MOBILIZATION OF U.S. NATIONAL GUARD IN WORLD WAR II

goodbye dear Oh as impotent opportunity to take apart a problem by restoring [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Applause] fighting by Lana you can fighting my team would you invite him in the air until with God's help we've rid the earth of his shadow today President Roosevelt ordered into active military service effective September 16th nineteen hundred and forty the 18 divisions of the National Guard I I'll be back in here but I'm in the army you told my darling i miss you so but nevertheless it's my duty to go but when i get back i'll be your hand and brown and we violet car is just outside of town so goodbye I'll be back in here go for gas I first came in the Fort Stewart when the National Guard unit was mobilized in February 1941 of course I came in with a hundred and first which came our battery be was here locally in hinesville most of our group was made up from farm boys ones who lived and worked in area all small town boys back in 1938 when I was only 18 years old I was a crew chief mechanic on an Air National Guard aircraft Oh 38 such as this one here which incidentally is the only one in existence today being a crew chief on an aircraft such as that in those days was equivalent to being involved in the man in space program of today from November the twenty-fifth nineteen forty when the 36th division was mobilized to the Armed Forces I was attending West Texas State University here in Kenya is a 19 year old and most of us thought that we were going into the service for one year and would be discharged in a year then we would get back to our school is the young men in the guard who had lied about their age and certainly they were too young to go on to active duty those young men were the most disappointed man in the world more than boys but not yet know they would in a matter of months march from training fields to fields of combat and too soon become adults a maturity sparked by the one fire that generates no warmth war the time late nineteen hundred and forty and early in 1941 the occasion the largest mobilization of the National Guard and history an unprecedented call involving 18 divisions plus Coast artillery and anti-aircraft unit also called up with 28 National Guard air squadrons that would be sired to today's Air National Guard these 300,000 members of the National Guard would in 1914 1941 had once double the strength of our standing army but at the time of mobilization not one among them could have predicted they would eventually see action in every combat operation of World War two in 1940 New Guinea Normandy the time an angio were to most of them as remote as the valleys of the moon on sep tember 16 19 and 40 I was in the private practice of law in oklahoma city on this date the 45th Infantry Division was called to active duty as a National Guard division that time I was 26 years of age and had been in the National Guard for approximately six years I had received a commission and my assignment on the date of mobilization was to the staff of the 90th Infantry Brigade the arrangement that I belong to was first sent to Fort Sill Oklahoma the conditions of a camp were quite primitive it was a hastily constructed tent camp the weather was extremely cold and Wendy in Fort Sill everyone lived in tents which burned down with great frequency I think the morale of the members of the God though was very high they had anticipated this for over a year so that when the day immobilization actually could practically everybody was satisfied that they were going to be in for a year particularly happy I was going to be able to serve my country with the National Guard the fair was so the unknown not knowing when we might be called into combat and changing from a life of a civilian and that of a soldier at the time of mobilization the hand of war had not yet touched us although its grip had already squeezed large areas of Europe and Asia on sep tember 60 1940 the first day of mobilization Pearl Harbor was still more than a year away it was for most of those called up not so much a call to action but an invitation to adventure besides Americans had a tradition of serving the sense of duty was deeply ingrained 40 years ago this high school received word that the local Washington National Guard unit was being mobilized now this news had quite an impact on the high school captain Burke van de wildt was the local unit commander and also the principal of the school Jill blue is on the coaching staff a teacher and on the coaching staff students of the high school and all former students were members of the of the National Guard and in those days everyone wanted to belong to the guard and certainly everyone wanted to go with their unit when it left in September of 1940 I was a member of the 41st division stationed at Fort Lewis Washington we were one of the first five national guard divisions mobilized in peacetime most of us were quite young people with the exception of our officers we grew up in the service in a very short period of time the army gave us a very good sense of motivation discipline we we had a good life the training was very difficult we lacked equipment but surprisingly the morale was always quite high I never cease to be amazed at the fact that the citizen soldiers that I came in contact with at that time really seemed to have no bad feelings about the mobilization I was standing the lack of good training facilities training aids and in spite of the harsh winter the men of the 45th in my view responded with interest and enthusiasm to their effort to get trained when we came in the condition then for Stuart was pretty primitive everybody lived in tents the roads are muddy it was hard to get in and out all of the guardsmen expected the life not to be easy they got along fine in the army I thought that the morale was very good they seemed like they felt it was a duty to serve their country not expecting war we were in terms of armament and facilities unprepared for war those training in late nineteen forty and early nineteen forty one was much more than maneuvering in the classic sense it was