Some Mothers Day then and now statistics and figures.

The current median age for giving birth in the United States is age 30.  

Yes, you've seen these couples here before.

For women born in the 1910 to 1935 time frame, having a first birth over age 30 was fairly rare, with less than 10% of women falling into that category.  This was up to 20% by the 1960s. 

Women born in 1935 had the lowest average age of first birth for the 20th Century, with the same being 20.8 years of age. This supports, FWIW, what we earlier noted about average marriage ages, which dropped in the 1950s, before climbing back up to the usual historic norms, contrary to the assumption that marriage ages were historically low, which is incorrect.

The average first age for women born in 1910 was 21.1.  The average for women born in 1960 was 22.7. 

As of 2018, in the US, it was 26.9 years of age.  How this correlates to the "women born" statistic we're otherwise using is a little dicey, even though it would appear to be a simple application of math, but it would be basically women born in the 2000s.

That is, in other words, way up.

In Europe, currently, first time mothers are on average 27 to 29 years of age, up from 23 to 25 years of age in the 1970s.  In Spain, the median age is over 30 for first births.

Women born in 1935 had on average three births, the highest of the following three generational cohorts. 

Births per woman Year cohort completed fertility 

1910 cohort: 2.4 

1935 cohort: 3.0 

1960 cohort: 2.0

This is, I'd note, considerably lower than is often presumed.  Having said that, family sizes were larger in prior years.

During the 1920s in the United States, the average age at which a woman would have her last child was 42.

In France, as sort of a random statistic, the current abortion rate mirrors the children lost in childbirth rate of approximately a century ago.  I don't know what a person makes of that, if anything, but as this is a statistical thread, there's that stat.

In the US, along a similar line, at least as of about a decade ago, the number of "single mothers" due to a father not having a role, for one reason or another, actually equated with the same figure in the late 19th Century due to male accidental deaths.

My own mother was 37 when she had me, an age that seems pretty old in context.  She's just turned that age, actually.

She was one of seven children.

When she and my father married, in 1958, she was 32, above the median age that women tended to marry at the time.  Her mother and my grandfather on her side were also above the median age when they married, actually.  Her mother's first name was Leocadia, a name that hasn't repeated in the family since then.  People tend to call her "Leo", which we of course tend to think of as a male name.  Oddly my father's mother, whose first name was Katheryn (a name which has repeated quite a bit in the family), was usually called "Bob".  My father, in contrast to my mother, was one of four children, a more typical family size for people born in the 1920s.

Thursday, March 16, 1922. Trendsetters.

Walcott Rouse, March 16, 1922

 

On the same day that young Mr. Rouse was roller-skating with his dog in Washington, D.C., Ahmed Fuad Pasha was proclaimed King Fuad I of Egypt, making him one of only two kings in the country's mondern history.

He is mostly remembered for his son, who had a flamboyant if rocky and odd history.  Faud himself had an unhappy relationship with Farouk's mother, and indeed with both of his queens.  His first wife, Shivakiar Khanum Effendi, was his first cousin once removed.  They divorced in 1898, but Faud was shot in the throat by her brother during a dispute with her.  He survived that.  In 1919 he married Nazli Sabri, who was the maternal great-granddaughter of Suleiman Pasha, a French Napoleonic officer who converted to Islam.  She outlived Fuad but immigrated to the United States, reversing her great-grandfather's act, and converting to Catholicism.   She possessed the largest jewelry collection in the world.  Her youngest daughter Fathia also converted to Catholicism.

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was released from Sing Sing and would go on in his criminal career, fairly shortly becoming the head of what was called "Murder Inc".  The latter was an organization in which the Mafia could arrange for contract killings through non Mafia members, thereby insulating them from implication in them.  Buchalter was executed for his crimes in 1944.

Friday, January 9, 1942. Umm. . .about that salute. . . . Appropriated and Inappropriate Symbols.

On this day in 1942 West Virginia mandated a salute to the flag as a regular part of school activities.

German children?  Nope, US children in May 1942 giving the flag the "Bellamy Salute" that was advocated by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy.  At the time, the association with Fascism and Nazism had not yet fully sunk in.

The measure was struck down by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional the following year.

Until that summer, the salute would have been in the form advocated by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy, who was also the author of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Bellamy had died a decade prior, but the pledge and the salute were gaining popularity since the onset of the war.  Concern over its Nazi like appearance caused adoption of the palm over the heart form of the salute now used by civilians in this gesture, a measure urged by the Veteran's of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.

Saluting by civilians is, frankly, in my view an odd deal.  Simply standing and taking off your hat makes more sense to me. But like a lot of things, things, this has really spread, and morphed, in our society.

Bellamy began advocating for it as early as 1892, when he wrote:

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute – right hand lifted, palm downward, to align with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all." At the words, "to my Flag," the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. 

The Youth's Companion, 65 (1892): 446.

Bellamy of course meant no fascist connotations by it, and fascism wasn't even a thing at the time.  It spread slowly but picked up speed as a school thing following World War One.

In the same period of time, however, fascism and Nazism adopted the same salute.  Distinctions are sometimes made between it and the Bellamy salute, but in reality the only difference is that the fascist weren't attempting to copy Bellamy.  At any rate, it spread like wildfire in the 20s and 30s amongst fascistic movements, making a change in the US necessary.

This wasn't the only thing to suffer such a fate.  As noted on our companion blog, Painted Bricks:

One you definately do not see anymore, brickwork, Thermopolis Wyoming

Here's one that you would not see done again, and you might also expect to have been changed since 1945. Swastika motif in brickwork.

This is not as sinister as it might seem. Swastikas showed up as ornamental designs in quite a few things prior to World War Two, and they bore no association at all with the Nazi Party. In the west, they were associated with Indians, and were regarded as an Indian good luck symbol. Chances are that the architect of this Thermopolis, Wyoming building had that in mind, as Thermopolis is not far from the Wind River Reservation.

Indeed, at the time we're speaking of, the 45th Infantry Division, a unit made up of National Guardsmen heavily featuring Native American Oklahoman's, was only two years out from the redesign of its unit patch adopted during World War One, which looked like this:

And it gets even odder yet.  Lord Baden Powell waxed about it in What Scouts  Can Do--More Yarns, in 1921, in which he stated.

