drafted, in October I think it was, of 1941. And I didn’t see him again until Christmas. He came home on Christmas leave. And then he left again and the next thing I knew, he was in Canada. He left for Canada in March of 1942. Arrived, I think, on the 13th, in Dawson Creek.

Hank Bridgeman:
So he was sending letters. How often did you get letters from him?

Helen Navratil:
Oh, not all that often, maybe once or twice a month. Because he really didn’t have much time to write. I do have the letters, but I haven’t looked through them for years. And eh, he wrote back and forth all the time. The road was finished, I think, at the end of September of 1942. And around about November, they started putting up permanent quarters. Up until that time, they lived in tents.

Hank Bridgeman:
Where was that? Here, or...? Whereabouts would that have been? Do you remember?

Helen Navratil:
I don’t really know, except he kept saying “Camp Liard.”

Hank Bridgeman:
Okay.

Helen Navratil:
Now I don’t know whether the permanent camp was set up there, or whether they waited until they got back [ ] to Fort St. John. I don’t know from his diaries, even. But they built a mess hall first, and eventually quonset huts were brought in. But until then, they lived in tents. They lived in tents all through... from the beginning through till then. And he left there, I think at the end of January. And they went back to Camp McCoy, in Wisconsin. And all that time, the captain, the then-captain, Stewart, was trying to get leave for the men, because they wanted to ship them out immediately to where they wherever going, which they didn’t know. So he... I think he had 10 days leave, but it was shortened to about seven days. And I was in nursing school at the time. And he decided... Okay... When he came home, on that short leave, he asked if we could get married. And I said “Yes, of course.” And so we were married on a Wednesday, Wednesday January the 27th. And on the 28th, around midnight, he left...

Hank Bridgeman:
To come up here?

Helen Navratil:
No. He was coming back from here... They had already done this.

Hank Bridgeman:
Okay.

Helen Navratil:
And then they shipped out to Melbourne, Australia. First to Brisbane, and then to Melbourne, where they set up a photo mapping outfit, in a department store, actually.

Hank Bridgeman:
What... When he was here, what was he doing up here?

Helen Navratil:
He was a trailblazer. He actually was one of the... He wasn’t a surveyor. He was a recorder. But they were the man out in front finding the road, blazing the trail, that’s actually what they were doing.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. So that was... That was pretty rough work. He’d be pretty well isolated from the rest of the...

Helen Navratil:
Yes they were. And he was out the whole time, the whole -- what was it? -- eight months that they were in the field, he never went back to camp. He was always out in the front.

Hank Bridgeman:
So, what... what would he have been, topographical battalion?

Helen Navratil:
That’s what it was. Company A, 648 Topographical Battalion, of the Engineers.

Hank Bridgeman:
So what kind of things was he writing to you, that time, do you remember? Some things that really come to mind...?

Helen Navratil:
No actually, I can’t remember what... I don’t think he did say much in the letters. It was just that he wrote in the diary every day that he could. And that’s mostly what I know about the trip. But the letters were more or less just personal letters.

Hank Bridgeman:
I imagine love letters and that kind, right?

Helen Navratil:
No, not completely love letters, but he didn’t talk about much what he was doing. Because it was supposed to be secret. It was a secret mission. So it was from the diaries that I knew what he did while he was up here. Until then, I didn’t know. And I didn’t get the diaries until after he came back from Melbourne.

Hank Bridgeman:
So what was that like for you? Because he’s sending you letters. You know he’s way up in Northern Canada somewhere. And eh, you must have been curious.

Helen Navratil:
Well, I was curious, but... It, it... I was busy with my own work. You know, and I was worried about him, but since he wasn’t anywhere where he was being shot at, it didn’t bother me that much. I had no idea what the country was like or what the weather was like. I didn’t know what he was going through. None of it.

Hank Bridgeman:
So you had no idea?

Helen Navratil:
No idea.

Hank Bridgeman:
When you [drew up] the diary, that painted a picture basically of his activities up here...?

Helen Navratil:
That’s right. Then I knew what he had done.

Hank Bridgeman:
So is there anything striking that you recall from reading that? That you kinda went, Wow, that’s amazing stuff?

Helen Navratil:
Yes, it was amazing, because of his descriptions of the sky and the surroundings. Cause he was sort of poetic. And being an artist, he had a wonderful eye. And he kept saying “I wish I had paints so that I could paint this, because I’ll never be able to describe to anybody what it really looks like.”

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. So he would have come to Dawson Creek first, right?

Helen Navratil:
Yes he came to Dawson Creek first. And then they rode in an open truck, that they were in... They got into their sleeping bags and all their Arctic gear. And the trucks were open, they just had a tarpaulin over them, and drove across the Peace River to Fort St. John.

