[AT] Motor Transport Corp Cross Country Trip 1919

[Kenneth Gene Waugh]

Not precisely in line with this thread, but maybe not too far off...
My paternal grandfather homesteaded in South Dakota for just a few years,
in the early 1900s. I have him out there, if I recall correctly, in the
1910 census. Anyway, my brother (now passed) by an uncle, who would have
been a little tyke then, that the men returned from S Dakota to Indiana
driving a tractor with a trailer. But that they had rigged a driveshaft
from the tractor power takeoff to the truck rear-end that also served as
the trailer axle. Has anyone ever heard of this being done?

TIA,
Gene
Elgin, Illinois

On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 2:36 PM carl tatlock <carllary at gmavt.net> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> AT at lists.antique-tractor.com
> http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com
>


-- 
Gene
Kenneth Gene Waugh
Elgin, Illinois
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.antique-tractor.com/pipermail/at-antique-tractor.com/attachments/20200301/2a82bdcd/attachment.htm>