Testament to the Reserve

By Eric Minton

Reprinted with Permission of Author

From National Guard & Reserve Off Duty Magazine

Ed’s note: This article gives an excellent historical overview of the formation of our Reserve components and is especially pertinent as we salute the "Citizen-Sailor" for the sixth consecutive year.

They gaze to the horizon, rifle in hand, ready. They are statues of American heroes, and in their soldiers’ visage they differ little from other stone and metal representations of history’s most famous warriors. But unlike the typical battlefield statues, these depict men wearing work-a-day shirts and trousers, their ruffled hair straggling down their necks. One even steps beside a plough.

These are the Minuteman statues, memorials to the New England militia members who fought the first rounds of the American War for Independence. One stands at Lexington, Mass., another at nearby Concord, and a third kneels at Westport, Conn. They commemorate the men who laid the foundation for today’s National Guard and Reserve — our citizen-soldiers — a heritage Guard members and reservists have continued building upon through the nation’s first 223 years.

Colonial Origins to Revolutionary War

To see the true origins of the National Guard in this country, you need to visit the first permanent British settlement of the Americas at Jamestown, Va. The settlers who landed here in 1607 brought the tradition of the militia from the medieval roots of their English homeland, where every able-bodied male was expected to turn out with weapons to defend the realm from foreign attack. The Jamestown settlers organized into companies and squads that stood watch over the stockade and patrolled the borders. The Colonial National Historical Park has recreated their fort’s palisade amid a landscape that has changed little since the early 17th century.

Other English settlements followed Jamestown’s example. Colonies struggling to establish a commercial and social toehold in the wild country, could not spare any person for full-time soldiering. But prone to attack from Native Americans, and French and Spanish rivals, communities needed a strong defense and the capability to counter strike, so every man regularly trained in warfare. As the colonies became more stable and secure, many maintained their standing militias as training institutions for young men. They also provided a source for British imperial forces to draft soldiers for the French and Indian War of the 1760s.

Though the militia concept dates to Roman times, it took a decidedly American twist as relations with the mother country soured in the early 1770s. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety, proponents of revolution, created a select militia ready to turn out at a minute’s notice: the Minutemen. Paul Revere and William Dawes mustered this force April 18, 1775, to confront British troops marching overnight from Boston to Concord to destroy a patriot munitions storehouse. The two sides met on Lexington Green, but when the British commander ordered the rebels to disperse, the Americans started departing. Suddenly, a shot rang out — nobody knows by whom — and the British, defying orders, opened fire and charged with bayonets, leaving eight Americans dead and 10 wounded.

Though this first "battle" ended as a rout of the militiamen, it would exact a higher toll on the British before the day was through. The British reached Concord and Minutemen gathered across the North Bridge opposite the town. A British sergeant accidentally set fire to a building, and the patriots, fearing their town was being torched, advanced on the bridge. British troops again fired, killing two, but this time the Minutemen responded with "the shot heard round the world."*

Their fusillade killed two British soldiers and wounded nine, and the English fell back to the center of town, then returned to Boston. With news of the Lexington Green massacre spreading through the countryside, the British had to run a gauntlet of some 3,500 militiamen firing from behind trees and boulders along the road. The day’s final toll: 247 British soldiers killed or wounded, 89 Americans.

Two famous Minuteman statues commemorate the events of "Patriot’ Day." The version on Lexington Green shows a Minuteman holding a long musket in both hands standing atop real boulders taken from the stone walls the original minutemen shot from. Daniel Chester French, who later sculpted the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, launched his career with the more famous Minuteman statue at Concord’s North Bridge, the one depicted on National Guard shields with the militiaman grasping a long musket in one hand as he leaves his plough.

Even though the Continental Congress formed the Continental Army under Gen. George Washington, militia members supplemented the "regulars" throughout the war in every colony. After the British chased the Continental Army out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania in December 1776, Washington used reinforcements from local militia to launch his surprise counter attack across the Delaware River in Trenton. The army sheltered at the McConkey Ferry Inn, now a living history colonial farmhouse at Washington Crossing State Park, Pa. After British forces raided Danbury, Conn., in 1777 militia members fought alongside the American Army under Benedict Arnold to fight the British retreating to Long Island Sound.

The Minuteman statue at Westport recalls the brief Battle of Compo Hill where marines helped the British Army escape to boats. Militiamen killed in the skirmish lie buried a few yards from the statue. Nathaniel Greene reversed the tide of war in the South by keeping a highly mobile force of regulars who could move quickly through the terrain out of reach of the more encumbered British Army. Then he would call out militia contingents on the even of battle. After Lord Cornwallis moved into Virginia to build a naval base at Yorktown, America’s new French allies blockaded the British from the sea while the Virginia militia cut off Cornwallis’ land route, allowing Washington’s army to move down from New York and lay siege. Cornwallis’ surrender effectively ended the war.

Nineteenth Century Developments

Using militia to supplement the regular army continued after ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Militia Act of 1792, which dictated America’s military makeup for 111 years, divided militia companies into the community volunteers of tradition and a ready reserve of minutemen, both of whom could reinforce a small standing Federal Army. In that capacity militia members played instrumental roles in the War of 1812, the century-long fight against Native Americans on the frontiers, and the Mexican War, the first time militia fought on foreign soil.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter at Charleston, S.C., in April 1861 sparked the world’s first "total war" fought by massive armies on several fronts. But with a small standing Federal army and no previously established Confederate army, the battle lines primarily comprised companies of state militias. Nowhere is this more obvious than at Gettysburg, where Union forces stanched Gen. Robert E. Lee’s last invasion of the north. The battlefield now contains 1,400 monuments, many erected by states to memorialize their armies, like the 20th Maine "Mainiacs" who held Little Round Top against overwhelming odds, the 1st Minnesota which sustained the highest regimental loss per capita of any battle in modern history, and the North Carolina regiments honored in a memorial carved by Gutzon Borglum, Mount Rushmore’s sculptor.

