Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War:

Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War

The Korean War is something that most Wyomingites don't particularly associate with our state, but the war did have a noticeable impact on the state, and Korea has been in the news a lot recently, so now might be a good time to take a look at it.

 Official painting of the Wyoming Army National Guard depicting Wyoming's 300th AFA in action.

Part of the reason that we don't think much of the Korean War and Wyoming, is that we don't think much about the Korean War at all.  The Korean War is one of several wars that have been tagged "forgotten wars" and, in the case of Korea, it's really true.  Perhaps that was inevitable, coming between World War Two and the Vietnam War, as it did.

Wyoming's role in the Korean War is tied closely to the the decline in the Army's conventional war fighting abilities that followed World War Two.  The largest war ever fought, World War Two was the largest conventional conflict of all time but it ended with the use of two nuclear weapons.  Given that, the immediate assumption by the American military was that the age of conventional warfare had ended and that any future war, of any kind, would be a nuclear war.  The Army was allowed to atrophy as a result.  Between 1945, when World War Two ended, and 1950, when the Korean War started, the Army's training in conventional warfare dramatically declined.

An end to conventional warfare turned out to be a massively erroneous assumption, and the place we learned that was in Korea.

That the US would fight a war in Korea was something that, moreover, seemed an impossibility in 1945, when events took us there for the first time in the 20th Century.  The US had actually fought in Korea once before, but in the 19th Century, oddly enough, when the Marine Corps landed briefly in Korean in an obscure punitive expedition.  It was World War Two, however that brought the US back onto the Korean Peninsula, but only due to the end of the war.

Korea itself had been a Japanese possession since 1910, when the Japanese simply made a fact out of what had been the case following the Russo Japanese War.  Korea had been more or less independent prior to that, but heavily influenced by its much more powerful neighbors.  The Russo Japanese War effectively ended Korean independence in favor of the Japanese.  The Japanese dominance was not a happy thing for the Koreans.  Korea remained a Japanese possession up until after World War Two, when it was jointly occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, splitting the country in half.  The US had no intention to remain there but the original concept of uniting the country in a democratic process fell apart, and the Soviets and the US left with the country divided.  The US had weakly armed the South and failed to provide it with heavy weapons. The North, on the other hand, was heavily armed and trained by the Soviets, who left the North with the means, and likely the plan, on how to unite the peninsula by force.  In 1950, North Korea invaded the South with a well equipped and well trained Army.  They faced a poorly trained South Korean Army.

Soon after that they, quite frankly, faced a poorly trained American Army.  The US hadn't really given much thought to South Korea after leaving it, but the fall of China, followed by the Berlin Blockade, followed by shocking early revelations about Soviet espionage inside the US, followed by the development of the Soviet bomb, suddenly refocused attention on a country that now seemed to be a dagger aimed at Japan.  President Truman made the immediate decision to send the U.S. Army into South Korea to turn the North Koreans back.

That Army, however, wasn't the same Army the US had in 1945 after the defeat of Germany and Japan.  After VJ Day the U.S. had rapidly demobilized.  Moreover, convinced that all future wars would be nuclear in nature, the U.S. had let the Army deteriorate markedly.  It was poorly trained and not all that well equipped in some ways.

The intervention in South Korea required the call up of numerous Army National Guard units, and Wyoming's 300th Armored Field Artillery was one of them. Deployed in February 1951, the unit made up of young recruits from northern Wyoming and World War Two veterans proved to be a very effective one.  It achieved a fairly unique status in May 1951 at Soyang with the unit directly engaged advancing enemy infantry, a very rare event in modern combat and a risky one at any time.  The unit came out of the Korean War with Presidential and Congressional Unit Citations in honor of its fine performance in the war.  The individual Guardsmen of the 300th AFA largely came home after completing a combat tour, at a little over a year, but the called up unit remained in service throughout the war.  Other Wyoming Army National Guard units were also called up in this time, but only the 300th AFA was sent to the Korean War.

The Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Bomber Squadron from Wyoming was called up. The new Air Guard saw combat service for the first time in the Korean War.  Nine Wyoming F51 pilots were lost serving in the unit during the war.

Of course, many Wyomingites served in the war by volunteering for military service, or by being conscripted during the war.  Like earlier wars, Wyomingites volunteered in high numbers.

Tuesday, August 29, 1899. Volunteers back in the U.S.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 29: 1899  Wyoming volunteers returned from service in the Philippines, via the Port of San Francisco.  Attribution:  On This Day.

Sunday, August 27, 1899. A bridge over the Nile.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, British Empire, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Railroads, Sudan, Sudan (Khartoum)

2nd Bn, 300th AFA, activates.

Yesterday the 2nd Bn, 300th AFA, commenced active duty for a period of two years, during which they will be deployed to the "Middle East".

The Middle East is a large region.  The US has forces Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.  Most likely, the Guard is not going to Syria, Qatar (which is mostly USAF), or Iraq, but who really knows?

This is the largest deployment of the 300th since the Korean War, with it being perhaps significant to note that the 300th designation lapsed after the Korean War. During the balance of the Cold War, the Wyoming Army National Guard's artillery in the state was part of the 3d Bn 49th FA, which was part of the 115th FA Bde.