On the stole of an ancient bishop of Winchester, Edyndon, who died in 1366, is the Swastika or Scouts' Thanks Badge. It was at that time called the " Fylfot," and was said to represent Obedience or Submission, the different arms of the cross being in reality legs in the attitude of kneeling.

But as you know from the account of the Swastika Thanks Badge which I have given you in Scouting for Boys, this symbol was used in almost every part of the world in ancient days, and therefore has various meanings given to it.

It has been found engraved on weapons belonging to the Norsemen. It was also engraved on the spindles used by the ancient Greeks in their- weaving at Troy.

In India rice is spread on the ground in the form of the Swastika at the baptism of a baby boy to bring him luck.

The Indians in North America use it as an ornament, and it has been found engraved on ancient pottery in Peru.

How it got from one country to another, separated as they are by oceans, it is difficult to guess, but some people who say they know all about these things, affirm that there was once a great continent where now there is the Atlantic Ocean, but it went under the sea in an earthquake.

This continent was called Atlantis, and joined up Europe with America.

It was supposed to have four vast rivers running from a central mountain in different directions—North, East, South, and West—and the Swastika is merely a map of Atlantis showing those four rivers rising from the same center.

The Thanks Badge

I want specially to remind Scouts to keep their eyes open and never fail to spot anyone wearing this badge. It is their duty then to go up to such person, make the Scout sign, and ask if they can be of any service to the wearer.Anyway, whatever its origin was the Swastika now stands for the Badge of Fellowship among Scouts all over the world, and when anyone has done a kindness to a Scout it is their privilege to present him—or her—with this token of their gratitude, which makes him a sort of member of the Brotherhood, and entitles him to the help of any other Scout at any time and at any place.

I have heard of several instances where Scouts have done this, and it has greatly increased the value of the Thanks Badge to the persons who were wearing it when they found that Scouts recognized it and were anxious to do a Good Turn to them.

All that is more than a little cringe worthy now, but prior to the rise of the Nazis, the symbol had a wide range of meanings and in fact was quite common in the US, derived from Native American usage.  Of course, that can take you into the conversation about European Americans appropriating Native American symbols and identities, but that's another topic (albeit one we've discussed before).

By 1939, when the 49th Infantry Division went to its new symbol. . .

it was already the case that the Nazis had claimed this one forever, although perhaps a final non fasicst use carried on, for quite awhile, by the Finns.

Finnish Me109s during the Continuation War.  Some below the radar use of the swastika goes on in Finland today, due to its wartime use, even though a turn away from it started in 1945 when the Finns ended up reluctantly declaring war on the Germans.

In Slovenia, partisans engaged the Germans in what would become the Battle of  Dražgoše.

Admiral Yamamoto made a statement to Taketora Ogata in which he stated:

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

This is likely the origin of the claim that on December 7, he stated that he feared that all the attack had done was to "awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve".

Joe Louis regained the heavyweight boxing title by knocking out Buddy Baer in round one of a match at Madison Square Garden.

Back to saluting, I'm very glad, as I'm sure everyone is, that the Bellamy salute was dropped and I'm okay with the hand on the heart salute, although personally I think simply standing and uncovering the head would be enough, but since the First Gulf War, and dating back to the Reagan Administration really, saluting in the military style by civilians has really spread and I really don't like it.

This really started with President Reagan giving a snappy salute to the Marine Corps guards and other servicemen he routinely encountered. At the time, that was technically illegal, although probably unenforceable, as it was reserved for servicemen.  Reagan had served as a reserve cavalry officer before the war and during the war in the entertainment branch of the U.S. Army, which I do not wish to discount, but he was a civilian and should not have done that. Since then, however, every President has, encouraging the creeping militarization of our society.

At some point in the 90s or 00s, the law in this was officially changed to allow veterans to use the salute, and some really do.  I could, as I’m a veteran.  I don't, as I'm a civilian.  There's no need for it.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Weighing the costs and benefits from a Red Chinese prospective. Part II

Flag of the Republic of Formosa, which existed for only a few months in 1895. By Jeff Dahl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3550776

But why, you may ask, would the Chinese risk such a move?

The answer to that would have to be found in the answer to the question, why do nations start wars?  And the answer to that is much more difficult to answer than we might suppose.

First, let's look at the risk v. the benefits to the People's Republic of China invading Taiwan.

The most obvious part of the answer to that question would be the one a wag would give. Red China would get Taiwan. But Taiwan in and of itself is obviously not the goal.

Nations do invade other nations simply for territorial gain, although that has become increasingly uncommon since World War Two.  Indeed, now it's very rare, and frankly it's been fairly rare since 1945.  When nations invade another country, if we assume that the Chinese view Taiwan as another country (and they don't, really) there's always more to it.  Indeed, the Second World War saw most of the real outright land grabs by aggressor states.  The last one I can really think of since World War Two was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which had that feature.

Given that, for the most part when nations, post 1945, invade another, they have some claim of some sort to the territory they're seeking to incorporate.  Indeed, this was the case prior to 1945 as well, and a few of the minor aggressor states in the Second World War entered the war on the Axis side with this goal themselves.  Romanian sought, for example, to incorporate Moldova, which it borders and which is ethnically Romanian.  They went further than that, charged up with aggressor greed, but that was their primary goal.  Finland, which went into the "Continuation War" without greed, provides another example, and they actually stopped once they had reoccupied what they'd lost the prior year, not even going further and taking all the ethnically Finnish lands that they could have.  

That provides clue here really.  What the Chinese would really get is the Chinese population of Taiwan combined with the island and its strategic value, and the Republic of China's industrial base.

Okay, what of those.

Well, that may all be fairly illusory.

We'll start with the islands strategic position.  It's real. . . but not as real as it once was.

Taiwan, or Formosa if you prefer, is a major Western Pacific island and all the really big Western Pacific Islands have traditionally been island bastions.  Japan was an island bastion nation in and of itself, and it really still is.  The Philippines were an American bastion, although one that fell fairly rapid.  Taiwan was a  Chinese bastion, then a Japanese bastion, then a Nationalist Chinese bastion.

Or was it.

We noted the other day that Japan secured Taiwan as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. At that time, Taiwan really made sense as a Japanese possession, even if that result was not just.  It provided a large island landmass off of China which gave it a base to protect its interests in China, or to mess with China if it wanted to, and it wanted to.

But, by 1941, its utility had diminished.  The United STates considered invading Taiwan rather than the Philippines in its advance toward the Japanese home islands, but it didn't.  That's partially due to political considerations, but it was partially as we didn't need to. That didn't mean, however, that the Japanese needed to quit defending it. They had to garrison it right until the end of the war.