Hank Bridgeman:
This was like in the winter time?

Helen Navratil:
Yes, 60 degrees below zero. This was March 1942. 60 degree weather, below. And one of the men in the truck, he had his toes frozen, and he was sent back, and they... He didn’t complete the mission.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. That’s quite a rude awakening. End up here in the winter and then being trucked in an open truck. Can you tell me some stories of... I imagine the stories when he was trailblazing. Things that they ran into, and...?

Helen Navratil:
Well, he said they were hungry all the... most of the time, because the supplies didn’t catch up with them. They got mostly dried eggs and eh... they just weren’t well fed. They were hungry. They ran out of cigarettes. They’d share cigarettes, that sort of thing. But, the worst thing, he said, was they had to eat so much fish once they finally got to the rivers. That was the only fresh food they had. And they had no guns, of course, to shoot wildlife. They would occasionally get one of the birds. I forget what they’re called -- the prairie hens, or guinea hens -- that sort of bird.

Hank Bridgeman:
Grouse.

Helen Navratil:
Because, he said they were so stupid, they would sit and you could almost clobber them, you know.

Hank Bridgeman:
Spruce hens.

Helen Navratil:
Spruce hens, is that what they were? Well, that they had once in a while, but not often, cause they made so much noise... He never saw any wildlife. Not really. He said “I never say a bear, never saw a moose, never saw anything.” Because they made so much noise, all the wildlife was scared of. (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
Well that’s good. At least they scared the bears away.

Helen Navratil:
And crossing the rivers... They crossed on poles... on logs that they cut down and then they’d peddle across the rivers, somehow. But he also talked about logs dropping across a ravine, with water underneath, and then they had to shinny across. And he said he was terrified of the running water underneath, and falling.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow, shinny across these logs across a raging river...

Helen Navratil:
Yes.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. Was there... were eh... Were there any accidents and things that you recalled?

Helen Navratil:
He... I don’t know where it was, but he hit himself in the knee with an... with an ax when he was chopping wood and laid his knee open, but he said that eh... I think it was a captain, just put a butterfly bandage on it and managed to get it together enough so that it would heal. And so he never went back into the main camps. He was out all the time. But that’s the only accident he’d ever been in... He didn’t mention if any of the other men ever did. In fact, there was a lot of them that had jaundice from the shots, and those went back.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah, there was a lot of that.

Helen Navratil:
But he didn’t get it. Or at least he didn’t know if he had it. He was out in the field for the whole time period.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. So when they’re basically out in the tents most of the time, like eh... You know, that must have been something being in those tents in winter time...?

Helen Navratil:
Yes. They said in the winter time they would go to the cook... cook shack to get their meals and their mess kits. And then there was no mess tent, so they had to carry the food back to their own tent. And I don’t know how many men were in the tent, three or four I think, about four. And then they had to unfreeze the food. It froze by the time they got to the tent. And they used the stoves to unfreeze the food. (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
It was an incredible life.

Helen Navratil:
And they talked about getting into the... into the... bed... oh their downy... oh dear.

Hank Bridgeman:
Oh, their sleeping bags?

Helen Navratil:
Sleeping bags, that’s it. And they said when you got in, the moisture from the night before froze, so that you just inched your way down into the bag. (laughs) You know, with your feet. So... and when you woke in the morning, your breath was frozen on the, on the front of the bag.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. Wow. Yeah it would be, like, 50, 60 below at times, right?

Helen Navratil:
But he thought the worst were the mosquitos and the eh, no-see-um flies, the little black flies. Now, I don’t... Mosquitos never really bothered him at home. He didn’t complain about himself, but he talked about some of the men who couldn’t stand the flies especially. And the one man tore off all his clothes, shrieking and cursing “Why don’t you let me alone!” (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
Get me out of here! (laughs) Oh, those no-see-ums are nasty. When they were trailblazing, would they have, like, a Native guide with them?

Helen Navratil:
They had a horse troup with them. They called them wranglers. I don’t know how many of them were horse men, but they had a small bunch of horses. They never rode the horses but they were there to help break the trail, I guess... No, to carry the supplies that they had, the tents. At that time, they weren’t carrying huge tents, they were carrying two-men tents.

Hank Bridgeman:
Little pup tents?

Helen Navratil:
Yes.

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. Wow. So they were going in the country, like, the rest of the troupe... They were basically breaking virgin country.

Helen Navratil:
Yes, there was nothing there. They were following an airplane route. That’s what they had as a guide. And of course, the ground was a lot different from on the ground than it was from the air. So they didn’t know what they were getting into. And eh... The compasses didn’t work properly either. So they didn’t... weren’t able to follow company... compass’s trails as well. They said, once in a while somebody would climb up a tree to find out what the terrain was like, if they could find a tree big enough to climb, which I imagine there were a lot bigger trees then. But imagine...