The deployment of a National Guard unit in this role, for this long, really demonstrates the degree to which the National  Guard is part of the overall Army structure today.  If you are in the Guard, you are going to see active duty.

Heartville Fire

 CAMP GUERNSEY, Wyo. – A fire near Hartville, Wyoming, is causing the residents of the area to evacuate, July 30, 2024.

The Wyoming National Guard opened its gates to offer shelter on Camp Guernsey. If evacuees are seeking shelter, please go to the front gate of Camp Guernsey to start the process.

According to Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, the fire began due to a lightning strike a few days ago outside and north of the Camp Guernsey training area. The fire was almost out when the heat index and wind sparked the fire back up and according to the last report has burned approximately 2,200 acres and continues to grow.

Camp Guernsey, Torrington and Wheatland fire departments are teaming up to fight the fire.

Monday, July 31, 1899. Homeward bound.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 31: 1899  The Wyoming Battalion, having been in the Philippines for exactly one year, embarked on the Grant at Manila and started their journey home. Attribution:  On This D

Last edition:

Saturday, July 29, 1899. The results of the Hague Convention.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Diplomacy, Hague Convention, War

Reserve Retirement & Regrets.

It dawned on me the other day that if I'd stayed in the National Guard, I'd have been able to start drawing Reserve retirement pay starting in late May.

Even though I was in the Guard for six years, I've never really been able to grasp how Guard retirement pay works.  I tried to look it up this morning, and learned that it's on a point system, one of those nifty military devices that has been around since at least World War Two in some ways.  The system by which soldiers who fought in the ETO were eligible to go home, for example, when the war ended was based on points.

Anyhow, there are some really useful net articles on this topic, of which this is one:

A Quick Overview of How Active Duty and Reserve Retirement is Calculated

What I ended up with, in the end, was this useful rough example, from the above:

The Final Pay Pension

Whatever max pay you find for that rank, multiply it by the service percent multiplier and round it down to the nearest dollar.

That’s your monthly pension.

For an E-7 with 2134 points starting their pension in 2016 it’d be $5061.30 * .1482 = $750/month.

Of course, you wonder how this applies to yourself.  I was an E5 when I got out, and would have had to have gone (and should have already gone) to the NCO Academy if I was to carry on.  Indeed, for the last half of my time in the Guard, I was in an E7 slot for much of that time.  

Had I stayed in, I would have gone to Officers Candidate School.  It would not have made sense not to, and I was eligible to do so.  One of my good friends from the Guard did do so, and he retired from the Guard as a Colonel after reaching age 60.

Without trying to really figure the math, I think I likely would have drawn, had I taken that course, and assuming that I didn't take a grenade in a street in Iraq or Afghanistan, would have been around $1,000 to $1,500 per month.

Not bad, but not enough to live on, which, of course for reserve service, makes sense.

Some reservists, I should note, draw considerably more and even approach Regular retirement pay as they have so many active duty points.  That would have made a difference, as our Guard units did serve in Afghanistan and Iraq, although not every soldier in the local units served in both. Some did.  Some did more than one tour in one of those countries, for that matter.

Here's a big thing, however.

All retired National Guard and Reserve members and their eligible family members may participate in a TRICARE health plan. You have access to certain services and health care benefits based on your age, retiree status, and location. 

• You may get care at military hospitals and clinics if space is available. 

• You remain eligible for the TRICARE Pharmacy Program. 

• You may choose to purchase dental and vision coverage through the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP).

That alone makes me wish I'd stayed in the Guard and gone to OCS.  I wouldn't be retired in the real sense now, but in real terms, I'd be a lot better off insurance wise.

Or so I say. At age 24, when I ETSed, I don't know that insurance was on my mind.  

Well, I know it wasn't.

I also know that our full time NCS who was our Retention NCO wasn't doing a good job.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Put your nastiness away and have a beer, Steamboat and Red Wing, Repeating history, Dog whistles.

I went to the Black Tooth Brewery in Casper's beer reveal, for their new UW themed beer.  I wasn't really interested in going but my wife was, so my wife, daughter and her boyfriend all went.

Secretary of State Chuck Gray was there.

The can has an old style state license plate theme, and therefore it would need cooperation from UW anyway, which owns the trademark for the symbol and jealously guards it.  That requires the cooperation of the Secretary of State's office.  This is being done as a "partnership" with UW, so there's no doubt that it would have come.  One of the employees of the SoS's office was thanked by UW, and to his credit, Secretary Gray thanked the woman as well.

But Gray, who has spent a lot of time touring the state and showing up at political events, just couldn't help but go negative and throw in some nasty line about how we aren't "woke" in Wyoming and referencing Budweiser.

The reaction of the crowd was muted at best. This was a Wyoming beer crowd, not a populist far right gathering, and chances are a lot of the people in the audience were either apolitical or old style Wyoming conservatives.  Gray seemed to get the message right away and finished his talk, or whatever it was.

