Showing posts with label War of 1812. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War of 1812. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Monday, August 30, 1943. Hornets

CV-12, the second aircraft carrier of World War Two to be named the USS Hornet, was launched.

CV-12 being launched.

CV-8, the USS Hornet that had been in the Doolittle Raid, was sunk in October, 1942.

CV-12 was the eighth U.S. Navy ship to bear that name, the first being a merchant sloop acquired by the infant U.S. Navy in 1775 and captured by the Royal Navy during the Revolution.  A second USS Hornet, also a sloop, was acquired in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War, but served for only a year.

CV-8 was named in honor of a sloop of war commissioned in 1805.  She's served in the War of 1812, but had been lost due to a material failure at sea in 1829, going down with all hands.

The foundering of CV-8's namesake.

The fourth was a schooner acquired in 1814 that mostly served the Navy by running messages.

The fifth ship to bear that name was a captured and renamed Confederate steam ship.  Its career with the US Navy was brief, and she then went on to a brief career with filibusters, being renamed Cuba.


The Red Army captured Sokolovskym Yelna, and Taganrog.

In his second act of heroism, Lt. Kenneth Walsh, would push his deeds over the top as a Marine Corp aviator and win the Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:
For extraordinary heroism and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as a pilot in Marine Fighting Squadron 124 in aerial combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands area. Determined to thwart the enemy's attempt to bomb Allied ground forces and shipping at Vella Lavella on 15 August 1943, 1st Lt. Walsh repeatedly dived his plane into an enemy formation outnumbering his own division 6 to 1 and, although his plane was hit numerous times, shot down 2 Japanese dive bombers and 1 fighter. After developing engine trouble on 30 August during a vital escort mission, 1st Lt. Walsh landed his mechanically disabled plane at Munda, quickly replaced it with another, and proceeded to rejoin his flight over Kahili. Separated from his escort group when he encountered approximately 50 Japanese Zeros, he unhesitatingly attacked, striking with relentless fury in his lone battle against a powerful force. He destroyed 4 hostile fighters before cannon shellfire forced him to make a dead-stick landing off Vella Lavella where he was later picked up. His valiant leadership and his daring skill as a flier served as a source of confidence and inspiration to his fellow pilots and reflect the highest credit upon the U.S. Naval Service.

Lt. Walsh had joined the Marine Corps in 1933 and retired in 1962, flying again in action during the Korean War.  He died at age 81 in 1998. 

The Lackawanna Limited wreck occurred when a Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad passenger train, the New York-Buffalo Lackawanna Limited collided with a freight train. Twenty-seven people were killed in the collision, and about twice that number injured, many from steam that poured into the railroad cars.




Saturday, August 10, 2019

August 10, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy rests in Laramie. Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve trains at Denville.

The Motor Transport Convoy spent their Sunday in Laramie on this day in 1919.


The weather was "fair and cool", which would be a good description of most summer days in high altitude Laramie, which has some of the nicest summer weather in Wyoming.  Wind and rain in the late afternoon is a typical feature of the summer weather there.

In New Jersey, where the weather probably wasn't fair and cool, Troop A of the New Jersey State Militia Reserve was training.

Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve, at Denville, New Jersey.

State units during World War One and World War Two are a really confusing topic.  All states have the ability to raise state militia units that are separate and part from the National Guard, but not all do. Generally, however, during the Great War and even more during the Second World War, they did.

State units of this type are purely state units, not subject to Federal induction, en masse. Their history is as old as the nation, but they really took a different direction starting in the Spanish American War.

Early on, all of the proto United State's native military power was in militia units. There was no national army, so to speak, in Colonial America. The national army was the English Army, which is to say that at first, prior to the English Civil War, it was the Crown's army.  That army was withdrawn from North American during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s, in which it was defeated.  During that decade long struggle British North America was defended by local militias.  When British forces returned, which they did not in any numbers until the French and Indian War, it was the victorious parliamentary army, famously clad in red coats, which came back.

Not that this was novel.  Early on all early British colonies were also defended only by militias. The Crown didn't bother to send over troops to defend colonies, which were by and large private affairs rather than public ones anyhow.  At first, individual colonies were actually town sized settlements, with associated farmland, and they had their own militias.  Indeed, as late as King Philip's War this was still the case and various towns could and did refuse to help other ones and they had no obligation to do so.