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow. I wonder why the compasses weren’t working...?

Helen Navratil:
Something about the North Pole, being so close to the North Pole that they were off.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah. Right. Because the true north and the magnetic pole...

Helen Navratil:
Yes.

Hank Bridgeman:
Right. Interesting. Eh... (mumbles) Food. There wasn’t much food... Eh... Would they have like... Would you know if they had a quota, that they had so much territory to kind of get through in a day, or anything like that?

Helen Navratil:
I think they do, although he never really mentioned any time limit. They just pushed on as hard as they could. And occasionally, they’d say “The cats are right behind us. We have to get moving.”

Hank Bridgeman:
Wow.

Helen Navratil:
And a lot of it was rough traveling. He said, the worst thing was trying to get over a burnt area, where there had been a forest fire and all the trees were down. And trying to cross those areas were pretty terrible.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah. Hard to walk in that stuff. I’ve been there. So eh... So they were ahead of the catskinners?

Helen Navratil:
Yes. The 35th. And many times they were not far... that far ahead of them, cause, you know, the traveling was hard on them.

Hank Bridgeman:
Well, they were on foot, and these guys were coming... [?] on the machines.

Helen Navratil:
Yes, exactly.

Hank Bridgeman:
Eh, what did those guys do to blow off steam? I mean, here they are blazing trail. They must have had some time where they... you know...

Helen Navratil:
Well, they played cards, I think. And he talked about the fact that, amazingly, that they were interested in poetry. Somehow or other they had got a hold of books. And eh, they would read poetry aloud. And he said “It’s amazing how these rough men up here are enjoying all this poetry.” And if you noticed in Trailblazers he uses Robert Service’s poems all the way through, which suited the terrain that he was in and the conditions under which they were working.

Hank Bridgeman:
Okay, that, that makes sense. Wow, what a time. So you mentioned too that he really liked the country and that would have loved to have painted it...

Helen Navratil:
Oh yes. Oh yes, he was really impressed with the, with his surroundings.

Hank Bridgeman:
Cause I’ve talked to some people and they say “It was terrible. I hated it all the time!” Did he hate it, or was there some romanticism...?

Helen Navratil:
There was some romanticism. He didn’t enjoy what he was going through, the hardships... But he, he did enjoy nature, and its... what... As he said, this place is... “Neither men nor God has ever walked through this place.” (laughs) Which was not much of an opinion, I guess, of the whole experience. But still, he felt, you know... He was very much impressed with the northern lights. And he saw a snow bow once, and he was impressed with that. But he always talked about the sky and the surrounding areas. As I say, he really wanted to paint.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah. That must have been a bit frustrating, because... some of the scenery is incredible. You only look... You don’t really have time to look at it, because you gotta keep, keep moving ahead, right?

Helen Navratil:
Strangely enough, my husband was a marvelous artist, but he is colorblind. (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah, many, many artists are colorblind.

Helen Navratil:
Yes, and he’s one of them, and he kept it a secret all his life.

Hank Bridgeman:
What was his most memorable experience, good or bad? Do you recall?

Helen Navratil:
I really can’t say.

Hank Bridgeman:
Anything that really sticks out above everything else?

Helen Navratil:
No, the worst thing was when they all got sick at Christmas because of the turkey that they had. (laughs) They had this lovely Christmas dinner in December of, of ‘42, and he said “We all regretted it the next day,” because they were all very ill.

Hank Bridgeman:
So they got food poisoning?

Helen Navratil:
Yes.

Hank Bridgeman:
Not a nice place to get food poisoning. (laughs)

Helen Navratil:
But by then, they had, as I say, a mess hall. No, he never really said anything about the worst experiences. It was just the overall thing, the fact that they ran out of cigarettes, that they hungered for candy and sweets.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah, there wasn’t much there.

Helen Navratil:
Unless you’d say the worst time was when they went out in the field and they had this huge can which they were told was fruit. And when they opened it it was beets. (laughs) Diced beets. He never ate beets again at home. Never. (laughs) He wouldn’t touch beets.

Hank Bridgeman:
That’s what I heard, it was pork and beets.

Helen Navratil:
No, there was no, no pork. He kept saying “I wish I could have a hamburger, from one of the hamburger places in Pittsburgh. I can’t remember the name of it at this point. They served, real... Not McDonald’s, but real thick, juicy...

Hank Bridgeman:
Real ground beef.

Helen Navratil:
...real juicy hamburgers. They dreamed of food. He kept saying, “We dream of food. We talk about food.”

Hank Bridgeman:
Are you in touch with, you know, other people that have been involved in the highway, like in friendships, or, you know, you stay in touch with some people?

