Corporal Michael Joseph Leech

Corporal Michael Joseph Leech was born on April 21st, 1891, in the remarkably small village of Killucan in Ireland. It was here in the countryside of Ireland, in a town where fewer than 2,000 people live, that Corporal Leech grew up and spent his childhood. As a young man at the age of 22, Corporal Leech immigrated to the United States in 1913, and he lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he enlisted into the US Army. For training, he moved down to Pennsylvania where he joined the 338th Tank Battalion for training as a tanker.

It was here that he was naturalized as a US citizen on July 15th, 1918. Despite the unit never being deployed overseas, it is still remarkable that Corporal Leech was a part of the Tank Corps at this time in history. Corporal Leech was promoted to his rank 4 days before the end of the war, on November 7th, 1918. He was honorably discharged on December 1st, 1918.

Following the war, Corporal Leech actually moved down to Balboa in the Panama City Canal Zone, which was in control of the United States at the time, where he lived and worked as a butcher in a commissary. He worked there for years, until the early 1940s when he moved up to Tampa, Florida. Corporal Leech lived in Tampa with his wife, Margaret. Corporal Michael Joseph Leech passed away on January 15th, 1918, at the age of 68. A practicing Catholic in life, he had a funeral mass at Sacred Heart, and is interred at the American Legion Cemetery in Tampa, Florida.