Later, when colonies were organized on a larger basis, the proto states if you will, militia units were organized on that basis, although they were still local units.  I.e., towns and regions had militias, but the Governor of the Colony could call any of them out. That gave us the basic structure of today's  National Guard, in a very early fashion, and in fact that's why the National Guard claims to be the nation's oldest military body with a founding date of December 13, 1636.

Colonial militia's fought on both sides of the American Revolution, depending in part upon the loyalty of the Colonial governor at the time they were mustered as well as the views of the independent militiamen.  They formed, however, the early backbone of the Rebel effort and indeed the war commenced when British troops and militiamen engaged in combat at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

The Revolution proved the need for a national army to contest the British Army and hence the Continental Army was formed during the war and did the heavy lifting thereafter.   Militia, however, remained vital throughout the war.  Following the British surrender, there was no thought at all given to keeping a standing national army and it was demobilized and, for a time, the nation's defenses were entirely dependent upon militias, with any national crisis simply relying upon the unquestioned, at that time, ability of the President to call them into national service if needed.

The lack of a national army soon proved to be a major problem and a small one was formed, but all throughout the 18th and the first half of the 19th Centuries the nation's primary defense was really based on militias, with all males having a militia obligation. The quality of militia units varied very widely, but by and large they rose to the occasion and did well.  Interestingly enough, immediately to our north, Canada, a British Colony, also relied principally on militias for defense and its militias notably bested ours during the War of 1812.

The system began to demonstrate some stresses during the Mexican War during which New England's states refused, in varying degrees, to contribute to the nation's war effort against Mexico.  A person can look at this in varying ways, of course.  While we've taken the position here that the Mexican War was inevitable and inaccurately remembered, the fact that the Federal government had to rely upon state troops did give states an added voice on their whether or not they approved of a war.  The New England states did not.  The Southern states very much did, which gave the Mexican War in its later stages an oddly southern character.

The swan song of the militia system in its original form came with the Civil War.  Huge numbers of state troops were used on both sides, varying from mustered militia units that served for terms, to local units mustered only in time of a local crisis, to state units raised just for the war.  But the war was so big that the Federal Army took on a new larger role it had not had before, and with the increase in Western expansion after the war, it was reluctant to give it up.  Militia's never again became the predominate combat force of the United States.  Indeed, there was long period thereafter where the militia struggled with the Army for its existence, with career Army officers being hugely crabby about it.

That saw state militias become increasingly organized as they fought to retain a military role, and  by the Spanish American War they were well on their way to being the modern National Guard.  The Dick Act thereafter formalized that.  But the Spanish American War, which was also very unpopular in New England, saw some states separate their militias into National Guard and State Guard units, with State Guard units being specifically formed only to be liable for state service.  Ironically, some of the State Guard units that were formed in that period had long histories including proud service in the nation's prior wars.  This split continued on into World War One which saw some states, such as New Jersey, muster its National Guard for Federal induction but its State Guard just for wartime state service.

That pattern became very common during the Great War during which various states formed State Guard units that were only to serve during the war for state purposes.  Naturally, the men who served in them were men who were otherwise ineligible for Federal service for one reason or another, something that has crated a sort of lingering atmosphere over those units.  When the war ended a lot of states that had formed them, dropped them, after the National Guard had been reconstituted.  

This patter repeated itself in World War Two during which, I believe, every state had a State Guard.  After the Second World War very few have retained them, and most of the states that have, have a long history of separated militia units.  Today those units tend to provide service for state emergencies, but they also often serve ceremonial functions.  An exception exists in the form of the Texas State Guard, which was highly active on the border during the Border War period, and which was retained after World War Two even after the Federal Government terminated funding for State Guard units in 1947.  They've continued to be occasionally used in Texas for security roles.

In New Jersey, we'd note, the situation during the Great War was really confusing, as there were militia units organized for the war, as well as separate ones that preexisted it.  A lot of those units would soon disappear as the National Guard came back into being, although New Jersey is one of the few states that has always had a State Guard since first forming one.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Okay, maybe I don't care if football players (who are individual people) take the knee, but keep your Corporation's "opinion" to itself.