Helen Navratil:
Just Harry [Spegel], and his brother Carl. But I really don’t know them that well. I only met Harry and Carl once, in 1991. I typed all Harry’s letters, the excerpts from them. And he was so grateful. And I said to him then “Harry, do something with these. These are such marvelous letters that they should be published somewhere. Please, do something with them.” Because Sid wouldn’t use them all. I wanted him too, but he... he said “I want all the men to have something in.” But Harry’s letters were just special. And that was the only time I met him. But I have written to him, since then, on occasion. But I don’t really keep in touch. And I met [Adolph Adrian], but he’s not doing too well at the moment. He’s had a couple of accidents and he’s now in a nursing home. And Jim [Halfacre], I met him. Sid was very impressed with Jim Halfacre, but Jim died of Alzheimer’s. And I... we never really kept in touch with him. Sid called him occasionally, but I didn’t. No, I’m not one who... (laughs)

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah. They’re just questions I’m supposed to ask, so... I think... (mumbles) Anything. You know, is there anything that eh, anything you want to say? Anything, about all of this?

Helen Navratil:
Well, as I said, in the beginning it all [?] because of the diary. And I felt that it was a feat that should be known, that it would be... should be more publicized. And I thought there should be a book, to tell what those men did, all of them. And, as I say, since Sid was in the advertising business, I pushed him into the 648 about it. And, they... the other men from the 648, the regular battalions, were a little fed up with Company A, they really were, you know. (laughs). Company A came to Melbourne and told them all about these hardships and what have you. Well, the regular battalion was already there doing photo mapping. And they got sick of these stories of the bears, and the hunger, and the cold and the hot. But fortunately, in 19... It was 1990 that Sid went to Tucson and brought out the idea, publishing a book. And they all sort of liked the idea. And in ‘91, I went with Sid to Dallas, and they were very enthusiastic then. And all the men contributed, whatever they could. And Sid said, it wouldn’t give them any money, necessarily, but he would do all the work. And he did. He put a lot of time and effort into that book.

Hank Bridgeman:
Great. I’m... It’s really good that that all happened, because, it’s history, and you know...

Helen Navratil:
That’s what I said. It’s history, and this, this should not be forgotten.

Hank Bridgeman:
No. It was a major feat.

Helen Navratil:
These were men, mostly from cities. Young men.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah. Boys most of them, you know, really...

Helen Navratil:
Yes, who had no idea of what wilderness they were going into or what they were going to have to suffer. And yet... Well, of course, they had to go. (laughs) There was no question about whether they’d go or not. But they still didn’t know what they were doing, and they did it! And in record time! I said, “can you imagine?”

Hank Bridgeman:
Oh yeah. I mean, it’s totally amazing, and in that short period of time. To do something like that.

Helen Navratil:
Of course, the best history of the road is [Heath Churchill’s], of course, who goes the whole road. He tells it from the north to the south. But all we were concerned about was this little short jaunt that our boys did.

Hank Bridgeman:
So, did he... No, I... No, cause he came home. So he didn’t... He never had a chance to go the whole length, right?

Helen Navratil:
No. No, no. He just went whatever length from Fort... Fort Nelson up to Watson Lake, I think he went. But I’m not even sure about that. As I say, there was a picture of him, sho... pointing to a sign, saying “Yukon Border.” So...

Hank Bridgeman:
That’s Watson Lake. Watson Lake is just inside the Yukon border.

Helen Navratil:
Well, then he may have been there. He must have been there. And then they went back, to Liard, and camped there.

Hank Bridgeman:
Have you been all the way up the highway?

Helen Navratil:
No. No. We went up to Muncho Lake, yesterday.

Hank Bridgeman:
Yeah? That’s pretty.

Helen Navratil:
And they’re going to take me up again on Sunday. We’re going to go to Watson Lake. So that would be as far as he went.

Hank Bridgeman:
Okay. So that’s as far as you’re gonna go? You’re not gonna go the whole way?

Helen Navratil:
No, no. I’m not going any further. We don’t have the time.

Hank Bridgeman:
Well, it’s... From here to Watson Lake is actually, I think, the prettiest part of the highway, anyway.

Helen Navratil:
It’s amazing, to think that they walked through woods, trails, following Indian trails, if they could find one, with all that forest around them.

Hank Bridgeman:
Totally.

Helen Navratil:
He talked about Charlie Macdonald and his family. But just the fact that Charlie was there. And he also mentioned the fact that the Indians, the Native Americans, I should say, had been decimated even before they came by disease from the whites. Which is a shame for all Indians. That’s what they say about when Columbus arrived. Some of the... I guess, he brought the diseases with him. And by the time the English came, the whole population had been decimated already before the English arrived -- and the French.

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