Wednesday, May 28, 1924. Border Patrol and Foreign Service.

We earlier posted this: 

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, May 24, 1924. Foreign services.: 

Saturday, May 24, 1924. Foreign services.

President Coolidge signed the Foreign Service Act of 1924, creating the Foreign Serve and the Immigration Act of 1924, the National Origins Act.

The act reflected immigration by national origins, banned all immigration from Asia and set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere.  It also authorized the creation of The Border Patrol.

And on this day, those agencies came into being.

Japan issued a formal protest over the Immigration Act of 1924.

President Coolidge issued a proclamation:

Max Wallraf was elected as the President of the Reichstag,

New York National Guardsman, Pvt. George Herman Ruth was photographed saluting Gen. Pershing.

Coolidge was photographed with cadet officers.

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 26, 1924. The beginning of the end for Hejaz.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, German Weimar Republic, Immigration, Jordan, Kingdom of Hejaz, law, Saudi Arabia

December 30, 1920. Criminals

The body of Monk Eastman, notorious criminal, receives a guard of honor from the New Yor, National Guard.

 

On this day in 1920, the remains of New York criminal, and heroic World War One veteran, Monk Eastman received a guard of honor on his way to his funeral

Eastman was a well known New York thug in an age filled with Empire State thugs.  He was 44 or 45 at the time of his death, making him an old soldier at the time of his enlistment.  He served heroically in the Great War and received a pardon from the Governor of New York before resorting to his prior life of crime.  He was gunned down by a criminal confederate after an argument about bootlegging proceeds, with the gunman claiming he feared for his life.

He was a bad man in an age filled with really bad men, and a good soldier.

The USS John D. Ford was commissioned.

The Clemson Class destroyer would serve through World War Two, but was sold for scrap prior to the Korean War.

An unknown Vietnamese Communist, Nguyn Ai Quoc, would address the French Communist Party on this day.

He would later be known as Ho Chi Minh and was one of a collection of nationalist, by not all means Communist, figures who would oppose the Japanese occupation and then the French return following World War Two.  A central figure in the Vietnamese Communist Party in the 40s and 50s he'd help shove aside the non Communist nationalist and thereby set his nation up for rivers of blood that would follow the French expulsion.

He deserves to remembered in unending infamy today, less bloody than Moa or Stalin, but still a figure representing a collection of real bastards.

On this day in 1920, coincidentally, Yugoslavia outlawed the Communist Party.  Outlawing a stupid idea rarely works, and instead causes it to fester, and following World War Two it would reemerge, although in a less virulent form than in the USSR, or for that matter Vietnam.

March 27, 1919. New York's 27th Division receives a parade, Wyoming veterans reported on way home.

American Red Cross Volunteer Motor Corps transporting wounded veterans of the 27th Division in a parade held on this day in New York City, 1919.

A huge parade was held on this day in New York City where the 27th Division, which had been formed from New York National Guardsmen, marched.

West Point cadet receiving hot chocolate from a Red Cross volunteer.

 Wounded and nurse viewing from an open window on Millionaires' Row.

Camp Dix, March 25, 1919.

Probably more than a few of those soldiers had come through Camp Dix at some point.

Closer to home. .  or not, Wyomingites read that 147 Wyomingites in the 264th Infantry were on the way home.

March 6, 1919. The 27th Infantry returns, the 116 Ammo Train is set to.

Officers of the 27th Infantry, a unit of the New York National Guard, on the day of their return to New York on the Leviathan.

And the men of the same unit.  Note the one smoking a cigarette, something that had only just become socially acceptable for men, due to World War One.

On this day in 1919, the 27th Infantry, one of New York's large National Guard contingent in the Great War, returned home.  

And the 116th Ammunition Train was set, or maybe not, to return home to Wyoming.

The 100 Days Offensive: The 27th and 30th Divisions fight the Battle of Vierstaat Ridge

On U.S. 27th Division and the U.S. 30th Division, attached to the British Second Army when it appeared that the Germans had abandoned Mount Kemel in front of them.  They were supported by the British 34th Division.  The advance soon demonstrated that while the Germans had in large withdrawn, they had left behind machineguns to cover their withdrawal in dug in positions.  These slowed the Allied advance but the Americans none the less took their objections by 17:30.

Insignia of the 27th Division.

The attack resumed the following morning at 07:00 and carried through September 3.

The 27th Division was a unit made up entirely of New York National Guardsmen, making it one of three U.S. Divisions that were comprised of National Guardsmen entirely from a single state.  At the time of the battle of Vierstaat Ridge it was commanded by John F. O'Ryan, a New York City lawyer who had been in the New York National Guard since 1900.

John F. O'Ryan.

After World War One he pursued commercial pursuits and was active in protesting the German treatment of the Jews as early as 1933.

Shoulder patch of the 30th Division.

The 30th Division was also a National Guard Division, and had originally been designated the 9th Division after being mustered and assembled.  it was made up of National Guardsmen from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.  It was commanded at this time by Maj. Gen. Edward Mann Lewis, a career office in the U.S. Army.

Maj. Gen. Edward Mann Lewis.

Rouge Bouquet- A poem by Joyce Kilmer set to music (about the March 7, 1918 event involving the Fighting 69th).

Send Off Day for the 27th Division. The New York National Guard leaves for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina. August 30, 1917.

Send Off Day Poster.