I'm really sick of this behavior.  Gray boosted lies as a candidate, and now he runs around trying to pour gasoline on politics and ignite fires when he doesn't need to. Wyoming's politicians never used to do this, and they certainly didn't do it while in office.

What must it be like to have to be angry all the time?

For that matter, what must it be like to wear brand-new Wranglers, a style of jeans designed for people with cowboy bodies, and brand-new thick soled cowboy boots, the type that cowboys don't wear.

Why did people vote for Gray?  It's really a mystery.  That he's campaigning for the Governor's office right now should be evident to everyone.  Wyomingites would really have to be suckers to vote for Gray for that office, but then, they were suckers when they put him in his current office.

But beyond that, what kind of personality do you have to have in order to show up at everything with some right wing screed?  Can't anyone just enjoy their day without having to be fed a spoonful of BS?

And at what point does putting on a wrathful show convert your personality to fully wrathful?  I know one lawyer who puts on such an act all the time that I think he's truly lost his real personality.  At some point, that would occur.

Gray referred to the famous rodeo horse in his speech, Steamboat.  That's frustrating but inevitable, particularly as his speech, which short, was rambling, much like a speech by a high schooler whose concluded that he's too smart to prepare a speech.  Gray rambled on, something about Steamboat and World War One.

Steamboat was never used by the Wyoming Army National Guard in reality, or as a symbol. That's Red Wing.

That horse on the license plate, everyone knows its Steamboat. Right?

This is never going to get straightened out, but frankly I have a hard time imagining Gray caring, just like I don't think he's going to be flanking any calves while wearing those boots and jeans at branding.

On politics, here's an episode of Jimmy Akin's mysterious world really worth listening to.

The Knights of the Golden Circle (Secret Society, Civil War, John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Confederate Gold, Rebels, Slavery) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

It's fascinating history, but beyond that, if you can't see the parallels between today's far right populists and the Knights, you just aren't trying.

The only weekend show that's downloaded for me so far has been Meet The Press, and I didn't listen to it.  The theme was the Supreme Court.

"The Supreme Court is corrupt!" is to the American political left what "Trump won the election" is to the populist far right, and they're both based on the exact same thing, a contempt for democracy.  The far right wants the election to have been stolen, as that would mean it's not a permanent political minority, and we're never going back to wherever they think we were.  The left wants the Court to be corrupt as it might get to boot a couple members off and the country would return to the good old days when the Court decided things rather than state legislatures.

In the case of the Court, the entire claim is based on something that's true, but just is.  Positions of power and wealth attract each other.  You might not like it, but that's the way the world actually works.  That doesn't make it illegal, and it doesn't mean that terrible things are going on behind closed doors.

Last prior edition

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Aging, Russian military culture, Cinematic explortation of the 60s and 70s, The King of Canada.

Thanks for having been in the service

The Ghosts of Prior Careers

On a Saturday, while working on my now very long term one of nearly thirty years.

I just ran this item:

A Veterans' Day Essay on Worshiping the Military

It'd be very easy to take it the wrong way.

As noted in that thread, it's common now for people to tell you "thank you for your service!"  Indeed, some years ago I saw a National Guardsman coming out of the barber shop and, out on the street, a woman being arrested for something yelled it out, to his surprise.

I'm a contraran anyhow, and I always feel awkward about such thanks, but this thread is on thanks.

But in another direction.  I'm thankful that I served in the National Guard.

Technically, I served in the Army and the National Guard.  Basic training and AIT were so long for cannoneers that I received an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army after AIT.  And FWIW I was activated for summer employment and other active service at the armory that I have more time in active service than some guys who did the short two-year Cold War enlistments do.

I've often regretted getting out.  The end of my Guard career was due to a misconception about how busy I'd be in law school.  I listed to people about law school and how hard it was.  I shouldn't have.

Anyhow, I'm glad I served in the Guard.

The National Guard/Army put me together with a lot of men, and we're talking about the basically nearly all military of that era, who came from very different backgrounds than me and who worked in lots of different occupations, many of them in manual occupations.  I learned from that a lot of them had very common interests with me.  I also learned that a lot of them were every bit as smart as I was.  

This is something I've found that a lot of people who haven't ever been in the service don't appreciate.  Blue collar workers aren't there due to intellectual deficit.  And the knowledge they possess in their fields is both vast, and interesting.  Knowing that has served me all my life.

Getting through basic training taught me that I was pretty tough.  I don't know what basic is like now, but the Army basic training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, of the 1980s was very close to what was depicted in Full Metal Jacket.  We were told by one of our drill sergeants early on that his job was to make basic training as rough as possible, as combat would be worse, and he wanted those who were going to fail, to fail then.  Quite a few did fail.

That's served me ever since as well.  Indeed, not so much now, but for years decades after Ft. Sill, in times of high stress, things I learned there by memory would come flooding bad to mind.  We'd been so well-trained that it was automatic.

It also made every one "man up", although by that age I was pretty much an adult already.  Since getting out of school, I've been amazed by the degree to which a lot of modern adults never actually become adults.  There's a song out there somewhere called High School Never Ends, and for an amazing number of people, it really doesn't.  Being part of an organization in which you are flatly informed that in the event of certain circumstances you are expected to perform until dead, and that death would come soon and violently, really takes the game playing out of a person in serious settings.