fantasy on a constant collision course with reality a sense of urgency but still somehow play-acting we were eager in spirited enthusiasm rich but equipment poor one of the problems after were mobilized was a definite lack of modern equipment and we had to go out and simulate a lot of things like you'd take the [ __ ] of a tree but a branch net was an anti-aircraft gun or machine gun planes overhead would drop bags of flour for simulate bombs all sorts of improvisations were made sometimes is a little hard to get the feel of things particularly you were anticipating the tank and down the street came a truck with a cloth sign said this is a bank everybody enters into the spirit of the thing I believed and tried to do a good job a lot of times it was a little difficult when you didn't have the real thing muck and mire were not a vaudeville team in 1940 they were the conditions under which many of the National Guardsmen lived and trained choking dust was as much a part of camp routine as drilling and what it wasn't dust it was mud mud everywhere indoors as well as out right here at camp murray Washington where the tall grass and trees are now we pitched our first tent city in a couple of months the weather conditions became so bad we renamed the area swath Murray we were not only ankle-deep in mud it was more like a lake but retaining our Guardsman's unique sense of humor we renamed the area the venice of the prairie but material shortcomings would be overcome and living conditions would improve as the scope the pace and the seriousness of the training intensified slowly an army was taking shape what had been at the start of mobilization almost a ragtag assemblage of men were now crack unit ready for anything that they had experienced enough now not only to wage battle but to train others entering the service from the time of mobilization to the entry into combat the 45th Infantry Division had a fortune to a rather long period of time for training however due to poor training facilities and equipment and clothing this was badly needed in addition to this the division was called on to supply catteries to new divisions being formed from scratch this meant that we furnished many noncommissioned officers and officers to help form these new divisions the time therefore was well spent in training and Retraining and assisting the formation of other divisions we underwent about two years of vigorous infantry training in the United States at various posts some of which was pure hell 50 miles speed marches and many days and the maneuvers of sleepless day and nights eventually that training paid off as we got into combat we were in excellent physical shape we knew our business and although the many months of training were monotonous and hard we realized after we got into combat that there was a real purpose in the training which we had received of course once you're overseas in combat the necessity and validity of a good training program is demonstrated not only in the training will save lives it also is an element to success and victory however there was a period when we didn't have adequate replacements a lot of these people really didn't have the training and how to load a fire a rifle hollow handle a grenade how to take care of the personal self the reinforcement of troops in action is necessary and basic to any war while the National Guard due to their early mobilization and long months of training were well conditioned and up to battle standards the new men coming in mostly draftees were under trained and in many cases not prepared for combat I can recall getting some reinforcements up at nine o'clock at night next one and they were dead we didn't even have a chance to record their names this should never be actual combat goal was still to come to most Americans war was not only unwelcomed but unthinkable constant troopa new bring on a large scale under all kinds of conditions and on all types of terrain is the order of the day but we were not uninformed the headlines were full of Hitler and Mussolini strutting about posturing raising clenched fists smiling their humorless smiles of trial and the Japanese were so many years so far removed from us we're making an indelible body impression upon Asia but all of this was but a distant rumbling nobody could attack us and if the unthinkable ever did become a fact retribution would be swift in September 1941 was a station on the island of Luzon in the Philippines a member of another National Guard unit 194 thank battalion I had transferred in at Fort Lewis taking a reduction in rank and was back to private again the we had no inkling of course at this time that that world war two was virtually upon us and that very shortly we would be down on the time and subsequently of members of the infamous death march on December the 5th 1941 little did we know that Pearl Harbor would be attacked in two days after we had honed our unit into a battle sharp organization 160 1st infantry loaded from these very same tracks at North Fort Lewis for a destination that would eventually leave it lead us to the South Pacific [Music] yesterday it's 7 7 1941 a date which will live in states america suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces empire goodbye dear I'll be back in a year but the bombs falling over Pearl Harbor abruptly changed the time to now that year would stretch into two three four and five years the lessons learned in the Arizona desert in the Georgia swamps and on the shores of New Jersey would come to life in fearful proportion and the deserts of North Africa in the swamps of the Philippines and on the shores of North the nation's peacetime investment and mobilization had resulted in the most powerful military organization in all of history the training that we had in the National Guard before and even after we were mobilized was very important in getting this combat ready did the mobilization pay off here is what general jakob l Devers commanding general of the army ground forces had to see without the 18 divisions and the special troops provided by the mobilization of the National Guard in 1940 in 1941 the victorious army of