Researcher Chris found Leonard Larkins and his family in 2016. We’ve travelled to New Orleans to visit and interview Leonard, to apply Leonard’s memory to our research. Leonard Larkins on our Research Site
Leonard talks about pup tents and stoves in cold weather—“had trouble with the stoves all the time.” He confirms that tents frequently burned. Most of all his mind keeps returning to cold. “One time it was so cold the gas froze in the lines.”
He remembers fighting drainage and muskeg. Company A built bridges, “Lots of bridges.” And they built culverts.
One of his sons asks about baths. He laughs, “No time for that.” But, when pressed, he describes portable showers. Queried about how often the men used them, he guesses, “every four days or so.”
Captain Robert Boyd of Company C of the 93rd wrote a book, many years after the fact, about his company’s time on the Alcan—Me and Company C. Boyd writes well, and his book is an invaluable source of information. We suspect, though, that the good captain is prone to a certain amount of embellishment.
Boyd tells a delightful story about turning his men loose for a quick dip and a bath in a Yukon Lake. I run that by Leonard, and he laughs, delighted. “No way. Too cold.”
If Boyd’s book takes a hit from Leonard’s testimony, so does ours. We have been captivated by our image of Company A’s tough old First Sergeant, Ashel Honesty. Leonard remembers Honesty vividly—as a mean S.O.B. “Some guys said if this was a shootin’ war they’d kill him.”
Oops. Note to selves—revise section on Honesty.
In October General Hoge had a problem… He had just learned that his men would have to stay in the North Country into the winter. And they lived in tents! Leonard and Company A climbed into deuce and a half trucks and headed north—far north onto the section of the highway being built by the white 18th Regiment. There they continued to live in tents—while they built winter quarters for the white men of the 18th. Leonard remembers the long, cold trip. He remembers building barracks in the cold. He has no idea where he was.
We turn to follow up questions—mostly from Leonard’s sons who have heard very little about all of this.
Did the troops get R&R (Rest and Recreation)? Not really.
Leonard remembers being marched to the theater in Skagway to watch a movie; confirms that they didn’t have to sit in the balcony because they had the theater to themselves. He doesn’t remember the movie, but he remembers leaving the theater in a snowstorm so thick they got lost.
On the highway, the men didn’t get days off.
One of Leonard’s sons asks about how they “maintained their sanity”. Leonard thinks about that a minute. Sometimes the guys would pass a medicine ball. He remembers baseball and softball—but not in the woods.
“Who was the Company Clown?” Leonard thinks again… “Just about everybody. We kidded each other about wives, sisters, mothers…”
“Who was the toughest, meanest guy?” Leonard doesn’t hesitate. “Sergeants.”
And finally… “Of all the memories, which was the worst?”
Leonard’s answer completely floors me. Sub-zero temperatures in a tent, mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds, muskeg that could swallow a D-8 Cat whole, endless days swinging an axe or a shovel “from can to can’t”… None of those things bothered Leonard as much as his initial training at Camp Livingston.
Leonard enlisted at “Napoleon Field”, a little crossroads town near the sugar cane plantation where he had spent his life. The Army transported him from there to Camp Livingston, issued uniforms and equipment, yelled him into formation and commenced training. And Leonard remembers the training—formations, marching, PT (army speak for calisthenics “Physical Training”), rifle range, breaking down and reassembling his rifle—as the worst part of his Army career. He explains that it was “unpredictable”. And that floors us—the Army? Unpredictable?
I’ve struggled for two weeks to understand that choice.
Leonard grew up on a Sugar Cane Plantation. Link Bert told us about the endless hard work, the absolute dominance of “the Man on the White Horse” before we ever came to New Orleans. Bert remembered that, if he asked his dad how much more work they had to do, Leonard would respond, “don’t worry about how much more, concentrate on what’s in front of you.”
I think that answer came from the very core of Leonard Larkins—and the very core of black men of his generation in the Deep South.
Born into a horrendous reality, Leonard and most of the black men who accompanied him to the North Country, didn’t think about it, they just lived it. First of all life was work—endless, grueling work. Second, everything that was not work was a dangerous threat.
At Camp Livingston, for the first time in their lives, they had no idea what was expected. That experience Leonard remembers as the worst, and his fellows would probably agree.
Advancing into the Yukon wilderness confronted them with mosquitoes, mud, and frigid cold. But these men were tough beyond anything we can imagine. They knew Yukon—and the Aleutians. This was just a different version of the plantation—with First Sergeant Honesty on the White Horse.