The 123rd Quartermaster Battalion (Truck) was activiated on the 1st of June, 1942, with the primary mission to furnish transportation for the New Orleans Staging Area. The battalion had a very modest beginning with only four officers, thirteen enlisted men, and no trucks. But because the Camp at that time was also young and unspoiled, it worried along without transportation (believe it or not), and employed the personnel, who gradually poured into the 123rd fold, on labor details around the Area. This went on for some time until Dame Rumor had it that the 123rd was going to be redesignated a Service Battalion; when - Lo! and Behold! The Battalion received twenty "Jeeps"! All the keyed-up ambitions and enthusiasm of the officers and the enlisted men centered in these "baby bantams" and in less than a week all were adept at maneuvering the "1/4 ton" jobs around the lot. Then what? Out of a clear sky came the long-awaited notice that Arlington, Texas and Camp Livingston, Louisiana, had bundles of mechanisms for the 123rd in the form of 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 ton cargo trucks.
So with the experience derived from circling the truck park, shoving pointed sticks at dropping boards, choosing colored strands of yarn, playing "Punch and Judy" through a peephole with a couple of blocks of wood, and pulling and pushing levers inside the new "1/4-tons", the swashbuckling heroes from the 123rd road the "rods" to where the vehicles were pooled, and then drove, pushed, and otherwise "babied" them back to the battalion truck park. Well, to make a long story still longer, the local brass hats joined hands around the truck park and danced and sang and drooled until the "wee" hours of the morning when they all disbanded and hurried back to their "inner sanctums" to burn the midnite oil writing transportation requests. And so that has been our job ever since - - to satisfy the hunger for transportation of outfits here at Camp and to reply by indorsement why our convoys were 15/32 of a second late, or why we did not furnish love seats, divans, and reading lamps in the back of our trucks when we made a convoy move. Not so modest are the accomplishments of the 123rd - - we've done everything (including the seemingly impossible) with our trucks. We've convoyed troops through rain, cold and heat, by day and by night, and have loaded them on troop transports with tears in our eyes because we could not climb on board ourselves; we've pulled barges, boats, and scrap metal out of the bayou swamps to aid the scrap drive; we've braved icy blasts, rainy weather, and Mississippi mud on maneuvers in Mississippi; we've evacuated troops from the coastal areas with hurricane winds at our backs and threatening overhead, and rivers where the roads were supposed to be; we've made emergency trips to West End to pick up survivors of sucken boats, to RR Stations to meet incoming and outgoing troop trains; besides performing our regular housekeeping duties in Camp of which some figures are worthy of mention - - we've distributed approximately 60,000 tons of food and 5,000 tons of ice to the various mess halls in Camp during the year 1943 and we've delivered tons and tons of clothing and equipage and dirt and sand and lumber and hundreds of items of material too numerous to mention all of which were vital to the growth and maintenance of the Camp. All in all, we've traveled about 2,000,000 miles during 1943 and are justly proud of our average of just one accident in every 25,000 miles of driving. We're ready to roll day or night on any kind of detail that the master minds behind the war machinery of our Country can devise, and what's more, we've got the best damned officers and enlisted men in the Army of these United States to DO THE JOB, whatever it may be!! We never say "It can't be done"! Our Motto is -- "It will be done and BY GOD'S WILL, we can do it"!!
On the 11th of November, 1943, the 123rd Quartermaster Battalion (Truck) was redesignated 123rd Quartermaster Battalion, Mobile.
Our past is a road heaped high with glorious attainments; a vehicle loaded to capacity with enviable records; and an artist's brush held high -- poised and glistening in the sunlight in admiration of a deft stroke which made other lines appear in proper relation to each other in this unfinished picture long to be remembered in the annals of posterity! Our future is a bright pebble tossed into the stream of war; it is the ripples caused by the pebble -- ripples of adventure, of new glory, of fresh fields to conquer, of the Four Freedoms for which we fight; it is the splash on the shore, on the rocks, and the crags, and the templed hills which grows louder and louder until it fairly shouts of shells and tanks and smoke and blood and laughter and tears and boats and trains and trucks and back slapping and handshaking and GLORIOUS ALLIED VICTORY!! To this end is our resolve!