Note, this is one of the many draft posts that I started a really long time ago, and then never finished.  I have on the order of 300 posts, most barely started, that fit that description.

Writer's block?  No, just the nature of available time.

Anyhow, this item oddly shows right back up in the news again.



Some time back I posted on football players "taking the knee" during the playing of the National Anthem.  As anyone who read it may have noted, I'm sort of generally lukewarm on any opinion there, unlike a lot of people I see (if Facebook is any guide).  I.e, I didn't have a fit about football players taking the knee and, absent an individual athlete's protest reaching the level of that of the 1968 Mexico City, Olympics, I generally don't get too worked up about that.

At the same time, I also tend to disregard individual opinions of people who have risen to fame through their athleticism or because they're entertainers.  Recently, for example, I read where Beyonce was expressing opinions at a concert of some fashion.  It would be nearly impossible for me to care what Beyonce's opinion on anything at all actually is.  Indeed, I thought her daughter's instruction to "calm down" at a recent awards show was pretty much on the mark.

But opinions, particularly social opinions, by corporations really aggravate me.

Recently this has become particularly common, and while I'll give a few entities a pass, it smacks to me of being blisteringly phony.  If corporations, as a rule, suddenly endorse something that's been recently controversial, the issue has probably actually become safe to express.

What this amounts to, of course, is belated virtue signalling, and it's phony.  Corporations main goal, indeed, their stated and legal goal in almost every instance, is to make money for their shareholders.  That's their purpose and focus, and when corporations suddenly take up a cause, what they are often really doing has nothing to do with values and everything with trying to co-opt a movement for profit or not offend a group that's been lately in the news and has obtained financial power accordingly.

Indeed, it's frankly much more admirable when a corporation has a stated position that it adheres to in spite of financial detriment.  The fact that they know an opinion will be unpopular and they stick with it probably says its a real belief.

Which gets back to the perceived views of people in general.  If you look out at a crowed of people supporting anything, or in modern terms posting their support in some fashion on Facebook or Twitter or the like, probably over half, and I'd guess around 2/3s, have no strong convictions on the topic at all. They may believe they do, but in other circumstances they'd be there supporting the other side equally lukewarmly.

Today is American Independence Day.  The day came in the midst of a truly bloody war.  Around 23,000 Americans lost their lives in the war fighting for the Revolution, including those who died of disease, and a nearly equal number were wounded in an era when being wounded was often very disabling.  The British took about 24,000 casualties of all types, meaning they took fewer than the Americans.

But among the "British" were a sizable number of American colonist who fought for the Crown.  Up to 1/3d of American Colonist remained loyal during the war to the United Kingdom.  Only about 1/3d of the American Colonist supported independence or the revolution at all.  The remaining 1/3d took no position.

Even at that, it's not all that difficult, retrospectively, to find example of combatants who fought on both sides of the war.  Some captured American troops were paroled with the promise to fight for the British, and did.  The times being murky and records difficult to keep, some men just fought on both sides depending upon how the wind seemed to be blowing, a risky course of action, but one that some did indeed take.

Howard Pyle's illustration of Tory Refugees.

After the war those die hard Loyalist who couldn't tolerate living in the United States, including many who were so outed as Loyalist they had little choice on that matter, relocated to Quebec where there descendants are still sometimes self identified by initials that note an honorific conveyed by the Crown.  But 1/3d of the American population didn't pull up stakes and relocate, which tells you a lot.  And what that conveys is that a lot of people who thought that the Colonies were making a mistake just shut up.  Indeed, it proved to be the case during the War of 1812 that British soldiers met with sympathy and assistance in Virginia as they marched on Washington D. C., and that was because many Virginians, in that state which had been a colony, of course, retained a higher loyalty and sympathy with the United Kingdom than they did the United States.

But if you read most common commentary today you'll be left with the impression that the Americans, and by that we mean all of the Americans, were eager to shake off the chains of British tyranny.  And I'd wager that as the war began to turn in Congress' favor that view became common at the time and that it really set in by the time the American victory became inevitable.  So most of the men who spoke quietly in favor of King George III at the Rose and Thorne, or whatever, on Saturday nights in 1774 were praising George Washington by 1781.

