Volume 11 , Issue 8

1941 Train & Boat Ride - Ft. Benning to Hawaii

Matt says, "Just a note after looking at your page on Uncle Bob McGill. He was remembered just the other day by my friend Col. Jimmie Leach, US Army (Ret) who rode with Lt. McGill on the 1941 train ride and boat ride from FT Benning (Bill got on at Leesburg, LA) to Hawaii. Col Leach, who is 87, spoke a couple of years ago here to a National Guard outfit of the on the rails training that went on during that ride west.

"I came across you page while attempting to get some info on the 193rd Tk Bn. Col Leach did not go to the Pacific with the 193rd. He was selected to go back to Benning to OCS after he got to Hawaii and went on to provide 30 years of heroic service as a tanker under Abrams leading the breakthrough to Bastgne in the Battle of the Bulge and as the regimental Commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry, under Abrams again, in Vietnam.

"I am preparing a biography of Col Leach as we speak and was writing the story of that train ride tonight!"

"Here is a quote taken from his talk to the 202nd Cav, SC National Guard, 2006. He only mentions your uncle once but the context of that trip is clear ... and Lt. McGill had a very creative and aggressive Sgt working for him. This was the 193rd Tk Bn.

"We left Ft. Benning. Our mission was to go to the Philippines. Readiness. You can see we were far from it at that point in time. We got into Ft. Polk. We pulled into the siding there and a new Lieutenant joined us by the name of Bob McGill and he said, I'm new to this light tank business, I don't know anything about it. How long have you all had 'em? Got 'em yesterday, sir. Good God.

"That's what we thought too. Because three of us had to gone to Ft. Knox gunnery school but you see we had a PFC with us who was from a light tank unit of the 2nd Armored Division. So we buttonholed him and got the manual out and we were bouncing along the railroad on the way eventually to the Philippines and we brain-drained that guy as best we could to refresh our memory and then on the moving train, gong to San Francisco, across our country, the four of us went out and we got on a tank and we would open a breech and close a breech and assemble a breech and all the things you had to do. We did have ammunition. We had 37 mm rounds but we didn't have .30 cal rounds. Then a boxcar on our train, each company had its own loading detail, hand cranked, one bullet at a time going into the damn web belt. A tedious job and they were loading all ball ammunition. No 1,4,5. No tracer. No shot. Just ball which was not acceptable in combat. That loading detail worked all the way across the country."

"Col. Jimmie Leach reminds us of the good fortune of the 193rd Tk Bn. I am not certain you know this but the 192nd and 194th went to the Philippines earlier and were lost in their entirety with few survivors outlasting the Bataan Death March. The 193rd was on its way to the Philippines when the decision was made to cut our losses there. Thus the months in Hawaii.

"Jimmie Leach brings us a history of service that extends back to his enlistment in the National Guard in 1938, right up until this week when VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki thanked Jimmie for saving his career when Shinseki was young and a wounded veteran of Vietnam and Jimmie saved the careers of amputees like Shinseki by finding a way to keep them in the Army. That is more than 70 years of service!"
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