Related to that, I've noted it before, and will again, but the Guard also taught me a system of organization and its stayed with me ever since.  Everything I've learned about office management I learned in the Guard, including that there's different roles and classes in offices, just like in the Army, for a reason.  I've watched over the years as people who don't have that background run around talking about "teams" and "we're all in this together" only to see things fail.    I've seen people make friends in offices they shouldn't have, surrender their efficiency to inattention or whatever, and go into power pouts when things didn't go the way they personally felt they should, or just because they turned out to be serious.  I've avoided all of that, in no small part due to the Guard/Army.

And the Guard gave me a job when I was young, and really needed one.  It helped pay for my schooling and gave me a way to try to do that, for which I remain grateful.

The Guard also blessed me with at least one instance of nearly being killed and not be.  That may sound odd, but only people whom have been exposed to sudden violent death, and then escaped it, knows what that means.  People's plans are always subject to the fickle hand of fate.  One moment you are doing your job, and the next an entire battery of 8in artillery shells are coming right down on you.

And finally, it gave me an appreciation of history in a way which only somebody who has been in a military unit can.

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

It's always temping to look back at an historic event and imagine "where would I have been".  I have to admit, having an historical inclination and mindset, if you will, I do that often.

When I do, I usually imagine it with some calendar related restrains.  I'm not sure why, but to some degree I don't think you can accurately imagine where you would have been, and what you would have done, but for that.  The constraints of time, when you were born, and how that plays into where you are at anyone time, are an inescapable fact.  I know that I tend to do that pretty strongly, when inserting my hypothetical self into past events.

Having said that, for whatever reason, in seeing something on the upcoming 79th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to some extent the real framework of "1941" struck me for the the first time, in a realistic sense just the other day.  It's weird, as I've looked back to World War Two quite a few times, as I imagine nearly everyone with a sense of history, and imagination, and wondered "where would I have been"?

I graduated from high school in 1981; forty hears after. . . well not actually forty years after, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.*  In May 1981 when I graduated from high school I was 17 years old.  I joined the National Guard that following August, by which time I was 18, not even telling my parents that I had done it before I had.  That, in some odd way, tend to have formed my frame of reference looking back, as that puts my actual military experience in context.

But in looking at the calendar of the United States in World War Two, the National Guard was mobilized in August 1940.  So if I imagine myself 40 years prior, and apply a sort of calendrical lock to it so that I would have graduated from high school in 1941, instead of 1981, the National Guard would have been mobilized for a year.

Now, I also know that lots of high school men, and no matter how we might imagine it the story of service during World War Two includes women, but far more it includes men, had been in the local unit of the National Guard at that time. Indeed, the 115th Cavalry, Horse Mech, included not only a lot of high school students, a significant percentage in fact, but it included a lot of underaged ones.  Would I have been in that number?  Those too  young to serve in the Army were discharged, along with those too aged and infirm to serve.  Were the 17 year old sent?  I imagine some where, some were not, depending upon their wishes and those of their parents, maybe.

I wonder.  I like to think that I would have, and just knowing myself I probably would have joined the unit in high school, probably whenever I could have, but who knows.  Maybe not?

Well, in my own actual life in my junior high years I was in the Civil Air Patrol and I did in fact join the National Guard when still a teenager.  So my guess is that I probably would have.  Almost certainly.  I didn't, however, join high school JrROTC (which was mandatory for those in our local high school until some date in the 1970s), so maybe not.  Indeed, at that time I conceived of myself as busy, so I may not have.

In August 1940 I would have been 17. So would that have meant that I would have been mobilized with the 115th?

Maybe.  It's hard to know for sure.  I know that the 115th discharged a lot of underaged soldiers, as noted above, right at the start of their mobilization, and I know that the U.S. Army required parents consent to enlist until you were 18.  Contrary to what people typically think, the service itself wasn't too keen on teenage soldiers at the time.  

I know that my father wouldn't have been, but it would have been just my father's consideration at the time, assuming my life otherwise played out as it did, my mother being horribly ill when I was 17.  I'd have only been 17 for a few months at the time and also knowing myself I very well may have waited until fall to join, if I'd been planning to.  I only joined the National Guard in August 1981 as I'd planned on going to the University of Wyoming that fall and joining ROTC but changed my mind and didn't want to be hypocritical to my stated desires, so I joined the Guard.

Indeed, looking back, I'm stunned how earnest I was in my convictions.

That plays a role here too.

So, on December 7, 1941, I might have been an 18 year old cavalryman at Ft. Lewis Washington, surprised, and not surprised, that the nation was finally at war.

Or I might have been an 18 year old University of Wyoming student (the community colleges didn't yet exist here).

If that was the case, and for reasons I can't quite define I think it more likely, I would have joined the service after that semester.  And it would have been the Army.

If I'd gone to Ft. Lewis with the National Guard at some point I would have cadred out, almost certainly, and have been assigned to some other unit as an NCO.  Likely armor, and that would have likely meant Operation Torch and the ETO in that branch.  Most of the war. . . if a person survived it.