This commentary, I'd note, isn't directed specifically at Americans in the 1700s by any means, but is more broader.  There are big exceptions to the rule of the get along nature of human opinion to be sure, for example I think the Civil War may be uniquely an exception to it, but people shouldn't make any mistake about this in general.  During the 1930s a lot of trendy social types teetered on the edge of real Communist sympathy while some conservative figures in the country spoke in admiration of Mussolini's and Hitler's governments in their countries.  By 1941, however, everybody in the country was an outright die hard opponent of fascism and militarism.  By 1950 nobody had ever been a Communist sympathizer, not ever.  

In 1968 and later a lot of young Americans protested vigorously about the American role in Vietnam. Quite a few of them vilified American servicemen.  By mid 1980s the same people were backing the troops and by the 1990s quite a few of them were for other foreign wars.

If this suggests that people's stated opinions are fickle and can't be trusted its meant to.  I was in university during the Reagan Administration and a college student would have had to been cavalier or in very trusted company to express any kind thoughts at all about Ronald Reagan.  One of my most conservative in every fashion friends of long standing would openly declare that Reagan was going to reinstate the draft and send us all to fight in Nicaragua, which was just the sort of nonsensical opinion common at the time.  One young computer employee in the geophysics department was unique not only because he was an early computer genius, employed with their super computer that probably is less powerful than a modern cell phone, but because as a recently discharged Navy submariner he was an adamant and open Anti Communist.  Nobody openly expressed views like that.

Which isn't to say that a lot of people didn't think them.

Which is also not to say that a lot of those same people, in the presence of the granola chick at the bar, didn't express the polar opposite.*

Which gets back to the topic of corporations.

If people's confused and muddled approach to what they declare their views is quite often the rule rather than the exception, this isn't the case with corporations.  More often than not, their goal is the bottom dollar.  They're looking out at the confused and muddled crowed and assuming its focused and distinct, and they then leap on board because they want to sell you pants, shoes, or whatever.  and that's cynical even if its self confused cynical.

Which is all the more reason to ignore, or actually buy from the company that is open about just wanting to sell you goods because that's what they do.

*Which recall Zero Mostel's character's line in The Front as to his reason for becoming a Communist.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Wyoming National Guard and the Punitive Expedition

I'll confess, in making this post, that I have a soft spot for the National Guard.  In no small part that may be because I was in the Army National Guard for six years.  From 1981 to 1987, I was a member of the HHB 3d Bn 49th FA.  It is, in my view, one of the unqualified smart things I did after turning 18 years old, i.e., in my adult life.

 I've repeated this photograph of mustered Wyoming National Guardsmen from Powell several times, but its' the only such photo I have ready access to.  There are other photos of the Wyoming National Guard from this period, but not which I'm certain as to the rights to publish to.  This photo is quite interesting. The Guardsmen are dressed in the what appears to be the current pattern of Army uniform including the newly adopted M1911 campaign hat. They carry M1903 Springfield rifles which were then quite new (and in this case probably almost brand new manufacture).  They carry bed rolls rather than back packs, however, showing the retention of a Frontier Army method of carrying personal equipment.

Having been in a Guard unit, however, does make you cognizant of how unfairly they are sometimes viewed.  My unit, the 3d Bn 49th FA, was rated as combat ready the entire time I was in it and it often had the highest combat rating that the Army recognized, higher than many Regular Army units.  That it was highly rated isn't a surprise when it is considered that everyone who was in the unit wanted to be there. Moreover, in the early to mid 1980s the unit was really still in the wake of the Vietnam War and it was full of Vietnam War combat veterans.  The unit even had some Korean War combat veterans still in it, including a couple who had served with the Guard in the Korean War, and there was one remaining World War Two veteran, although he wasn't a combat vet.  Suffice it to say, the depth of knowledge in the unit was vast.  If we were, on average, older than a comparable Regular Army unit, we were also a lot more experienced as a unit as well.  Not too many Regular Army artillery units had men who wore Combat Infantry Badges nor did very many Regular Army units have NCOs who had been officers in the Marine Corps or Navy.  We did.

So, in that context its  hard not to feel a little insulted by the term "weekend warrior", although admittedly you don't hear that much anymore given that so many Guard units have served overseas in our recent wars.  Even so, its definitely the case that the Guard hasn't received its due over the years, sometimes simply by default, but sometimes because its been unfairly slighted.