Speaking of Mount Rushmore, those faces peering from the side of a South Dakota mountain share something other than the U.S. presidency: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt all served in militias, too. Lt. Col. Roosevelt had been a member of the New York National Guard, but was a volunteer in the Army when he led a group of Texas and New Mexico Guardsmen nick-named the "Rough Riders" in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

Eighteen U.S. presidents served in militias. One even told his fellow National Guardsmen, "I’d rather be here than president of the United States." That was 27 years before Capt. Harry S. Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Truman enlisted in the Missouri National Guard in 1905, served until 1911 and reenlisted in 1917 for the first world war. His 2nd Missouri Field Artillery was folded into the regular Army and sent to France with Truman in command of Battery D, which set regimental records for accuracy and efficiency. Truman’s uniform, saddle, sidearms, and a French 75mm field gun like those Battery D, are on display at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., as are some of his letters to his future wife Bess describing the Guardsman’s life.

Formation of Today’s Reserve Components

By World War I, the citizen-soldier’s role had changed and expanded. Civil disturbances from labor strikes and racial strife made up much of the militias’ duties in the last two decades of the 19th century, causing states to appreciate the value of maintaining well-funded, well-trained forces. Many "militias" became "National Guards" during this period. Nineteen states also created their own naval militias, the foundation of today’s Naval and Marine Corps Reserve. During the Spanish-American War, Navy militia-men saw extensive action in the Caribbean while 13,000 National Guardsmen made up the bulk of the expeditionary force that occupied the Philippines. That war made the United States an international power, requiring reorganization of the nation’s military. Congress passed the Dick Act in 1903, replacing the 1792 Militia Act and increasing federal control over the National Guards, including increased training (24 drills per year and five days of annual training).

The Army’s Medical Reserve Corps was created in 1908, the beginnings of the Army Reserve. The National Defense Act of 1916 formally created the Army Reserve along with Reserve Military Aviators, and also made state militias the Army’s primary reserve force, officially naming them "National Guards." Congress had already formed the Federal Naval Reserve in 1915 and established the Naval Reserve Flying Corps in 1917.

F. Trubee Davison and 11 other students from Yale volunteered to form the first Naval Air Reserve flying squadron on March 24, 1917. During World War I the Navy commissioned 2,000 aviators for the Reserve Corps who reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola for training in Curtis N-9s and JN-4 Jennys. Because reservists are fully incorporated into the active duty fleet, historical exhibits — such as the Navy Museum in the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard where you’ll see World War II anti-aircraft guns, Vietnam-era shallow water patrol vessels, and a Tomahawk missile like that used in the Gulf War — are equal parts Navy and Naval Reserve heritage.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 once again activated many Reserve and Guard units. At first these maintained their state identities but soon became wholly integrated into the regular forces as members shipped out to other regiments while enlisted and drafted personnel transferred in. Typical of a Guard unit of the time was the 45th Infantry Division, originally made up of Guardsmen from Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. New Mexico resident Bill Mauldin joined the 45th in 1937, attracted by free clothes and dollar a day pay for drills.

By the time the 45th landed on Sicily in 1943, Mauldin was one of the few original Guardsmen still assigned to the unit; but he was destine to leave soon, too. Poking fun at military life through his "Willie & Joe" cartoons for a division newspaper, he was detached from the 45th and assigned to the Stars and Stripes staff where his cartoons reached an international audience. Some 200 of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s cartoons are on display, along with other memorabilia of the Oklahoma National Guard’s history, at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City.

With the Air Force’s founding in 1947, the Air Guard became a separate entity within the National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve joined the citizen-soldier roster a year later. The Air Guard initially had the primary task of air defense of the country, but a call-up for the Korean Conflict illustrated the need to provide Guard crews more mission experience. While Air Guard units eventually would expand their duties to overseas deployments, the Reserve components established associate wings which combine with active duty crews for day-to-day Air Force missions. Consequently, the Air Guard and Air Force Reserve histories are so enmeshed with that of the Air Force that the best place to appreciate their legacies is the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Not only are Guard and Reserve memorabilia scattered throughout the museum, but several of its 200 planes served in the Reserve or have Guard markings, like the C-97 Stratofreighter of the Ohio Guard’s 160th Air Refueling Group.

Sure, today’s citizen soldier wears a uniform when he or she fights rather than work clothes. They are also trained in various war-fighting techniques uncomprehended by the Minuteman of 1775 and use technology Thomas Jefferson could not have envisioned. Still, you’ll see the link between today’s citizen soldiers with their ancestors if you look into the eyes of those Minuteman statues: the calm resolve that was there then is here now.

* Though a shot rang out at Lexington Green in the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, "The Shot Heard Round the World" referred to in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem "Concord Hymn," actually occurred at the North Bridge in Concord, Mass. Mr. Lou Sideris, a National Park Service employee at Minute Man National Historical Park, told us that the shots at Concord, while actually not the first fired that day, were the first ones ordered by Americans that subsequently spilled the first British blood as well.