If it was UW and on to the Army, I wouldn't have opted for armor but rather for infantry, and maybe airborne, knowing myself.  Same theatre and the like, but probably less of it.  And again, assuming a person survived it.

All of which is interesting to imagine, and I'm surprised that I haven't really though of this retroactive counterfactual in this context before.

*This upcoming year, 2021, I will be as many years from my high school graduation as I was from World War Two at the time I graduated. A sobering thought.  This effectively means that, at that time, high school graduates from the class of 1941 were men my present age, something that's stunning to imagine.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18, 1941.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18: 1941  One hundred Casper men and boys enrolled in the Wyoming State Guard.  State Guards were the wartime replacements for the National Guard, which had been Federalized in 1940, and therefore was no longer existent, now being part of the U.S. Army.  The mission of the State Guard was to provide the services to the State that the National Guard did in peace time.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

So you were a Wyoming National Guardsmen (or one from anywhere else) and now it's Monday July 7, 1919.

What now?

My M1911 Campaign Hat, which serves as my fishing and hunting hat, hanging by the stampeded string on the chair where I type out a lot of this stuff.  Probably a lot of M1911s were seeing similar storage about this time in 1919.

You might have joined a pre war National Guard unit in your hometown, if it had one, or you might have enlisted when the call came, which was quite common. If you lived in a small town like Casper, and Casper was very small in 1916, you would likely have done the latter, as Casper didn't have a Guard unit until 1917.

And that call for Guardsmen came on June 19, 1916 for Guardsmen.

So you became a Wyoming National Guardsmen in the infantry branch.  All Wyoming Guardsmen were infantrymen.

From there, it was some training locally, briefly, before you went with  your unit to Ft. D. A. Russell in Cheyenne, where you received more training and you were equipped, if you weren't already.  Or, actually, you expected to be sent there, but the Army, quixotically, refused to allow the Guard to train there and you therefore ended up at a camp at Frontier Park in Cheyenne.*

You learned how to fire a bolt action rifle, perhaps for the first time in your life even if you were familiar with firearms (and if you were from Wyoming, you were), as this was the age of the lever action, before bolt actions became a popular sporting arm.**  If you were an officer, or an NCO, you might have learned the ins and outs of the brand new M1911 pistol, just introduced into service, and quite a bit different from revolvers that may have otherwise been familiar with.***  And then there were automatic weapons, which you certainly weren't familiar with.

And you marched and drilled and marched and drilled.

By and large things went pretty well, but at least one of your fellow Guardsmen, Pvt. Dilley, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, never to return.  He was an exception to the rule, however.

Just after that you entrained at the railroad station in Cheyenne and shipped out to New Mexico, following a celebrated departure from the residents of Cheyenne.

The Union Pacific Railroad station in Cheyenne.

On September 30, 1916, you were arriving in Deming, New Mexico, where you were to be encamped while receiving additional training.  By October 1, 1916, you were on the border and you were placed under the command of a Regular Army officer.

And there  you remained for the next several months, a bulwark with other Guardsmen against Mexican incursions that didn't come. the Regular Army, of course, was now far down into Mexico, and truth be known very soon the Wilson Administration would be struggling for a way to disengage from that mission and pull them out.  In the mean time, you patrolled the border, which was not a safe job, and you trained.

National Guard infantry (9th Infantry, Massachusetts National Guard)  on the border in 1916.

You got back in the state on March 4, 1917.  You were mustered out of service on March 9, but the way things worked at the time, you wouldn't have made it home right away.  You had to process out, and wait for arrangements for train travel to whatever station was last on your route.  If you were lucky, that train ran right to your hometown. But for quite a few, that station was quite distant, and that meant that hopefully somebody was waiting for you with a wagon, or at least a horse, at that station.

On March 15, 1917, you likely made it home, if you lived in Central Wyoming.  So if you were from Douglas, or remote, small, but booming, Casper, you arrived home on this middle of March day.

You had just made it home, when you were called back into service on March 27, 1917.  Just twelve days later.

So it was back into service.

Once again you mustered and went to Cheyenne, this time fleshed out with new troops who were signing up to be part of the country's effort in the Great War. The belief was that for the most part it would be the Navy, not the Army, that did the heavy lifting, and in fact a few of your colleagues who had served on the Mexican border, preferring not to miss the action again, joined the Navy.  War was declared in April.  In May the state was still raising troops.

Shortly thereafter you shipped out with your fellow Wyomingites to North Carolina, where you were to be trained, you supposed, on trench warfare.  On August 15, 1917, due to a curious legal oddity, you were officially conscripted into the Army.

It was not to be.

In early September the news came that your unit was being busted up.  Some of you were going into machine-gun companies, some into transport companies, and some into the field artillery.  No infantry, although a machine-gun company would be pretty darned close.  The machine-gun companies didn't' seem to come about, but the transport and artillery units did.  We'll say for our story here that you were one of the men who became an artilleryman.  If so, you made it to France later than your transport colleagues, and it'd take you additional months after the Armistice to make it back home as well.  Those Guardsmen you knew who went into transport were home months ago now.