Anyhow, given as we've been posting nearly daily here for awhile on the Wyoming National Guard in 1916, it  might be nice to fill that story out a bit.   What was the unit?  What was it like?  What became of it?  It's a story we haven't really told here.  And for that matter, it's a story we haven't told on our companion site on Wyoming history, This Day In Wyoming's History.  We really should.  

Indeed, we thought about posting this as a sidebar there, and we in fact will, but we will post it first here, as this blog is the one that's really been looking into 1916.

But in order to do that we need to go back a bit further, indeed, all the way back.  Prior, that is, to 1776.  If we don't, we can't really understand the story of the National Guard in any context.

For most of this nation's history the bulk of our military manpower hasn't been in the Regular Army, it's been in the militia.  And that was both by accident and design.  Few now realize it, but every American had a militia obligation prior to the 20th Century, an obligation that has been transferred over to the Federal government by statute but which many state's still retain as an uncalled upon obligation as well.  Prior to at least the Civil War, however, the obligation was very real indeed.

In the Colonial era all men of military age, which was generally men over 16 up until age 60, were members of the militia.  The militia mustered at least once a year to drill; not much training, but it was an era when not much training time was available and such training as there was often took little time.  Failure to make muster was a crime, but then generally most people somewhat looked forward to the muster as it was the occasion for a community party as a rule.  Colonial militias, early on, did a lot of fighting however, almost all of it in brutal Indian wars the nation has more or less forgotten.  Some spectacularly violent Colonial wars, such as King Philips War, were entirely fought, on the colonist side, by militias.

When the Revolution broke out it was militia that really filled the ranks of the American forces, keeping in mind that state units were little removed from militia even if purpose raised for the conflict.  This would be the pattern all the way through the Civil War.  A Continental, i.e., regular, Army was raised, but it was state units that formed the ranks everywhere.  Units raised by the individual thirteen colonies and dedicated to the conflict alongside the national army, and local militias called out for individual fights.  Indeed, the term "Continental Army" doesn't even make sense until a person stops to consider that it was drawn from, and fought for, the entire continent (ignoring the fact that the Spanish on the continent and the French, and well even 1/3d of the English colonist in the thirteen colonies didn't agree with that suggestion).  This army defeated the British army on the continent although its worth noting that the British also used a militia system, although they did not attempt to deploy mustered English militiamen beyond their shores, at least not until World War One.  They did deploy colonial militia, however, during the Revolution themselves, something that's often somewhat forgotten, and some Minute Men mustered for the Crown, not the Congress.

 American troops evacuating New York, 1783.

Following the Revolution, Congress sought to  avoid having a large Regular Army, so it didn't.  The founding fathers were well aware that standing armies were a threat to a democratic government, and indeed to any government. They all knew the example of the Praetorian Guards in Rome well.  And if, in hindsight, that example seems remote, France reminded us of how current it remained when the French Army deposed the Republic and ultimately put a new Emperor, Napoleon, on the thrown of allegedly Republican France.   The US didn't want a big standing Army.  It needed a standing Navy, but navies, being deployed or deployable at sea, rarely pose a threat to their government.  So a small army it would be.  The land forces of the United States would be principally vested in the state militias with it being acknowledged that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  In the event of war Congress would rely mostly on state troops, was the thinking, and state part time troops wouldn't pose a threat to the republic and might even form its guardian in the event of undemocratic impulses somewhere.

Only in really big wars was it necessary to go much beyond that.  It proved necessary to do so during the War of 1812, although the Federalized militias formed the bulk of the US forces then. Ironically, in Canada, it would be mustered Canadian militias that would toss the  American forces back out, proving that a force nearly entirely made up of militias, the Canadian one, was adequate to defeat a force made up mostly of militias, the American one.  The Mexican War also saw the mustering of state troops, some raised just for the war, the latter of which were nearly a species of militia.  