And the Philippines themselves were abandoned by the US after the Vietnam War.  We just didn't need a base there anymore.  An American military commitment to the Philippines quietly remains, but it serves in a nearly clandestine way in an ongoing war against radical Muslim elements in the country.

The modern aircraft carrier, from the American point of view, made the Philippines unnecessary to us.

China doesn't have modern carriers. . . like ours. . .yet, but it's working on them.  But the real strategic value of the islands to China is that they're in the way.  If China was to get into a war with the United States, Formosa would be an American base against it, or at least we can presume so.  And it would be difficult for Chinese forces in the region to avoid it.  So, oddly enough, it might have what essentially amounts to a negative strategic value to China.  I.e., if they're thinking they're likely to fight the US, they need to grab it.

But that probably doesn't provide the motivation for grabbing the island, as China likely knows that the only way it gets into a war with the US is by providing one itself, such as by attacking Taiwan.

So what about Taiwan's industrial base?

Well, Taiwan does have an advanced economy.  It's more advanced than Red China's in fact.  That might be tempting, but in reality it surely isn't a consideration.  China's vastness and large-scale command economy enterprises really don't need Taiwan's more advanced corporate free market industries, and indeed, there'd be no guaranty that a war to seize Taiwan, or the Taiwanese themselves, might not wreck them.  And frankly, taking in millions of Chinese who have worked in a Western economy into a Communist command economy would be unlikely to go really smoothly.  That actually provides us with a clue as to why the Chinese might invade, actually, which we'll get to in a moment.

China would get the Taiwanese Chinese, many of whom had ancestors who left mainland China in 1948, together with those Chinese who left in 1948, or since. That's what they want, combined with lands that have been historically governed by China.

That may seem odd.  China doesn't have a deficit of people. But ethnic reunification has been a driving factor of wars over history and it's been particularly strong since 1918.  A lengthy post World War One period saw multiple border wars and invasions that were over nothing other than ethnicity.  Nations that had been imperial possessions fought to be independent single ethnicity nation states.  Nations with messy ethnic boundaries slugged it out in the 1920s over who got to rule those areas.  The first moves of Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939 were excused by the Germans on this basis, although outright colonial and genocidal invasions followed, which were on a completely different basis.  

Since World War Two China has grabbed territory that what not Chinese, ethnically.  But here, its primary motivations are to accomplish that goal, reunification, and to assuage Chinese pride.  Taiwan is Chinese, in the PRC's mind, and they have a right to it.  That's the justification.

But is a justification upon which they're likely to act?

It certainly wouldn't be cost free.

Besides being involved in a war with the Republic of China, invading Taiwan obviously will provoke some sort of international reaction, and China knows that.

In recent years China has abandoned the Stalinist command economy model that it had for decades following 1948, complete with murder on a mass scale, and gone towards more of a command economy NEP model  It may have done that in part as it was a witness to the Stalinist model crashing in the late 1980s when the USSR found that it had run its course, and it was too late to adapt.  Chances are high that the NEP model will do the same, but the NEP model of Communism, being gentler and allowing for more liberty, if still falling far short of the Capitalist model, will forestall that for a while and probably has convinced the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party that they have a chance of avoiding its fall altogether.

If China invades Taiwan, however, they'll face an economic disruption at a bare minimum.

However, based on their observations of the West and how little it really does in this area, they may simply not really believe it.  Russia has managed to survive sanctions, for example. And the Chinese know that they're such a big part of the world's economy that they may feel that, for the most part, sanctions will simply be lip service.

And frankly, they'd have reason to believe that.

If they were wrong, however, it would be economically devastating.  And economics being what they are, China might not recover for decades, if ever.  Manufacturing might simply shift to the south and leave China with a massively failing market.  If so, it'd revert to Stalinism by default, if it could.

And it might not be cost free militarily.  

China certainly is building up its military, to be sure, but any invasion of the island would be bloody.  It might be really bloody if the United States intervened on Taiwan's behalf, which it very well would likely do.  Indeed, even with a limited strategic goal, it might be a rampaging naval failure which would send thousands of Chinese soldiers and sailors to a watery grave, and leave many more stranded on Taiwan in one way or another while the Republic of China cut them apart.  And a military failure on China's part would have long reaching implications of all sorts, including diplomatic, military and economic.

And even if it was successful, the primary achievement would be to take in 24,000,000 Chinese who have grown up and participated in a free market democratic state and who would be massively disgruntled in a Red Chinese one.  The Red Chinese have't seen the Chinese of Hong Kong, 7,000,000 in number, go quietly into the night even though there's nearly nothing they can do about the government in Beijing.

All that would be problematic enough, but there's already discontent in China itself.  The events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square showed that the young Chinese middle class isn't thrilled with their country's autocratic Communist government, and it also showed that elements of sympathy with students had crept into the Chinese Army.  Indeed, as the Chinese Army's makeup is regional in character, the Chinese had to bring in army units from outside the region to suppress the demonstrations. This ended up creating a sort of odd resistance movement in the form of the Fulun Gong, which is ongoing and which operates now partially out of the US, publishing the right wing propaganda newspaper for an American audience, The Epic Times (which absurdly claims that everything was nifty prior to 1948).

So the net result would be, best case scenario, to take in 25,000,000 new people who would be opposed to your reign in every fashion in exchange for an island that you only really need if you intend to be aggressive somewhere else, in a pre aircraft carrier naval fashion.  The worst result would be a bloody defeat that leaves the nation embarrassed and an international pariah.

So why do it?

Well, for a reason that has nothing to do with much of the above.

Lots of wars were fought after World War One solely on the question of whose nation a scrap of territory would be in.  The Poles fought to unite to newly established Poland territories that were Polish, or which had been at one time.  The Turks briefly tried to expand the border of Turkey into ancestral Turkish homelands.  Many other examples exist.  All of these are the flipside of national independence movements.  We're used to the concept of, for example, the Irish wanting to be free of the United Kingdom, but we don't often stop to think that this impulse isn't also what drives desires to do something like unite Ulster to the Irish state, even though it has a large non Irish population.  It's comparable to the Polish independence movements that existed during World War One which spilled out into wars and proxy wars after independence to secure territory that was Polish or had been.  Nations risk all to engage in that impulse.

