The Boys Are Called: Carlisle Responds to the National Guard Mobilization of World War I

One hundred years ago, in its first major projection of military power overseas, the United States was marshalling the force that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed would “make the world safe for democracy.” Eventually, some two million Americans would enter combat in the “Great War” in Europe, helping to break a four-year stalemate and drive the Allied cause to victory.

Among those two million troops were about 150 young men from the Carlisle area who had joined the effort with Company G, the local unit of the Pennsylvania National Guard. On September 10, 1917, these citizen-soldiers marched from their armory on North West Street to the railroad station at High and Pitt. Seven weeks before, they had been mustered into federal military service. Now they were headed off to Army training camp in Georgia, and from there to the blood-soaked battlefields of the Western Front. With a mix of melancholy and pride, a Carlisle newspaper described their progress through town:

Amid the “goodbye, good luck, God bless you” of thousands, with the sound of a saluting cannon ringing in their ears, while on one side the Carlisle Band played the popular “Grey Mare” tune and on the other a great mass of persons stood in silent tribute, with here and there a scattered personal farewell or the suppressed sobs of a mother, or sister or some other loved one, the men of Company G last evening went toward the flaming sunset in the west, on the first stage of their journey to France to battle for the freedom of the world.^[1]

This outpouring of support for war-bound Guardsmen was not unique to Carlisle. Eighteen of the 43 divisions that constituted the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) came out of the National Guard, and their mobilization inspired patriotic ceremonies in hundreds of communities across the country.^[2] Comparable public events – honoring both departures and homecomings – became common in later wars that had sizeable participation by the National Guard: World War II, the Gulf War of 1990-91, and recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The impetus for this patriotic display lies, in part, with the distinctive nature of the National Guard. In contrast to their Regular Army comrades, Guard members are full-time participants in community life when not called away on federal service. They represent every segment in society, from factory workers and store clerks to doctors, lawyers, and executives. When America’s leaders need immediate, limited military action, the task properly falls to the country’s permanent, active-duty armed forces. But protracted combat usually requires reinforcement from the National Guard (and other “reserve” elements of the military). As a consequence, when the United States goes to war, a wide swath of the populace feels it has a tangible stake in the outcome. That logic came to the fore in 1917, when the people of Carlisle rallied behind their “boys” as they prepared for battle.

From Local Militia to National Military Force

Carlisle’s Company G was formally established in 1879, as part of a reorganization of Pennsylvania’s Civil War-era militia under a single, statewide divisional command. The company took the nickname “Gobin Guards” in honor of Union General John Gobin (who later served as lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania). The unit was part of the 8th Infantry Regiment, headquartered in Harrisburg – one of fourteen regiments in a consolidated Pennsylvania National Guard division.^[3]

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Guardsmen still upheld the militia tradition of amateur soldiering. They bought their own rifles and uniforms, while their armories essentially functioned as social and recreational centers. Public perceptions of the Guard were dominated not by demonstrations of military prowess but by parades and fancy-dress balls.^[4] On rare occasions, state authorities were compelled to call out Guard units to help suppress labor unrest (most famously during the Homestead steel strike near Pittsburgh in 1892).^[5]

During the Spanish-American War, some 200,000 Guardsmen volunteered to augment America’s small full-time Army. Afterward, they returned home in high public regard. However, problems they had faced in being mobilized into federal service prompted Congress to pass the landmark Militia Act of 1903. This legislation marked the start of the official conversion of the Guard from a domestic constabulary to an effective instrument of foreign policy. Besides formalizing the National Guard as America’s primary military reserve, the act instituted routine oversight by the War Department, provided funding for much-needed equipment, and mandated new federal standards for unit organization and training.^[6]

The Guard welcomed its new role as a legitimate arm of national defense. Further enhancing its status was the National Defense Act of 1916. Passage of the act was prompted by agitation over military preparedness, in the face of the growing threat from Germany. The act tightened federal control over the Guard, especially in wartime, and introduced federal pay for training camps and weekend drills.^[7]

A Test on the Mexican Border

Under the aegis of the War Department and Congress, the National Guard evolved and matured during the first years of the twentieth century. As one historian noted, the Guard made the “difficult transition from being a club, emphasizing fellowship and recreation, to becoming a public institution, turning citizens into real soldiers.”^[8] The first test of a newly relevant Guard during the World War I era came not from Germany, however, but from Mexico.

In early 1916, civil war broke out there. Pancho Villa, one of the revolutionary leaders, sought to solidify his position by launching a raid into New Mexico on March 9. Seventeen Americans were killed, and Villa fled back across the border. In response, President Wilson directed the Regular Army to launch a “punitive expedition” to track Villa down inside Mexico. (Leading the force was a veteran of the western Indian wars, General John Pershing, who went on to command the AEF.) After two more raids in May, Wilson called up 5,000 Guardsmen from Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to block further incursions into American territory. By June, Wilson decided on a general mobilization of the Guard in order to address the continuing threat (and, some scholars say, to test the ability of the reformed Guard to meet the demands of a national emergency). By the end of July, 112,000 Guardsmen – including Carlisle’s Company G and the rest of the Pennsylvania division – were in place along the U.S. side of the border.^[9]

