“Top Kick” Ashel Honesty left his mark on the far north country. In 1942 the Army dispatched him with the 93rd Engineers to Yukon Territory and the Alaska Highway Project. From the Highway he went with the 93rd to the Aleutians. “Top Kick” Honesty was the man in Company A of the 93rd.
Enlisted soldiers live and work in platoons commanded by commissioned officers—usually second lieutenants, fresh from college ROTC or from West Point. Platoons work in companies, commanded by slightly more experienced 1st Lieutenants or Captains. Enlisted NCO’s, grizzled veterans who understand how things really work, serve alongside these young officers, saluting them but also guiding and teaching them. In a company, none of these veteran NCO’s is more important than the “Top Kick”, the Company First Sergeant.
The “Top Kick” runs the company. He guards the gate to the company commander. He administers discipline and rewards. He sees to it that everyone is fed and clothed. Above all he makes damned sure everyone is doing his job. A Top Kick is remote and very, very serious. A Top Kick is tough. A Top Kick is sometimes revered, but always feared.
Former Lieutenant Mortimer Squires who served in Company A remembered Sgt. Honesty. “A young lieutenant, “shavetail”, might walk by and ignore Sgt. Honesty once, but he wouldn’t do it again.” Former private Leonard Larkins couldn’t remember any of the white officers in Company A, but he remembered Sgt. Honesty. “He was mean.”
Company A led the 93rd Engineers through its most difficult and dramatic work on the highway. Its “Top Kick” clearly knew his business. But the Ashel Honesty who had to inspire fear and awe, had to exude power and authority, had to do it as a black man in a regiment commanded by young white southern commissioned officers. Young Mortimer Squires came from New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the most viciously racist parts of the United States in 1942. But he accepted Honesty’s authority, remembered it with an almost affectionate grin!
What qualities of character, toughness and intelligence prepared Ashel Honesty to fill this role? Coming to adulthood in the first four decades of 20th century America, how did he acquire them?