Howitzer of the type used by the 148th Field Artillery, of which many Wyoming National Guardsmen became a part.

You would have made it to France on February 10, 1918, and you went to the front on July 9.  Soon thereafter you were firing missions in support of the American effort at Château-Thierry.

Your unit, unlike the 115th Ammunition Train that your fellow Wyoming Guardsmen were in, was kept on in the Army of Occupation after the Armistice.  This gave you a little time to see some parts of France and some of Germany while they were not at war, if not in good shape.

Finally, in June your unit was ordered home.  You boarded the ship in France.  At Camp Mills, New York the unit was released from the Army rolls.  You were still in, however, and went to Ft. D. A. Russell out of Cheyenne with those Guardsmen from the West, men from Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado.

There you were discharged from the Army on June 26. You stayed at Ft. Russell for a couple of days, however, while your paperwork was processed.

And then you boarded a train in Cheyenne that, in a bit of a roundabout route, and a series of transfers, took you all the way home to Casper a couple of days later.  Your service was celebrated everywhere you stopped.  By the 29th, you were back home in Casper.

Not the Casper you left, however. That Casper was gone.  The war had changed it forever.  It was much larger now.  And it was a refinery town in a major way, with a giant refinery on the west edge of town that operated night and day, as all refineries do, in an unyielding fashion.  It dominated the town.

So now you were home, but that home was much different than the one you left.  And just after you came home a couple of notable events happened.

The first was that state prohibition arrived.  That may not seem significant, but with you just arriving home on the 29th, and state prohibition going into effect on July 1, you or your friends probably planned for a night downtown at the bars, and there were a lot of them, on the 30th.  One last night where the beer flowed freely.  It had flowed very freely in Casper before you left, and certainly wine had made an appearance in France. So a night on the town.

That probably meant that you slept in on July 1.  Not a day to go looking for work.  July 2 might be, but it's only two days away from the big July 4 celebration, and this year that celebration was to kick in on July 3.  So you probably  held off on July 3, 4, and 5.  The 6th was a Sunday and you probably went to church with your family.

And then, on Monday July 7, it was out to find a job.

But where and doing what?

The options in the town were plenty in 1919, but they were all dominated by oil production now.  That no doubt would have figured in your reasoning to some extent.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*There's no rational basis for the Army's decision, but in this period there was a fair amount of tension between the Regular Army and the National Guard.  Indeed, that tension would last as long as the Vietnam War.

**Which isn't to say that bolt actions weren't around and in use.  For American civilians the bolt action that was by far the most common was the Krag Jorgensen, surplus from the U.S. Army where it had been briefly the standard rifle prior to the M1903.  Surplus bolt action Navy Lees were also around but much less common.  Sporting bolt actions, mostly of European manufacture, were available but rare.

***Semi automatic pistols were also a recent innovation for most civilians, with revolvers being far more common.

July 3, 1919. But wait, what about Battery F? Battery F, 148th FA, returns home and Bisbee Riots.

One of the purposes of this blog is to correct errors and misconceptions, and we find that here we're victim of one.

Indeed, careful observers here will note that we've reported the 148th as basically mustering out twice. . . once in New York, and once at Ft. D. A. Russell outside of Cheyenne.  We think we figured out the origin of that confusion, however.  The Camp Mills event was the one that released the unit from the Army's rolls, and the Cheyenne one was the one in which the artillerymen were discharged.

That latter date was taken from a source we were relying on, but contained an error.

Battery F of the 148th wasn't home until this day.

For some reason Battery F had been delayed in returning home and just made it on July 3, something I hadn't run across before.  And upon arriving the men of Battery F were the subject of a big July 3 celebration welcoming their return to the state in Cheyenne.

Company F was entirely from the northern part of the state.  So not only were they the seeming last of the National Guardsmen to return home, they had further to go to get all the way home as well.

While celebrations were going on in Wyoming, riots were going on in Bisbee Arizona.

The riot started off as a confrontation between a while military policeman of the U.S. Army and black cavalrymen of the 10th Cavalry.  The town already had a marked racially tense atmosphere in which strong racial prejudices against Hispanics and Asians were highly exhibited.  In spite of this, black cavalrymen from the 10th Cavalry from nearby Ft. Huachuca did frequent the town. 

As with many towns near Army posts, the town had military policemen in it on frequent occasion and it was just such a confrontation that escalated into a riot.  What exactly occurred is not clear, but the main participants in the event seem to have been white policemen and black cavalrymen.

While there were serious injuries they did not prevent the 10th Cavalry from participating in the Independence Day march the following day.

June 27, 1919. Introduction of the Volstead Act, the men of the 148th coming to Casper, an uncertain Peace, horses and oil, violence in Tennessee, Annapolis and Rock Springs.

On this day in 1919 the Volstead Act, the bill that was tailored to carry out Prohibition under the 18th Amendment, was introduced into the House of Representatives.

On this day in 1919 there was still time to have a beer. Soon, there wouldn't be.