And the Chinese government in Beijing is proud, wounded, and arrogant.

It's pride and history leave it convinced that it must take back all that was once Chinese, and that may be enough to cause it to act.

And its arrogance may be sufficient to override any concerns that the West would act. Recent history suggest that belief would not be irrational, although history also suggests that at some point, the reaction sets in.  Nobody helped the Czechs keep the Sudetenland in 1938. . . but when it came to Poland. . .

And history suggest that this impulse has a time element to it as well, which may motivate the Chinese to act.  People retain long memories, stretching back centuries, of their ethnicity. . . until suddenly they don't.

Lots of example of this abound.  All the Scandinavian people were at one time one people, but by the Renaissance they were no longer thinking of themselves that way and fought wars against each other in order to be ruled by one another.  At some point the Norwegians and Swedes simply weren't one people, even though they retain a mutually intelligible language now.  The Estonians and Finns were once one people as well, and then weren't. The connection is sufficiently close that Finnish volunteers came to fight for Estonia in its war of independence against Soviet Russia, but they didn't become one state.  The Scots were Irish early in their history, but don't conceive of themselves in that fashion at all now.  The Dutch were a Germanic people from the "far lands", but they've long had their own identity and don't think of themselves as German.  The Portuguese were Spanish at one time, but don't want to be part of Spain, and the Catalonians are Spanish, but don't want to think of themselves that way.

Going into perhaps more analogous examples, when Germany reunited following the collapse of the Communism in the West, the process was not only rocky, but some East Germans have never really accommodated themselves to it and some West Germans continue to look down on them.  Ethnic Germans from elsewhere, still eligible to enter the country under its law of return, have been completely foreign to Germans from Germany who have been shocked by them.

And up close and personal, young South Koreans are very quickly reaching the point that they don't want to reunite with the North, long a dream of the government in Seoul, as North Koreans now are more or less an alien Korean-speaking people.

At some point the Chinese in Beijing may start worrying about that.  It's already the case that the government in Taipei no longer claim the right to rule on the mainland.  Have they started thinking of themselves as a Chinese other? After all, there's more than one Chinese culture. . .why not add one more. . . one with its own state?

Keeping that from happening may be a Communist Chinese priority, and not for economic or even territorial reasons.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Part I.

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.: 

Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Sgt. Toy receiving the Medal of Honor in 1891.  Sgt. Toy was cited for "bravery while shooting Indians" at Wounded Knee.  He is known to have shot two during the engagement, which is about all that his citations and the supporting material relates.

 Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Revoked.

While this isn't a Wyoming item per se, the Battle of Wounded Knee has been noted here before, as its a regional one.

It would likely surprise most readers here that twenty Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the actions at Wounded Knee.  The odd thing is that I was under the impression that the Army had rescinded these medals long ago, and I'm not completely certain that they haven't.  Having said that, I can't find that they were, so my presumption must have been in error.

To put this in context, the medals that were rescinded, if any were, weren't rescinded because Wounded Knee was a massacre.  They were rescinded because they didn't meet the post April 1917 criteria for receiving the award.

The Medal of Honor was first authorized in 1861 by the Navy, not the Army, following the retirement of Gen. Winfield Scott, who was adamantly opposed to the awarding of medals to servicemen, which he regarded as a European practice, not an American one.  The award was authorized by Congress that year, at the Navy's request.  The Army followed in 1862 in the same fashion.  The medals actually vary by appearance, to this day, depending upon which service issues them, and they've varied somewhat in design over time.

During the Civil War the award was generally issued for extraordinary heroism, but not necessarily of the same degree for which it is today.  Because of this, a fairly large number of Medals of Honor were conferred after the Civil War to servicemen who retroactively sought them, so awards continued for Civil War service for decades following the war.  New awards were also issued, of course, for acts of heroism in the remaining decades of the 19th Century, with Army awards usually being related to service in the Indian Wars.  Navy awards, in contrast, tended to be issued for heroic acts in lifesaving, a non combat issuance of the award that could not occur today.  Indeed, a fairly large number were issued to sailors who went over the sides of ships to save the lives, or attempt to, of drowning individuals, often with tragic results to the sailors.

At any rate, the period following the war and the method by which it was retroactively issued may have acclimated the Army to issuing awards as there are a surprising number of them that were issued for frontier battles.  This does not mean that there were not genuine acts of heroism that took place in those battles, it's just surprising how many there were and its clear that the criteria was substantially lower than that which would apply for most of the 20th Century.

Indeed, in the 20th Century the Army began to significantly tighten up requirements to hold the medal. This came into full fruition during World War One during which the Army made it plain that it was only a combat medal, while the Navy continued to issue the medal for peacetime heroism.  In 1917 the Army took the position that the medal could only be issued for combat acts of heroism at the risk of life to the recipient, and in 1918 that change became official.  Prior to the 1918 change the Army commissioned a review board on past issuance of the medal and struck 911 instances of them having been issued.  I'd thought the Wounded Knee medals had been stricken, but my presumption must be in error.

Frontier era Medals of Honor, as well as those issued to Civil War era soldiers after the Civil War, tend to be remarkably lacking in information as to why they were conferred.  This has presented a problem for the Army looking back on them in general.

Indeed, the Wounded Knee medals have this character.  They don't say much, and what they do say isn't all that useful to really know much about what lead them to be awarded.  There is a peculiar aspect to them, however, in that they don't reflect what we generally know about the battle historically.  

Wikipedia has summarized the twenty awards and what they were awarded for, and this illustrates this problem.  The Wounded Knee Wikipedia page summarizes this as follows

·         Sergeant William Austin, cavalry, directed fire at Indians in ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mosheim Feaster, cavalry, extraordinary gallantry at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mathew Hamilton, cavalry, bravery in action at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Joshua Hartzog, artillery, rescuing commanding officer who was wounded and carried him out of range of hostile guns at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Marvin Hillock, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Bernhard Jetter, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee for "killing an Indian who was in the act of killing a wounded man of B Troop."

