South Dakota National Guard Federalized for World War I

 by Duke Doering

      By August 5, 1917 all units of the South Dakota National Guard were mobilized at their local armories or in state military camps, and were actively recruiting up to full wartime strength while conducting local patrols to defend against suspected German saboteurs.

      In fact, the entire membership of the National Guard of the United States was drafted into federal service for World War I. After war was declared in April 1917 National Guard units were first called into federal service by President Woodrow Wilson under the militia clause of the Constitution.

      In 1917 rules for activating National Guardsmen were quite different than they are today.  Guardsmen could not be deployed overseas as militia since the Constitution stipulated that the militia could only be used to “execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection, and repel invasions.” To circumvent this restriction, the Army’s Judge Advocate General determined that it would be necessary to draft individual Guardsman into federal service, thus severing his ties to the state militia and freeing him for service overseas.

      Just over 379,000 Guardsmen were drafted in 1917, more than doubling the size of the U.S. Army with the stroke of a pen.  1,576 of these draftees were from the South Dakota National Guard.  The South Dakota National Guard at the time had units in Canton, Pierre, Sioux Falls, Brookings, Parker, Howard, Webster, Mitchell, Redfield, Lead, Rapid City, Lemmon, Aberdeen, Yankton and Ipswich.

     Despite the fact that the United States military would swell to over 4 million men during the war, the brunt of the fighting in the trenches in France would be borne by the National Guard. All 18 National Guard divisions served overseas as part of the 43rd division American Expeditionary Forces; 12 of the 29 divisions that saw combat were from the Guard.

    You are invited to hear Army Brigadier General Ted Johnson (SDNG ret) of Rapid City speak to the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group on Saturday January 10, 2015, at the Western Dakota Technical Institute, 9-11 am.   

      He will talk about his experiences directing the Guard through the largest call up of SDNG forces since WWII.  More than 7,200 troops were deployed to support the War on Terror.  He is the only general officer in the SDNG ever to command a combat unit: the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2010 to 2011.