An enforcing act was necessary in order to make Prohibition actually come into effect, something that's occasionally missed in this story.  Compounding the overall confusion, many states had passed state laws on the topic, including Wyoming, so in those places Prohibition was coming into law earlier, and with different provisions.  In some localities, such as Colorado, it already had.

It hadn't come into effect just yet, which meant that Casperites had time left to toast returning members of the 148th Field Artillery, recently discharged from their military service, just as they were also contemplating Germany signing a treaty that would end the war, but which appeared likely to result in an uncertain future.

That uncertain peace headlined the Wyoming State Tribune, which also featured an article that would be regarded as racist today, because it was.  That latter storing being how Mexican women were going to be liberated from the chains of tradition by adopting more progressive, non Mexican, values regarding their gender.

The 15th Cavalry, it was noted, was also going to appear in Cheyenne for new billets that afternoon.

Cavalry of that period was still horse cavalry, of course, and horses remained an important part of the economy in every fashion.  Advertisements for a horse auction in Campbell County appeared right on the cover of Wright's newspaper, which noted that it was published weekly "in the interests of dry-farming and stockraising in Wyoming".

Today, of course, when you think of Wright, you think of oil, gas, and coal.  You probably don't think of farming at all, let alone dry farming, although ranching is still there.

A photographer visited the Burk Waggoner oilfield of Texas on this day, giving a glimpse of what oil production in 1919 was like.

In far off Tennessee, Sheriff Milton Harvie Stephens of Williamson County, was murdered by horse thieves.  He was 74 years old and had held the office for one year.  That crime demonstrates that the value of the old means of travel, and the crimes it was associated with, kept on. The fact that Stephens was employed as a sheriff at age 74 also says something about the working environment of the day.

In that same region of the country, sort of, riots occurred in Annapolis between Navy trainees who were training to be mess attendants and local residents. The riot is regarded as part of the Red Summer, but the oddity of it was that the rioters were all black on both sides.  Mess attendants were normally black or Filipinos in the segregated Navy of that period and in this case it was black local residents who were in conflict with the sailors. The cause was that sailors had been harassing local women.

Strife and violence also seems to have broken out that day in Rock Springs.

1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, mustered out of service and discharged at Ft. D. A. Russell.

Wyoming and Colorado National Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, those being the Wyoming and Colorado Guardsmen assigned to the 148th, were mustered out of service and discharged on this date in 1919.  The were civilians once again.

June 25, 1919. The 148th In Cheyenne

The men of the 148th who remained in the service, as some had already been discharged on the East Coast, returned to Cheyenne to a rousing welcome.

In far off Russia, American solders were in action against the Reds.  At Romanovka American troops were ambushed but repelled a Red advance.

In New Jersey, the American Library Association was meeting.

American Library Association, Ashbury Park, New Jersey

The Presidio and Ft. Winfield Scott, San Francisco.

June 24, 1919. Marching towards Versailles, on the border, and home.

Wyomingites received the official news on this day that the Germans were going to sign the Versailles treaty.

Clearly, a lot of them were not happy about it and there was some resistance to it still in some quarters.

They also learned that things were still tense on the country's border with Mexico.

Fitting for the day, they also learned that the last of Wyoming's National Guardsmen, those in the 148th Field Artillery, would be arriving back in the state that night.

June 6, 1919. Portents

When we think of this day in terms of history, we naturally think of June 6, 1944.  But just a short twenty five years prior there was a lot going on, including a lot associated with the war that had just ended . . . and some that would figure in the war to come.

Some American troops who were not American citizens were becoming the same.

"Large group of overseas soldiers who applied for Naturalization, June 6, 1919. Man in center is Raymond Crist, Director of Citizenship, Bureau of Naturalization, Department of Labor".  June 6, 1919.

Those men had survived the Great War.  I wonder where they were when the Second World War came about and was raging?

Russian POWs who had survived at least the latter part of the war remained in German captivity while their country was itself aflame.

"Interior of the Clothing Supply Room, at American Red Cross Headquarters, Berlin. Sgt. Carl Olson, U.S.A. Supplying two Russian officers, Prisoners, with complete new outfits, Berlin."  The officer on the right retains the Imperial Roundel on his cap and the one on the left is a Cossack.  I wonder if they returned home?

 Russian POWs in a POW camp, June 6, 1919.

I really wonder about the fate of the men depicted above.  All we can really tell is that if they returned home, and most likely did, that fate was grim.  The country they had fought for was in a horrific civil war and they were of military age.  They were likely going into it, and no doubt many didn't survive it. Those who did, had World War Two in front of them, and no doubt many of the men shown here, if still living during the Second World War, served in their second war with the Germans.

And the nature of their country they had served here would never be the same again.

Residents of Cheyenne received the word that the last of Wyoming's Guardsmen still in service were now on their way home.

They were returning, of course, by sea.

Hampton Roads, Virginia.  June 6, 1919.  Hampton Roads was a major Navy installation.  It would have been busy in 1919, just as it would have been in 1944.

One country turned towards regulating the air, and became the first to do so.

Air Board ensign from 1922 and 1923.

Canada established its Air Board, making it the first country to have a regulatory body over air travel.  It's duties would be assumed by a successor entity in 1923.