·         Sergeant George Loyd, cavalry, bravery, especially after having been severely wounded through the lung at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Albert McMillain, cavalry, while engaged with Indians concealed in a ravine, he assisted the men on the skirmish line, directed their fire, encouraged them by example, and used every effort to dislodge the enemy at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Thomas Sullivan, cavalry, conspicuous bravery in action against Indians concealed in a ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         First Sergeant Jacob Trautman, cavalry, killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and, although entitled to retirement from service, remained to close of the campaign at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant James Ward, cavalry, continued to fight after being severely wounded at Wounded Knee;

·         Corporal William Wilson, cavalry, bravery in Sioux Campaign, 1890;

·         Private Hermann Ziegner, cavalry, conspicuous bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy;

·         Lieutenant Ernest Garlington, cavalry, distinguished gallantry;

·         First Lieutenant John Chowning Gresham, cavalry, voluntarily led a party into a ravine to dislodge Sioux Indians concealed therein. He was wounded during this action.

·         Second Lieutenant Harry Hawthorne, artillery, distinguished conduct in battle with hostile Indians;

·         Private George Hobday, cavalry, conspicuous and gallant conduct in battle;

·         First Sergeant Frederick Toy, cavalry, bravery;

·         Corporal Paul Weinert, artillery, taking the place of his commanding officer who had fallen severely wounded, he gallantly served his piece, after each fire advancing it to a better position

For quite a few of these, we're left without a clue as to what the basis of the award was, at least based on this summation. But for some, it would suggest a pitched real battle.  A couple of the awards are for rescuing wounded comrades under fire.  Others are for combat actions that we can recognize.

Indeed, one historian that I know, and probably only because I know him, has noted the citations in support for "it was a real battle", taking the controversial, albeit private, position that Wounded Knee was a real, pitched, engagement, not simply a slaughter.  This isn't the popular view at all, of course, and its frankly not all that well supported by the evidence either.  But what of that evidence.

A popular thesis that's sometimes presented is that Wounded Knee was the 7th Cavalry's revenge for the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Perhaps this is so, but if it is so, it's would be somewhat odd in that it would presume an institutional desire for revenge rather than a personal one, for the most part.  Wounded Knee was twenty four years after Little Big Horn and most of the men who had served at Little Big Horn were long since out of the service.  Indeed, some of the men who received awards would have been two young for service in 1890, and while I haven't looked up all of their biographies, some of them were not likely to have even been born at the time.  Maybe revenge was it, but if that's the case, it would demonstrate a 19th Century retention of institutional memories that vastly exceed the 20th and 21st Century ones.  Of course, the 7th Cavalry remains famous to this day for Little Big Horn, so perhaps that indeed is it.

Or perhaps what it reflects is that things went badly wrong at Wounded Knee and the massacre became a massively one sided battle featuring a slaughter, something that the Sioux on location would have been well within their rights to engage in. That is, once the things went wrong and the Army overreacted, as it certainly is well established that it did, the Sioux with recourse to arms would have been justified in acting in self defense.  That there were some actions in self defense which would have had the character of combat doesn't mean it wasn't combat.

And that raises the sticky moral issues of the Congressional efforts to rescind the medals.  Some of these medals are so poorly supported that the Army could likely simply rescind them on their own, as they have many others, and indeed, I thought they had.  Some seem quite unlikely to meet the modern criteria for the medal no matter what, and therefore under the practices established in 1917, they could be rescinded even if they were regarded as heroic at the time.  Cpl. Weinert's for example, unless there was more to it, would probably just merit a letter of commendation today.

Indeed, save for two examples that reference rescuing wounded comrades, I don't know that any of these would meet the modern criteria. They don't appear to.  So once again, most of these would appear to be subject to proper unilateral Army downgrading or rescission all on their own with no Congressional action.

But what of Congressional action, which has been proposed. The Army hasn't rescinded these awards and they certainly stand out as awards that should receive attention.  If Congress is to act, the best act likely would be to require the Army to review overall its pre 1917 awards once again.  If over 900 were weeded out the first time, at least a few would be today, and I suspect all of these would.

To simply rescind them, however, is problematic, as it will tend to be based neither on the criteria for award today, or the criteria of the award in 1890, but on the gigantic moral problem that is the Battle of Wounded Knee itself.  That is, these awards are proposed to be removed as we regard Wounded Knee as a genocidal act over all, which it does indeed appear to be.

The problem with that is that even if it is a genocidal act in chief, individual acts during it may or may not be. So, rushing forwards to rescue a wounded comrade might truly be heroic, even if done in the middle of an act of barbarism.  Other acts, such as simply shooting somebody, would seem to be participating in that barbarism, but here too you still have the situation of individual soldiers suddenly committed to action and not, in every instance, knowing what is going on.  It's now too late to know in most cases.  Were they acting like William Calley or just as a regular confused soldier?

Indeed, if medals can be stricken because we now abhor what they were fighting for (and in regard to Wounded Knee, it was questioned nearly immediately, which may be why the Army felt compelled to issue medals to those participating in it, to suggest it was a battle more than it was), what do we do with other problematic wars?

Eighty six men, for example, received the Medal of Honor for the Philippine Insurrection.  In retrospect, that was a pure colonial war we'd not condone in any fashion today, and it was controversial at the time.  Theodore Roosevelt very belatedly received the Medal of Honor for leading the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry up Kettle Hill during the Spanish American War, and he no doubt met the modern criterial, but the Spanish American War itself is morally dubious at best.  

Of course, none of these awards are associated with an act of genocide, which takes us back to Wounded Knee.  As noted above, maybe so many awards were issued there as the Army wanted to to convert a massacre into a battle, and conferring awards for bravery was a way to attempt to do that.

Certainly the number of awards for Wounded Knee is very outsized.  It's been noted that as many awards have been issued for heroism at Wounded Knee as have been for some gigantic Civil War battles.  Was the Army really more heroic at Wounded Knee than Antietam?  That seems unlikely.

Anyway a person looks at it, this is one of those topics that it seems clear would be best served by Army action.  The Army has looked at the topic of pre 1917 awards before, and it removed a fair number of them.  There's no reason that it can't do so again. It was regarded as harsh the last time it occurred, and some will complain now as well, but the Army simply did it last time.   That would honor the medal and acknowledge the history, and it really shouldn't be confined to just Wounded Knee.

Dead men and horses at Wounded Knee following the conflict.

March 10, 1921. Royalty

 Newly appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. on this day in 1921.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., whom friend called "Ted", was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the same position that his father had held in the first McKinley administration and his cousin Franklin had held in the Wilson administration.

Like his father, his personal connection with the military was in the army.  His father was an officer in the New York National Guard prior to his appointment, and of course went on to become a cavalry colonel in the Spanish American War, winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, conferred very much posthumously, for his leadership of the assault on Kettle Hill.  Ted Roosevelt had served as an officer during the Great War and would go on to be a Brigadier General during World War Two, also winning a Congressional Medal of Honor, in his case for his role in Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944.

