[AT] Motor Transport Corp Cross Country Trip 1919

[carl tatlock]

Hi guys-- I haven't chimed in in a long while, but wanted to add a footnote to the Army trucks across country. My dad was in the Motor Transport Corp in 1918. In fact he was at the embarkation point in Newport News Va ready to board the troop ship when the Armistice was declared. The unit stood down and nobody went. The trucks they worked on at Ft Sheridan Illinois were the Liberty type-- produced by a number of manufacturers using a standard plan they all agreed to. (Try that today, though it worked for Jeeps in WW2). 
The had no cabs, just a canvas cover, hard rubber tires (deemed a necessity for French battlefields and poor roads. In France they were used as supply vehicles, replacing horse drawn wagons, to get food, ammunition and other supplies to the Front. (Dangerous job-- no real roads at the front, bomb craters , German machine gunners.) Many breakdowns in equipment and no nice dry well equipped garages to work in. The only other vehicles were Model T ambulances, and civilian-style touring cars, Dodges were considered the most reliable. I had the honor as a young lad to talk with one of General Pershing's drivers in France. Pershing, Commanding General of the AEF had 4 drivers and 4 cars for 24/7 duty. Bill Bartholomew, of Vandling PA was the driver and said Pershing usually called for one of the Dodges- since they were the most reliable. (Others were Packards, Cadillacs, some Model Ts.)The Motor Transport Corp was a separate part of the Army then, along with the Air Service, Cavalry, and Tank Corp. 

An average of 6 mph must have made it a fun trip. We cannot today have any real idea what it must have been like-- consider walking across the country at 2 mph over normal walking speed. Without a road in many places. Not until 1922 did the nation really begin to build roads outside of towns and cities. Imagine then the Model T trucks with a cement mixer on board going to the jobsite and off loading on to men with wheel barrows laying the concrete. T's had 22hp, trucks had a wicked slow ratio rear end. It was a slow process. 

Anecdote my dad told me: At Fort Sheridan,IL, in training, there were a row of Dodge touring cars in one part of the Camp-- parked next to each other in a long open garage - dozens of them. Word came that a Senator was coming to "look things over". The Company Captain found out what time, and had the boys each climb under a car and make tool noises while the Senator walked by.- nothing but feet sticking out and banging noises Some things never change. (I was in the Army CounterIntelligence Corp during the Korean War and when the Inspector General from Washington was to arrive we had borrow some 6x trucks from somebody's Motor Pool and load them with the stuff we weren't supposed to have, and send them around the streets of Tokyo until he left.) I'll bet you guys from all subsequent service postings had a bunch of those stories, too. 

Hats off to Dwight Eisenhower and federal Interstate system. We use it without a thought today. That 1919 cross-country experiment was a wonderful thing. Carl Tatlock in Vermont 
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