This website is dedicated to my Grandfather, Guy D. Smith, who not only has made a great contribution to the study of soil science in his life, but also documented/filmed much of the construction of the Ledo Road in WWII.
On 19 August, 1942 my Grandfather joined the Army Air Corps. He served until February of 1947 in the WWII China, Burma, India Theater (CBI). Much of this website it dedicated to his time spent abroad filming, documenting, and collecting information about the Ledo Road. He wrote home daily to his wife and family. The Ledo Road (going from Assam, India to Kunming, China) was built so that the Western Allies could provide supplies to the Chinese. It was renamed the Stilwell Road (after General Vinegar Joe Stilwell of the U.S. Army) in early 1945.
When Guy left the service he dedicated the reminder of his life to the study of soil science. Guy culminated a new soil classification system, which became the official classification system of the U.S. National Cooperative Soil Survey in 1965. It was published in 1975 as Soil Taxonomy: A Basic System of Soil Classification for Making and Interpreting Soil Surveys. The Smith system was adopted in the U.S. and many other nations for their own classification system.
In the 1960’s the nonfarming uses of soil science was increasing rapidly, highway and other infrastructure engineers relied on this system for information.
(1944) “Do not tell anyone outside the family where I am now, or where I am going to be. Anything in any censored letter cannot be repeated.”
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