Ted Roosevelt was a rising figure in politics at the time, but after the election of his cousin Franklin, which he opposed, he retired from that pursuit seemingly with all of the remaining descendants of his famous father.

Helen of Greece and Denmark.

Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, daughter of the deposed King of Greece, married the louse Crown Prince Carol II of Romania.  He'd ultimately abandon her some years later, renounce his thrown (he was then the king) and take up permanently with a mistress.

She went on to be the Queen Mother of Romania as her son Michael grew up.  Michael would go on to be the last King of Romania, occupying that position during World War Two and, fairly amazingly, for a time after it even as the country had Communism foisted upon it.  Helen and her son would be tragic figures, but Helen is notable for her efforts to save Romanian Jews during the Holocaust, for which she was later counted as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Get Along Little Doggies (Whoopie Ti Yi Yo).

Whoopie Ti Yi Yo is a classic genuine Cowboy song. The song is an old one and like a lot of genuine Western music, it is a European folk ballad that was reset in a Western location.  The original song was an Irish ballad about an old man being rocked in a rocking chair.

The first reference to this song of any kind was in Owen Wister's The Virginian.  He'd no doubt heard it in Wyoming when he'd toured it prior to writing his novel which was published in 1893.  The song was referenced by musicologist John Lomax in his 1910 work Cowboy Song and Other Frontier Ballads.  It was first recorded in 1929.

In putting this up here, I had a variety of recordings I could have chosen, but I yielded to popular pressure and put up the Chris Ledoux variant as Ledoux remains very popular with Wyomingites.  I'm the odd man out on that as I find Ledoux's voice rough and I'm generally not a fan.

The Infantry Company over a Century. Part 1. The Old Army becomes the Great War Army.

A note about this entry.  Like most of the items posted on this blog that pertain to the 1890-1920 time frame, this information was gathered and posted here as part of a research project for a novel.  As such, it's a post that invites comment.  I.e., the comments are research in and of themselves and its more than a little possible that there's material here that might be in need of correction.

Company C, Wyoming National Guard (Powell Wyoming), 1916.  Note that seemingly nearly everyone in this photograph is a rifleman.  Also of note is that these Wyoming National Guardsmen, all of whom would have come from the Park County area (and therefore were probably of a fairly uniform background and ethnicity) are using bedrolls like Frontier infantrymen, rather than the M1910 haversack that was official issue at the time.

Infantry, we’re often told, is the most basic of all Army roles.  Every soldiers starts off, to some extent, as a rifleman.  But save for those who have been in the infantry, which granted is a fair number of people over time, we may very well have an wholly inaccurate concept of how an infantry company, the basic maneuver element, is made up, and what individual infantrymen do today. 

And if that's true, we certainly don't have very good idea of how that came to be.

And we’re also unlikely to appreciate how it’s changed, and changed substantially, over time.

So, we’re going to go back to our period of focus and come forward to take a look at that in a series of posts that are relevant to military history, as well as the specific focus of this blog.

Prior to the Great War, the Old Army.

U.S. Infantry in Texas early in the 20th Century.  I'm not sure of the date, but its a 20th Century photograph dating after 1903 as all of the infantrymen are carrying M1903 rifles.  It's prior to 1915, however, in that they're all wearing late 19th Century pattern campaign hats of the type that came into service in the 1880s and remained until 1911.

Much of this blog has focused on the Punitive Expedition/Border War which ran up to and continued on into World War One.  As we've noted before, that event, the Punitive Expedition, was one in which the Army began to see the introduction of a lot of new weaponry.  While that expanded the Army's capabilities, it also, at the same time, presented problems on how exactly to handle the new equipment and how its use should be organized.

Historians are fond of saying that the Punitive Expedition served the purpose of mobilizing and organizing an Army that was in now way ready to engage in a giant European war, and that is certainly true.  But the fact of the matter remains the infantry that served along the Mexican border in 1916 (the troops who went into Mexico were largely cavalry) did not serve in an Army that was organizationally similar at all to the one that went to France in 1917.

American infantrymen became riflemen with the introduction of M1855 Rifle Musket.  Prior to that, the normal long arm for a U.S. infantryman was a musket, that being a smoothbore, and accordingly short range, weapon.  Rifles had been issued before but they were normally the weapon of specialists.  Starting in 1841, however, the Army began to make use of rifle muskets which had large bores and shallow rifling, combining the best features of the rifle and the musket and addressing the shortcomings of both.  The advantages were clear and the rifle musket rapidly supplanted the musket

Civil War era drawling showing a rifleman in a pose familiar to generations of combat riflemen up to the present day.

For a long time, prior to the Great War, infantry companies were comprised entirely or nearly entirely of riflemen, with their officers and NCO's often being issued sidearms rather than longarms, depending upon their position in the company. As with the period following 1917, companies were made up of platoons, and platoons were made up of squads, so that part of it is completely familiar.  Much of the rest of it would strike a modern soldier, indeed any soldier after 1917 as odd, although it wouldn't a civilian, given as civilians have been schooled by movies to continue to think of infantry this way.  Even in movies showing modern combat, most infantrymen are shown to be riflemen.

Squads at the time, that is prior to 1917, were formed by lining men in a company up and counting them out into groups of eight men per squad.  Each squad would have a corporal in charge of it and consist of eight men, including the commanding corporal.  The corporal, in terms of authority, and in reality, was equivalent to a sergeant in the Army post 1921.  I.e., the corporal was equivalent to a modern sergeant in the Army.  He was, we'd note, a true Non Commissioned Officer.

There were usually six squads per platoon.  The squads were organized into two sections, with each section being commanded by a sergeant.  The sergeant, in that instance, held a rank that would be equivalent to the modern Staff Sergeant, although his authority may be more comparable to that of a Sergeant First Class.

The platoon was commanded by a lieutenant. One of the company's two platoons was commanded by a 1st lieutenant, who was second in command of the company, and the other by a 2nd lieutenant.  The company was commanded by a Captain, who was aided by the company Field Sergeant, who was like a First Sergeant in terms of duties and authority.  The company staff consisted of the Field Sergeant, a Staff Sergeant and a private.  The Staff Sergeant's rank is only semi comparable to that of the current Staff Sergeant, but he did outrank "buck" Sergeants.