the United States could not have been organized trained and committed to battle as soon as it was we were a new outfit in combat nevertheless our whole division acquitted itself well did the mobilization pay off Robert T Patterson Secretary of War during World War two looked at it this way 18 National Guard divisions fought in every action in which the army participated in Africa Asia and Europe they made a brilliant record on every fighting front proving once more the value of the Train citizen soldiers in December of 1941 we've been mobilized for about a year when the Japanese hits Pearl Harbor we were ready then we were in pretty good shape my outfit was in action before Corregidor fell actually before the Coral Sea bath the final reward was to be victory but victory was not to be gained without cost over 185,000 national guards before wounded or killed National Guard units 1 148 Presidential Unit Citation seemingly almost overnight the army mushroomed into a fighting force of millions short of qualified officers to both trained and lead the new units that were being formed it was desperate for leadership over 75,000 National Guard and listed paths were there for commission aid Lee filling the leadership void the highest award this country can bestow on a soldier the medal of honor was awarded during World War Two to fourteen members of the National Guard for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty that mobilization so long ago is now but a memory but the performance of those citizen soldiers who reported for duty in late nineteen forty and early 1941 and who did not get to be back home in a year will never be forgotten the 18 National Guard divisions all infantry saw action in every battlefield of World War two from Massachusetts the 26 the Yankee division northern France Rhineland Ardennes Alsace Central Europe from New York State the 27th the New York division central pacific western Pacific Ryu cue from Pennsylvania the 28th the Keystone division Normandy northern France Rhineland Ardennes Alsace and Central Europe from the District of Columbia Maryland Pennsylvania and Virginia the 29 the blue and gray division Normandy northern France Central Europe a lot of Vietnam of the company were used as Cadbury's to form other units and a lot of us stayed together a lot of a state to get it cleared through combat from Georgia North Carolina South Carolina and Tennessee the 30th the Old Hickory division Normandy northern France Rhineland our dens all sass from Alabama louisiana and mississippi the 31st the dixie division New Guinea southern Philippines western Pacific from Michigan and Wisconsin the 32nd the red arrow division papua new guinea southern philippines and blues on from Illinois the 33rd the Prairie division New Guinea news on everyman do that when he returned he would belong to the best unit in the united states army from iowa minnesota north and south dakota the 34th the Red Bull division tunisia naples foggia Anzio from kansas missouri and nebraska the 35th the santa fe division normandy northern France Rhineland I'll Denzil fast Central Europe from Texas the 36th the Texas division Naples fujiya Anzio Rome Arnold southern France Ardennes Alsace Rhineland for a year I think the first six reason was one of the most important part of the Italian campaign and European campaign in fact they had perceived probably as many medals and commendations a zinnia the division in World War food from Ohio the 37th the [ __ ] I division northern Solomon's Luzon from Indiana Kentucky and West Virginia the 38th the cyclone division New Guinea southern Philippines use off from california and utah the 40th the sunshine division Bismarck Archipelago southern Philippines Guzan from Idaho Oregon Montana at Washington the 41st the sunset division New Guinea southern Philippines Guzan from Connecticut main Rhode Island and Vermont the 43rd the winged victory division Guadalcanal New Guinea northern Solomon's news on in the following months in prison camp I our main thought was continuously of food and I used to think very frequently of of home and being back in Oregon and being able to hunt and fish it will from every state and territory in the youth 48 air observation squad african theater european theater agency when i first joined the Air National Guard back in 1938 to be part of the great aviation adventure the words integrity dedication patriotism were mostly words when I retired 40 years later I realized that these vital words and shaped my life from New Jersey and New York a forty fourth Infantry Division northern France are denville shots Rhineland Central Europe from Arizona Colorado New Mexico and Oklahoma the 45th the Thunderbird division Sicily naples foggia and leo southern France Ardennes Alsace Rhineland Central Europe after having jumped off on an attack towards Munich I received an urgent radio message to proceed immediately to the Dachau concentration camp to seize it seal it off and let no one in or out perhaps what General George Patton said about the Thunderbirds of the 45th Infantry Division embodies the spirit the devotion and the commitment of every National Guard unit which fought in World War two or Nazi baptized in blood your fame will never die the 45th division is one of the best if not the best in the history of American Arms the country had faced the most frightening threat to survival in its history but this country which did not want war proved itself because of mobilization to be able to face up to war and thus survive those who fought in that war with the youth of their time 300,000 citizen soldiers who left those they loved begs to serve their country most of them did not come back in a year some never returned the exploits of those National Guardsmen mobilized in 1940 and 1941 are now part of history but they extend beyond history or their deeds are forever imprinted in the hearts not only of those who serve but of those who were served and who continue to be served by their national guard but ever you need to go but when i get back i'll be your fam and friends and we BBQ south side of town goodbye don't gorgeous [Applause] [Music]