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Guard saw south border duty in 1916
1st federal mobilization sought 'Pancho' Villa
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Burea
Washington -- The situation along the Mexico border was chaotic, even bloody, and the president of the United States reacted by calling out the U.S. Army and all 158,664 National Guard members to deal with the situation.
The president wasn't George W. Bush. It was Woodrow Wilson. And the goal of the largest military call-up since the Civil War wasn't to keep out hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. Instead, Wilson in 1916 was after one man, Mexican bandit and revolutionary Francisco "Pancho'' Villa, whose forces had raided the border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.
The U.S.-led military incursion into Mexico ended without catching or killing Villa, but it marked a coming of age for the National Guard, which in the following year was shipped in its entirety to France to fight under Gen. John. J. Pershing, who also had led the Mexico operation.
The impressive deployment along the border 90 years ago, and the presence of a few hundred guardsmen and women for the past few decades as part of the effort to block illegal drugs, shows that using the Guard in Mexico operations as Bush has ordered this week is not new.
The Army National Guard claims to be the oldest military branch in the country, tracing its history to 1636, when the first militia units in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were formed. Those militia units, sometimes ill-trained and operating under elected officers, played key roles in the Mexican War in 1846, and the Civil War.
Ordinarily, the Guard operates under the command of the states' governors. But that changes when it is summoned for federal service, under the command of the president.
That's one way the pursuit of Villa completely changed the Guard. As the official history of the Georgia National Guard notes, "It is important to Georgians because it was the first mobilization and deployment of National Guard Units for federal service and an end to the old militia system of recruiting volunteer units of rank amateurs for federal service as it was done for the Mexican War of 1846-1848."
Some California units had actually been called to the border area earlier, in 1914, in response to previous trouble as Mexico was caught up in revolutionary fighting that sometimes spilled into the state.
While Wilson federalized the Guard in 1916, he didn't provide them with anything. The states had to provide the troops with all their supplies. "This was a significant departure from the Army's normal practice of providing all necessary equipment to the National Guard while in federal service,'' the Illinois Guard's official history says.
Once down along the border, the Guard force didn't see much action since Villa proved elusive, and Pershing relied mainly on his Army regulars in what was the last U.S. Army cavalry campaign.
The California Guard's official history notes that the boredom and financial hardship led to demands from some of the men that they be sent home. Many of them were mustered out by late 1916, as the Villa campaign wound down.
The deployment coincided with the passage of the National Defense Act of 1916, legislation that also transformed the Guard by setting up uniform standards for training and unit size and by requiring that all enlistees take a dual oath to obey their state's governor and the president.
The timing was fortuitous because in April 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. The regular Army was tiny, so Wilson again quickly called up the entire National Guard.
"It is not easy to assess the accomplishments of the National Guard on the border,'' the California Guard's history says.
"The presence of 150,000 state troops discouraged further depredations on American soil by Mexicans. Its numbers over-awed the Mexicans clamoring for war with the United States. By the end of August 1916 it was clear the National Guard had served its purpose,'' it says.
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