Sergeants were, rather obviously, a really big deal.

Spanish American War volunteers carrying .45-70 trapdoor Springfield single shot rifles and wearing blue wool uniforms.

While this structure would more or less exist going far back into the 19th Century, the Army had undergone a reorganization following the Spanish American War which brought to an end some of the remnants of of the Frontier Army in some ways and which pointed to the future, while at the same time much of the Army in 1910 would have remained perfectly recognizable to an old soldier, on the verge of retirement, who had entered it thirty years earlier in 1880.*  This was reflected by an overhaul of enlisted ranks in 1902 which brought in new classifications and which did away with old ones, and as part of that insignia which we can recognize today, for enlisted troops, over 100 years later.  Gone were the huge inverted stripes of the Frontier era and, replacing them, were much smaller insignia whose stripes pointed skyward. The new insignia, reflecting the arrival of smokeless powder which had caused the Army to start to emphasize concealment in uniforms for the first time, were not only much smaller, but they blended in. . .somewhat, with the uniform itself.

New York National Guardsmen boarding trains for border service during the Punitive Expedition.  They are still carrying their equipment in bed rolls rather than the M1910 Haversack.

The basic enlisted pattern of ranks that came into existence in 1902 continued on through 1921, when thing were much reorganized.  But the basic structure of the Rifle Company itself was about to change dramatically, in part due to advancements in small arms which were impacting the nearly universal identify of the infantryman as a rifleman.

Colorado National Guardsman with M1895 machinegun in 1914, at Ludlow Colorado.

Automatic weapons were coming into service, but how to use and issue them wasn't clear at first.  The U.S. Army first encountered them in the Spanish American War, which coincidentally overlapped with the Boer War which is where the British Army first encountered and used them.  The US adopted its first machinegun in 1895.  The 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, which fought as dismounted cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish American War, used them in support of their assault of Kettle Hill, although theirs were privately purchased by unit supporters who had donated them to the unit.   The Spanish American and and Boer Wars proved their utility however and various models came after that.  They were, however, not assigned out at the squad level, but were retained in a separate company and assigned out by higher headquarters as needed.  There was, in other words, no organic automatic weapon at the company level, and certainly not at the squad level.

African American infantryman in 1898, carrying the then new Krag M1986 rifle.  This soldiers is wearing the blue service uniform which, at that time, was being phased out in favor of a khaki service uniform.  Most of the Army had not received the new uniform at this time and, in combat in  Cuba, most wore cotton duck stable clothing that was purchased for the war.  Some soldiers did deploy, however, with blue wool uniforms.  In the field, this soldier would have worn leggings, which he is not in this photograph.

There also weren't a lot of them.  Running up to World War One the Army issued new tables of organization for National Guard units, anticipating large formations such as divisions.  Even at that point, however, there were no automatic weapons at the company level at all.  The infantry regiment table provided for a Machine Gun Company which had a grand total of four automatic rifles. 

M1909 "Machine Rifle".  It was a variant of the Hotchkiss machinegun of the period and was acquired by the Army in very low quantities.

Just four.

Most men in a Rifle Company were just that, riflemen.  Automatic weapons were issued to special sections as noted.  Rifle grenadiers didn't exist.  Most of the infantry, therefore that served along the border with Mexico was leg infantry, carrying M1903 Springfield rifles, and of generally low rank.**

New York National Guardsmen in Texas during the Punitive Expedition.

That was about to change.

Well, some of it was about to change.  Some of it, not so much.

So, in 1916, anyhow, where we we at.  A company had about 100 men, commanded by a captain who had a very small staff.  The entire company, for that matter, had an economy of staff.  Most of the men were privates, almost all of which were riflemen, and most of who's direct authority figure, if you will, was a corporal. There were few sergeants in the company, and those who were there were pretty powerful men, in context.  There were some men around with special skills as well, such as buglers, farriers, and cooks.  Cooks were a specialty and the cook was an NCO himself, showing how important he was.  Even infantry had a small number of horses for officers and potentially for messengers, which is why there were farriers.  And automatic weapons had started to show up, but not as weapons assigned to the company itself, and not in large numbers.

A career soldier could expect himself, irrespective of the accuracy of the expectation, to spend his entire career in this sort of organization, and many men in fact had.  Some men spent entire careers as privates. Sergeants were men who had really advanced in the Army, even if they retired with only three stripes.  Corporals had achieved a measure of success.  Most of the men lived in common with each other in barracks.  Only NCO's might expect a measure of privacy.  Only sergeants might hope to marry.

Machine gun troops of the Punitive Expedition equipped with M1904 Maxim machinegun and carrying M1911 sidearms.

That, of course, was the Regular Army.  The National Guard was organized in the same fashion, but there was more variance in it.  Guardsmen volunteered for their own reasons and had no hope of retirement, as it wasn't available to them.  Some were well heeled, some were not, but they were largely armed and equipped in the same manner, although they received new material only after the Army had received a full measure of it first. Their uniforms and weapons could lag behind those of the Regular Army's.  And some units who had sponsors could be surprisingly well equipped, some having automatic weapons that were privately purchased for the unit and which did not fit into any sort of regular TO&E.

And then came the Great War.

Footnotes:

*Thirty years was the Army retirement period at the time.

**We've dealt with the weapons of the period separately, but in the 1900 to 1916 time frame, the Army adopted a new rifle to replace a nearly new rifle, with the M1903 replacing the M1896 Krag-Jorgensen, which was only seven years old at the time.  While M1896 rifles remained in service inventories up into World War Two, to some degree, is field replacement was amazingly rapid and by World War One there were no Regular Army or National Guard units carrying them.  

In terms of handguns, of which the US used a lot, in 1916 the Army was acquiring a newly adopted automatic pistol, the M1911.  Sizable quantities had been acquired but stocks of M1909 double action .45 revolvers remained in use. The M1909, for that matter, had been pushed into service due to the inadequacies of the M1892, which was chambered in .38.  The M1892 had proven so inadequate in combat that old stocks of .45 M1873 revolvers were issued for field use until M1909s were adopted and fielded.  Given this confusion, and rapid replacement of one revolver by another in 1916, there weren't enough M1911s around, and some soldiers went into Mexico with M1909s.

Related threads:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition.