This latter example was the rule for the Civil War in which both sides fought with regular armies, but which also saw both sides commit the bulk of their forces in the form of state forces.  That's forgotten by some but the Union and Confederate armies were not simply national armies by quite some measure.  The Confederate regular army was actually quite small.  The Union one was bigger, but the bulk of the Union forces were state troops raised for the conflict, a type of mustered militia.  Pre war militias also fought as Federalized units during the war, and quite often non Federalized militias, in both the North and the South, were mustered when the war came to their areas. The Battle of Gettysburg, for example, provides a classic.  The Union forces included units that were Regular Army units as well as many state units, but even the militia from Gettysburg itself fought on the first day (successfully, it might be noted).

New York militia in camp, Harper's Ferry.

The Civil War was the high water mark of the old militia system. By that time war was becoming increasingly more complicated and hence required increasingly more formal training.  Pre Civil War militia varied enormously in every measurable respect, although Congress had sought to provide some uniformity, and some equipment, right from the onset. After the war the United States government sought to impose more uniformity on state militias so that they would match more closely the United States Army.  Generally, state militias were happy to cooperate and conform to Federal requirements wherever they could, with Federal assistance.  In some rare instances, however, state units would actually exceed the Army in some respect, such as the New York National Guard, which was equipped with better arms than the U.S. Army was in the late 19th Century.

 Rhode Island Zouave, Civil War.  Popular with some New England states (and there being at least even one Confederate such unit) these units were regarded as elite and patterned their dress after French North African troops.  In Union service they tended to be issued the M1863 .58 variant of what had been the M1841 .54 rifle which ad the advantage, if it was one, of taking a huge sword bayonet.

By the Spanish American War most states had a National Guard that was equipped with Federal equipment, although it was often the case that the Guard's equipment was older than the Army's.  Federalized National Guard units in the Spanish American War, for example, often had old Army uniforms rather than the current ones.  Nonetheless they were brought up to Army standards for the war and the following Philippine Insurrection.

 8th Illinois, 1899.  This was a black Illinois militia unit.  The uniforms are correct for the period but are a pattern that was being phased out of the Army at that time and wouldn't be around much longer.

The Spanish American War and the Philippine Insurrection were the last instances in which states raised forces specifically for the war, although this was done within the context of mustering the National Guard.  Wyoming, for example, sent over 1400 men to those wars which was far more than served in its very small pre war National Guard.  Indeed, while Wyoming had a National Guard dating back to territorial days, it had been minuscule and the ranks of its state units, raised just for the war, swelled during the Philippine Insurrection.

 By the Spanish American War and Philippine Insurrection war photography had begun to take on a more modern appearance.    California and Idaho troops in churchyard at San Pedro Macati, Philippines.

During the Philippine Insurrection Wyoming contributed the 1st Wyoming Infantry Battalion and the Wyoming Light Battery to the war, units that were formed principally from mustered Wyoming National Guard units.  This is complicated, however, by the fact that the Army was authorized (or more properly instructed) to raise volunteer cavalry units and these units were in fact organized on a regional basis.  In Wyoming's case Wyoming volunteers to these units went to the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry and the 36th United States Volunteer Infantry.  While units within the Army's establishments, these were not really Regular Army units in practice, existed only during the conflicts and were really basically an extension, or perhaps more accurately an evolution, of the Civil War state forces system.  The Wyoming Army National Guard today still uses a unit patch for some units of a cavalryman of the 2nd United States Volunteer Cavalry, showing how close the connection was.

 

After the Civil War a struggle broke out between backers of the National Guard and the Army over incorporating the Guard officially into the Army as its reserve.  While this is fairly clearly an aspect of what the Guard was, up until that time that last formal link had not been established and some in the Army establishment resisted it even giving thought to forming a separate Army reserve.  The reasons that can be debated but there were individuals who were quite partisan on either side of the debate  They failed in their effort, however, and the Dick Act, named after a Congressman who supported it and who served in the National Guard, became law in 1903 and the Guard was officially made the reserve of the Army, bringing the ties even closer.  By 1908 Congress authorized deploying the Guard outside of the United States although Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General would opine that to be illegal, which resulted in a Congressional act providing for simply conscripting  Guardsmen into the Army should that be necessary.