On this day in 1917 the State of New York held a massive parade in New York City for its sons in the National Guard. Those men formed the 27th Division.

The parade lasted a massive five hours.  The dignitaries in the reviewing stand included former President Theodore Roosevelt.  4,000 New York City policemen were deployed to control a crowed that was estimated to reach as high as 2,000,000 spectators.

 Col. James S. Boyer. Washington Arch Square in the background.

The New York National Guard's 27th Division had a fair number of dignitaries and representatives from well known families itself amongst 24,000 members in and of itself.

Colonel Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Commander of the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.  In civilian life Vanderbilt was an engineer associated with his family's railroad interest but often on the outs with his parents due to a marriage that they disapproved of.

The unit wasn't going to France yet, but actually just leaving the State of New York for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina.  And the New York National Guard wasn't contained completely within the 27th Division.  Other units remained in training in the state and would be deployed to Army training camps in the coming weeks, resulting in more, if not quite so massive, farewell parades.

The unit Vanderbilt commanded at this time, the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.

 

Watching from downtown New York.

 

Major General John Francis O'Ryan, commander of the 27th Division.  He was a lawyer and a life long resident of New York City.  He was also a rare National Guard officer in that he was a graduate of the Army War College.  The youngest division commander in the Army at the time of his arrival in Europe, he was also the only National Guard officer still in command of a division by the war's end.

Lt. Col. Paul Loeser, Commander of the Eighth Coast Defense Command (coastal artillery).

The parade also included units of the New York National Guard's Coastal Artillery.  Coast Artillery is something we don't think much about anymore, but it was a major defensive organization at the time by necessity and it was a natural for the National Guard, given that Guardsmen could train in place on the same weapons they'd man in war.

Col. Sidney Grant, Commander of the Thirteenth Coast Defense Artillery.  By the time this phoograph was taken the day must have grown hot as Col. Grant has taken off his service coat.

 

 Maj.Wilbur T. Wright, Commander of the Second Battalion, Second Field Artillery, New York National Guard.

Col. John J. Byrne, the Commander of the Ninth Coast Defense.

Scenes like this were playing out all over the nation as National Guard units were being sent off to training camps and ultimately to the war.  New York's example was an unusually large one, but then the populace state had a very large National Guard establishment.

Edwardina L. Lavoie, bugler, 1st Artillery, New York National Guard

Edwardina Lavoie, a female New York National  Guard bandsman, April 26, 1917. 

These photographs are interesting for a variety of reasons.

Unlike the Navy, which had just authorized regular female recruits, the Army had a longer history with women in service.  It's somewhat muddled, quite frankly, and its subject to misinterpretation, but as its muddled and subject to misinterpretation I won't go into it.  Be that as it may, what these photographs depict is definitely out of the norm.

Being a bugler was a combat role. 

And a vital one.

Radio had just made its appearance in the US Army in the field in the Punitive Expedition and field phones hadn't gotten too far as of yet, although they were definitely in use.  Buglers, therefore, going into the war, remained a critical field signaling role.

Not the only one, we might note.  Field phones, of course, have already been mentioned.  And dispatch runners, some mounted, some on foot, were very common.  But, at least in theory, it remained the case that a large variety of military signals were sent by assigned bugle calls.

It was a very dangerous combat role.

Maybe she was a bandsmen?

Well, the captions from the Library of Congress don't say that.  I trust, therefore, that she really was a bugler with the New York 1st Artillery.  But let's take a look at bandsmen for a second.

Being an Army bandsman wasn't the same a century ago as it is today, although being a National Guard bandsmen might have been, oddly enough.  In the 19th Century Army, much of the military culture of which remained at the start of World War One, being a bandsman was a field occupation.  That is units all had bands, at that time, they took them to the field.  The scene depicted in Little Big Man, for example, in which the 7th Cavalry Regiment's band plays Garryowen as the 7th charges at Washita is actually correct.  The 7th really did have the band strike up Garryowen in that frozen horror, which tells us a lot about how bands were treated at the time.

Not everything about them, however.  One thing that's commonly not noted about military bandsmen, except by some astute historians, is that they were used as stretcher bearers as soon as the need arose.  So they didn't just hang around and provide stirring music for the carnage.  They helped carry the wounded off, a job which we might note which was extremely hazardous.

I don't know when that practice ended.

Note, as we circle back to the bugler role, that she's dressed in a male uniform.  Artillery was a mounted service, along with cavalry, and she's wearing leather leggins and male breaches.  She's dress for riding, in other words.

A very interesting photograph.

I'm certain she didn't deploy with the New York National Guard to Europe.  But by this date she would have been mobilized (she likely wasn't yet Federalized, that oddly took quite a bit more time to occur in World War One than it would in later call ups requiring Federalization).  I suspect, but don't know, that her role with the Guard ended with Federalization.  She wouldn't be the only one, I'd note.  Federalization of Guard units, pretty much up to the World War Two call up (but not much after that) entailed a weeding out and reassignment process.  Men unsuitable for military service in the opinion of the U.S. Army were weeded out at that point, units that were one thing in their state assignments became another in the Army.  I don't know what happened to Pvt. Lavoie, but I suspect her role with the New York National Guard ended at that point.

Mustering of the 71st Regiment, New York National Guard. March 28, 1917

The Guard had just been released from Federal Service, and was now being called back up.