So, circling back to our focus, timewise, in 1916, when troops were being called up and deployed for the Punitive Expedition (was Lex Anteinternet: The Military and Alcohol. U.S. Army Beer 1943-1946). . .

what was the situation?

The law of the Officer's Club at Ft. Meyer, VA, being mowed by a mule drawn lawn mower.  This photo dates from early in the 20th Century at which time Congress had technically made the sale of alcohol illegal on Army bases, but at which point the Army chose to define beer and wine as not being excluded.

This follows from this post here:

Lex Anteinternet: The Military and Alcohol. U.S. Army Beer 1943-1946: Patrons of a bar and grill in Washington D.C. in 1943.  The man on the left is drinking a glass of beer, and it appears the woman is as well...

Let me explain.

In 1982 when I was stationed as a recruit at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, there came a time when us boots could go to the 1-2-3 Club, a sort of combination cheap fast food/beer/high school hangout, type club.  It wasn't great, but if you had nowhere else to go, and we had nowhere else to go, it was okay*.  

The 1-2-3 Club had 3.2% beer, which I guess actually no longer is brewed by anyone, save perhaps by Guinness, as draft Guinness is only 3%.  Nobody brews it in the context of its earlier days, in which it was brewed in order to comply with certain laws. It's history goes back to 1933 as Prohibition was being repealed.  Prohibition never completely dried up the supply of legal alcohol, contrary to what people imagine it did.  Alcohol remained legal for "medicinal" purposes and extremely low alcohol beer, i.e., "Near Beer" was legal.  In 1933, prior to Prohibition being officially repealed, the legal alcohol limit for beer was increased up to 3.2%.  

Following the end of Prohibition, some states restricted beer sales based on the 3.2% amount, and Oklahoma was one of them.  Generally, if you were below a certain age you could buy 3.2%.  You couldn't buy beer with a higher alcohol content than that.  This was, of course before "Light Beer", which generally has around 4% ABV.  Coors, which is pretty light to start with, introduced Light Beer prior to World War Two, far earlier than many people might suppose, and relaunched it in 1978.  Millers Lite actually came out in 1967, prior to the Coors relaunch, but as Gablingers Diet Beer, a market name doomed to failure. The recipe was later sold to Millers.

I never really did grasp why Coors would market light beer.  Coors is pretty light to start with and there were already all those 3.2% beers around.  Oh well, my view obviously isn't the clever marketing one, as light beers became a pretty big deal.

Anyhow, in 1982 you could buy 3.2% beer at the 1-2-3 Club on Ft. Sill, or 3.2% beer downtown in Lawton, Oklahoma.  Obviously, Ft. Sill also had a NCO Club, or clubs, and an Officer's Club, or clubs.

Camp Guernsey had a NCO Club and an Officers Club as well.  Camp Humphreys, Korea had them as well and I had a nice bulgogi there for lunch while there.

I guess this is somewhat of a thing of the past now, to my surprise.  The Army has completely done away with Officers Clubs and now there are unitized clubs.  Privates can go to the same club that officers can, although 1-2-3 Clubs remain.  Without knowing for sure, I suspect that not only is the culture of such clubs now radically different, but probably a lot of more senior officers and NCOs rarely show up at the club.  This is part of the current culture in which we do not wish to recognize any differences at all in the social status of anyone, but frankly, I think this likely a mistake, although one reflecting the current military culture.   The current military is small compared to the giant Cold War Army that followed the giant World War Two Army, and its much more selective than its been at any prior point in history.  There are certainly problems in the current U.S. military, to be sure, but one current feature of it is that the up and out and selective nature of it means that the guys were sort of fit the definition of a "working man" that were sung about by Tennessee Ernie Ford aren't really in the service anymore.  That may have some negative aspects to it as well, but its a fact.  Anyhow, given the current make up of the currently fairly small army, the traditional separation in all things between enlisted men and officers has been much reduced and the clubs are gone.

So what was the situation in 1916?

Starting in 1890, about the time that the temperance movement was really gaining cultural steam, the Army banned the sale of hard alcohol at military posts that were located in areas that had Prohibition. So, for example, if you were stationed in a county that was dry, the Army post was as well, sort of.  The Army barred the sale only of hard alcohol, so beer and wine was still sold and you could still consume them at the post canteen.

In 1901, however, Congress entered the picture with the Canteen Act of 1901 which prohibited the sale of any intoxicating beverage including beer and wine.  This was pretty clearly intended to make all alcoholic beverages a thing of the past on post, but in practice the Army simply chose to define "intoxicating" beverages to mean those having a pretty stout alcohol content.  So, once again, no Kentucky bourbon on post, but beer was probably okay.  

This continued to be the practice up  until May 18, 1917, when the Selective Service Act stretched the military prohibition beyond the base to include a five mile alcohol exclusion zone and, moreover, it was made a crime to sell alcohol to a uniformed soldier anywhere.  Congress, recalling the end run the Army did with the 1901 act, defined "intoxicating" to be anything containing 1.4% alcohol or more, a very low threshold.

To complete the story, when Prohibition ended the 1901 statute remained in effect and the Army, at this point, continued to enforce the 1.4% limit.  Halfway through the Second World War, however, the Army changed this allowed 3.2%, the figure that had been created earlier when Prohibition was lifted.  This standard remained in place until 1953 when a legal ruling determined that the entire Canteen Act of 1901 had been repealed by the 1951 amendments to the Universal Military Training and Selective Service Act.

So, going back to our query about 1916, in 1916 a soldier stationed almost anywhere in the U.S. was probably able to buy beer at the post canteen.  Beyond the post fence, there would have undoubtedly been saloons catering to soldiers that sold everything.  The scene of a night of leave in 1941 Honolulu depicted in From Here To Eternity in that regard was likely pretty accurate on occasion.  And at that point, in some of the US, the "saloon trade" was unrestricted.  Having said that, in some locations Prohibition had already come in.

Footnotes

*There were other places to go, to be sure. Ft. Sill had a swimming pool open to privates, but I never went there.  The one time I had on base free time when we could have gone, I had a horrible case of progressing pneumonia and no interest in going to a pool.

I did once go to the library, as odd as that may seem, simply because I was sort of tired of the intellectual quality of my stay at Ft. Sill and because I hoped it to be quiet.  It was quiet, and very nice.  I looked like a fish out of water there, however, and I simultaneously froze and fell asleep there.  The freezing due to my having acclimated to the 100F+ Oklahoma summers and the sleep due to simply being exhausted.