This is the Guard that existed in 1916 when Columbus New Mexico was attacked in Villa's raid.  It was officially a reserve of the Army, but its quality varied by state.  In some rare instances small units were still very much the province of a local community or even individual, who contributed funding to the unit and who sometimes even purchased non standard arms.  Some units were social units, made up of social elites, who actually spent more money being National  Guardsmen than they received back in the form of drill pay.  Others were made up of rough and tumble locals who needed the drill pay, in an era when drills tended to be weekly, on a week night.  Pay was provided, as noted, but retirement, which is now a feature of long Guard service, was not.

The Wyoming National Guard (there was no "Army" National Guard at the time, Army units were National Guard, states with Naval units had them Naval Militia) between the Spanish American War and World War One were infantry.  This often surprises people but there are real reasons for it.  People want to believe that a state like Wyoming must have had cavalry but even by the Spanish American War that was not true.

Early on, even before statehood, Wyoming had militia units that were in fact cavalry, but that was in the context of contemplating deploying them against highly mobile Indians. After statehood the expense, probably, and difficulty, of keeping mounts for cavalry would likely have made that impractical.  Infantry was much easier to keep.  Indeed, while I do not know a great deal about the early cavalry units chances are very high that the horses used by those units belonged to the individual troopers and not to the state.

The forces committed by the state to the border in the Punitive Expedition were to be eight companies of infantry. Wyoming had nine on paper.  One was to be kept home, something fairly typical for big deployments.  But that didn't mean that nine full strength companies actually existed.  They did not.  So, after the Guard was called up the state spent weeks recruiting to bring the unit up to full strength.  We've read about that in the newspaper articles that have been posted on this site.

The mustered  Guard assembled at Cheyenne but it wasn't allowed by the  Army to to use Ft. D. A. Russell as a training ground, a raw deal really that was fairly inexcusable as the post's training range was enormous.  Instead, the state formed Camp Kendrick which is where Cheyenne's Frontier Park is today.  The Guard trained there all summer long. By late summer there were constant rumors about immediate deployments, and as we have seen, when the official orders came it was at first thought the unit would be deployed to San Antonio, but it was instead sent to Deming New Mexico.


At Camp Cody outside of Deming it trained further and took up the role of patrolling and garrisoning as infantry.  By the time the Wyoming Guard was deployed other Guard units had been on duty on the border for quite some time and were rotating back home.  Principally the unit trained, however, until the Regular Army returned from Mexico and the Guard was released on January 17, 1917, to return home.  In a real sense its mere presence was its mission as it served as a ready force, along with many other units, if Villa became fully resurgent or if war broke out with Mexico.

Their return in January 1917 would be brief.  The United States would enter World War One in April of that year and the recently mustered out National Guard would be called back into service.  In 1917, prior to the call up, the strength of the active Army was 200,000 men, 80,000 of which were still serving  Guardsmen. During the Great War 40% of the combat soldiers in the U.S. Army were Guardsmen who were formed into nineteen divisions.  While the U.S. Army balked at relying heavily on the Guard at the start of the formation of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1917 the truth of the matter is that the Army would have been incapable of deploying when it did but for the Guard.  This didn't keep the Army from looking down on Guardsmen, particularly on National Guard officers, but during the war the Guard proved its mettle and served very ably.

The Punitive Expedition service, therefore had served as a nearly year long training period for the Guard that would serve it well.  In Wyoming's case that service would not be as infantry, however, and the Guard would experience a phenomenon that's not atypical for Guard units of being re-formed into some other type of unit at the start of war.  The Wyoming National Guard was converted into heavy artillery, predicting a role that it would resume after World War Two.  That conversion is a bit surprising, really as conversion into artillery during the Great War was common for cavalry, but not really infantry.  However, the Wyoming National  Guard was not a large unit and the Army created for World War One was an enormous Army, so the conversion of a unit about 600 men in strength into artillery made some sense. The bucking horse symbol came into military use at that time, as the Wyoming National Guard painted that symbol on its artillery pieces, something that they would do again during the Korean War.


Bad photograph of World War One era Wyoming National Guard symbols on monument in Cody Wyoming.

After being re-formed following World War One; the Wyoming  Guard would in fact become cavalry during the the 1920s, and remain so until converted into Horse-Mechanized Cavalry just before World War Two, and then armored cavalry during the war, and finally to artillery after World War Two.  Various designations have come and gone, but its been the Wyoming Guard all along.  Just recently, infantry returned to the Wyoming Army National Guard in the form of a small infantry unit; the first one the state has had since the 1920s.