An older means of transportation was also in the news.

Man o' War won the Belmont stakes, the first race on his way to fame.

Chicago Police Department inspection at Grant Park, June 6, 1919

Chicago's finest, who were about to endure one of the worst decades in their history, due to Prohibition, stood for inspection.

Mussolini's fascists, meanwhile, published their Manifesto in an Italian newspaper.  They were on their rise and just becoming a force that some would come to think, for a time, was the wave of the future, including some in the free world who thought that such movements had perhaps eclipsed democracy.

Here's what it stated:

Italians! Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.
For the political problem: We demand:
a) Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.
b) A minimum age for the voting electorate of 18 years; that for the office holders at 25 years.
c) The abolition of the Senate.
d) The convocation of a National Assembly for a three-years duration, for which its primary responsibility will be to form a constitution of the State.
e) The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.
For the social problems: We demand:
a) The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers.
b) A minimum wage.
c) The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions.
d) To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants.
e) The rapid and complete systemization of the railways and of all the transport industries.
f) A necessary modification of the insurance laws to invalidate the minimum retirement age; we propose to lower it from 65 to 55 years of age.
For the military problem: We demand:
a) The institution of a national militia with a short period of service for training and exclusively defensive responsibilities.
b) The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.
c) A national policy intended to peacefully further the Italian national culture in the world.
For the financial problem: We demand:
a) A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.
b) The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.
c) The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.

Or, in the published Italian:

Italiani!
Ecco il programma di un movimento sanamente italiano. Rivoluzionario perché antidogmatico e antidemagogico; fortemente innovatore perché antipregiudizievole. Noi poniamo la valorizzazione della guerra rivoluzionaria al di sopra di tutto e di tutti. Gli altri problemi: burocrazia, amministrativi, giuridici, scolastici, coloniali, ecc. li tracceremo quando avremo creata la classe dirigente.

Per questo NOI VOGLIAMO:
Per il problema politico

a. Suffragio universale a scrutinio di lista regionale, con rappresentanza proporzionale, voto ed eleggibilità per le donne.

b. Il minimo di età per gli elettori abbassato ai 18 anni; quello per i deputati abbassato ai 25 anni.

c. L'abolizione del Senato.

d. La convocazione di una Assemblea Nazionale per la durata di tre anni, il cui primo compito sia quello di stabilire la forma di costituzione dello Stato.

e. La formazione di Consigli Nazionali tecnici del lavoro, dell'industria, dei trasporti, dell'igiene sociale, delle comunicazioni, ecc. eletti dalle collettività professionali o di mestiere, con poteri legislativi, e diritto di eleggere un Commissario Generale con poteri di Ministro.

Per il problema sociale:
NOI VOGLIAMO:

a. La sollecita promulgazione di una legge dello Stato che sancisca per tutti i lavori la giornata legale di otto ore di lavoro.

b. I minimi di paga.

c. La partecipazione dei rappresentanti dei lavoratori al funzionamento tecnico dell'industria.

d. L'affidamento alle stesse organizzazioni proletarie (che ne siano degne moralmente e tecnicamente) della gestione di industrie o servizi pubblici.

e. La rapida e completa sistemazione dei ferrovieri e di tutte le industrie dei trasporti.

f. Una necessaria modificazione del progetto di legge di assicurazione sulla invalidità e sulla vecchiaia abbassando il limite di :età, proposto attualmente a 65 anni, a 55 anni.

Per il problema militare:
NOI VOGLIAMO:

a. L'istituzione di una milizia nazionale con brevi servizi di istruzione e compito esclusivamente difensivo.

b. La nazionalizzazione di tutte le fabbriche di armi e di esplosivi.

c. Una politica estera nazionale intesa a valorizzare, nelle competizioni pacifiche della civiltà, la Nazione italiana nel mondo.

Per il problema finanziario:
NOI VOGLIAMO:

a. Una forte imposta straordinaria sul capitale a carattere progressivo, che abbia la forma di vera ESPROPRIAZIONE PARZIALE di tutte le ricchezze.

b. II sequestro di tutti i beni delle congregazioni religiose e l'abolizione di tutte le mense Vescovili che costituiscono una enorme passività per la Nazione e un privilegio di pochi.

c. La revisione di tutti i contratti di forniture di guerra ed il sequestro dell'85% dei profitti di guerra.

That manifesto did include some radical elements, particularly in regards to the Church, but like a lot of radical movements its radicalism was largely hidden or obscured except where it appealed to simplistic populist elements. There was a lot of that going on in this time frame and it would help bring the world into war in 1939. For that matter, it helped cause a lot of big wars for the remainder of the 20th Century.

Worth noting, and contrary to the way that some latter day pundits tend to view it, the manifesto demonstrated Fascism's hostility to religion.  And while it had very strong nationalistic and militaristic elements, it combined those with socialistic elements, which was true of it wherever it was and in all its normal forms.   For these reasons, the conventional defining it on a left and right basis isn't really accurate, which has caused some people to debate its classification on the political right from time to time.

Well, at least there was something you could really sink your teeth into. Canned whale.