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Further reading and partial sources:

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Persistent Myths III: Pacifist Canada, Cowardly French, Invincible United States

The Canadians have never fought a war.

 World War One Canadian Army recruiting poster. The thought that an Allied loss would cause Canada to disappear from the earth seems dubious, but lots of Canadians signed up.

Here's a really weird, but very common, one.  There's a sense in the United States that Canada has never been in a war.  A few years back a junior high middle school teacher actually lectured a class my son was in to that effect.

Well, guess again.  Canada fought in the War of 1812, and in its view, probably correctly, it beat the stuffing out of the US in it.  Canadian militia pretty much wiped up on American troops in the War of 1812, to be followed by the British landing in the US itself and beating the tar out of us, which relates to another myth below.

Canada also fought some Indian campaigns, just not as many as we did. And it also occasionally had to repel Irish rebels who somehow thought that launching an invasion from the US into Canada would achieve something.

And Canada fought in the Boer War. And Canadians bled in vast numbers in World War One and World War Two. And Canada fought in the Korean War as well.

What Canada did not do is fight in the Vietnam War.  Because the Canadian government at the time was sympathetic, for some reason, with American draft evaders in that period the myth seems to have been created that Canada is a pacifist nation.  It isn't.  Indeed, Canada has been fighting with us in Afghanistan.

"Surrender" is a French word.

 This intrepid French aviator is not amused that people accuse France of surrendering easily.

This rumor is even nastier than the idea that Canada is a pacifist nation.  It's common in the US to accuse the French of being cowardly.

This rumor seems to have come out of the French defeat at the start of World War Two, but it oddly hasn't attached to any of the other nations that Germany ran over at the start of the war.  And it shouldn't even apply to France.  The French were defeated on the battlefield in 1940 and the government did surrender, but it was being overrun and simply being realistic. Even at that, however, French troops kept fighting where engaged in order to allow the British to evacuate the continent, a valiant act.  A sizable number of French troops never surrendered and effectively disobeyed a legitimate order of their country to keep on fighting.  When the opportunity came in 1943, the French armed forces were pretty quick to get back into the war against the Germans even though it was technically an act of rebellion.

At any rate, accusing the French of cowardice ignores the fact that the French nation bled itself white in the Napoleonic Wars.  I don't admire Napoleon, but like him or hate him, the French troops of that period, which made up in some ways one of the first modern armies, sure weren't cowards.  They died in such numbers that nearly the entire army died in Napoleon's service.

And the French fought hard, if to defeat, in the Franco-Prussian War.  They fought extremely hard in World War One. After World War Two they put up a real fight in Indo China and Algeria, and they've fought with us in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. They fought with the British and Israelis in the Suez incident.  And they've been involved in third world fights, mostly in their former colonies, to an extent we can hardly appreciate. The French have conducted over 200 combat air jumps since World War Two. We've conducted less than twenty.

The United States has never lost a war.

 American naval heroes of the war of 1812. The naval war was about the only thing that went well for us, at least at first, although a war in the Atlantic was highly irritating to New England's merchants who thought about succeeding form the nation and who didn't support the war.  On the ground, we were pretty much a universal flop.

This may be a matter of perception, but  I'll occasionally hear that the Untied States has never lost a war.

Arguably, we lost the War of 1812.  We may pretend otherwise, but basically the Canadian militia wiped up with us in Canada, and the British pasted us everywhere else.  The war basically ended when the British defeated the French in Europe, and then dictated to us what the peace would be. We were allowed to enter into the peace or suffer the consequences. We did.

The US also lost Red Cloud's War. This may be a minor matter in the overall scheme of things, but still, we lost. Red Cloud's Sioux won.

We also lost the Vietnam War and there's no reason to pretend otherwise.  This isn't a simple story, in my view, and it is true that militarily we won. We were not defeated on the battlefield, but the American populace grew tired of the war and in 1975 when the North invaded for the second time in the 1970s, we threw the South under the bus.

If viewed as a campaign in the Cold War, however, which is how I feel the war is more properly viewed (and I'll blog on that in future) the result is a bit different.

Related Threads:

Persistent Myths

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