As military adventures go, the deployment was underwhelming. Constitutional ambiguities over the employment of militia kept Guard units from joining what amounted to an invasion of Mexico. “State soldiers, in the hallowed volunteer tradition, traveled to the border expecting to engage and whip unruly Mexicans and then go home.”^[10] But the only enemies the Guardsmen encountered were heat, dust, insects, and boredom. Settling into a chain of makeshift camps, they did their best to keep busy with rifle practice, close-order drill, and maneuvers out in the desert scrubland.^[11] A bit of doggerel from a company of Pennsylvania National Guard engineers caught the prevailing mood of cynicism:

With reconnaissance roadwork and pipelines

We were busy from morning till night

Though our rifles got rusty and crusty

Our picks and shovels kept bright^[12]

In their free time, many Guardsmen took advantage of the brothels and saloons that sprang up around the camps. Among certain government officials, such behavior raised “a specter of innocent American boys overwhelmed by the forces of alcohol, sex, and immorality.”^[13]

Public opinion, though, was generally favorable toward the border mission and the Guardsmen dispatched to carry it out. Secretary of War Newton Baker praised the spirit and speed of the Guard response.^[14] Despite logistic shortages that plagued the Guard, critics acknowledged the value of the experience in exposing Guardsmen to the challenges of mobilization, deployment, and service under rugged, real-world conditions. A Carlisle native returning from service with the Regulars in Mexico echoed that positive assessment. “Old Carlisle can sure feel proud of Company G,” he wrote in a letter to the Sentinel. “I have seen a lot of Militia and their camps in the last five years but considering everything, the men, their appearance and their camp I think Co. G is the best company of Militia I have ever seen.”^[15]

In a remarkably candid editorial, the Sentinel alluded to problems that had once bedeviled the National Guard, “way back in ancient history. Discipline was lax. Drunkenness was passed over with a reprimand, armories became the scene of beer parties, the officers cared not for the morale of the men. Their positions were looked upon as places of petty power or political preferment… The inevitable result was a distinct lowering of the tone of the guard.”^[16] Now, on the Mexican border, the Guard had been redeemed.

In January 1917, the border mission was winding down – Villa had eluded capture – and Company G was soon to be on its way back to Carlisle. A Sentinel editorial evoked the public mood: “The town is proud of the part its soldier representatives played in this crisis in the nation’s relation with Mexico.” The paper went on to urge the community to mount a huge welcome celebration, so that the Guardsmen “will be made to feel compensated for their hard work of the last seven months for us.”^[17]

That opportunity came on February 26, when the Guardsmen finally returned home. Eight thousand people thronged the streets of Carlisle, alerted by fire bells and factory whistles. As the train carrying Company G pulled into the station, the Sons of Civil War Veterans fired a cannon salute from the grounds of Dickinson College (one block away from the unit armory). In addition to local bands and fire companies, the ensuing parade featured impersonators of George Washington and Pancho Villa, the latter hemmed in by two burly Guardsmen. The welcoming speech, by Dickinson’s Professor Leon Prince, mingled the mundane with the sublime. The professor said, in part:

Some mean scamp may have tried to get your job or steal your girl, but your girl stood by you, and your job – or a better one – awaits your reappearance. You left us a company of citizens… your return a company of soldiers… It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t ‘get Villa.’ You were never given a chance to ‘get Villa.’ It isn’t what you did, but what you stood ready to do, that makes the man in us respond to the man in you… Mother Cumberland who sent you forth with her benedictions and her prayers, hails your safe and honorable return with glad thanksgiving, and welcomes back again to the fold of her citizenship you who have never been absent from her heart.^[18]

The celebration was far from over. Gratitude and affection poured out from every corner of the close-knit Carlisle community. Churches honored the Guardsmen at receptions and Sunday services. The Fraternal Order of Owls feted them at a luncheon. The Chamber of Commerce, the Spanish-American War Veterans, and the proprietor of the Wellington Hotel all sponsored formal banquets. The YMCA offered every Guardsman a free six-month membership. And the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America gave an inscribed gold watch fob to six of its members who had served on the border with Company G.^[19]

Public Support as the Boys Prepare

As it turned out, the Carlisle Guardsmen enjoyed only a brief respite from soldierly duties. On April 6, 1917, Congress met the president’s request for a declaration of war with Germany. This was followed by the authorization of a military draft (benignly labelled “selective service”) on May 18. In another move to expand the country’s manpower pool, Guard units nationwide were ordered to fill up their ranks to full wartime strength by July. For an infantry company like Carlisle’s, that meant an increase from 100 or fewer men to 150.^[20]

Recruiting efforts swung into high gear. Guardsmen took every opportunity to promote favorable perceptions among the public. In Carlisle, they marched in formation to a packed Memorial Day service at Grace United Brethren Church. They also assumed a prominent role in flag-raising ceremonies at two local factories (one of which included a large contingent of Dickinson College students).^[21] “Automobile parties” of Guardsmen toured Cumberland County making patriotic speeches and displaying military paraphernalia from the Mexican border. “Huge signs asking men to ‘come in out of the draft’ and exhorting girls not to walk with a ‘slacker’ [appeared] in every part of the town.”^[22]

Guard recruiters did their best to exploit the advantage of long-time hometown support. Those local roots – combined with the pressure of the draft – significantly enhanced the popular appeal of the Guard. “Guard commanders struck a chord with prospective recruits by pointing out that those joining the Guard would serve with friends and families from local communities rather than fighting with total strangers in draftee units.”^[23] From Dickinson College, an increasingly militant Professor Prince reappeared in print to endorse that point. Writing to the Sentinel in June, he warned young men that the nation was facing “a crisis of imminent and towering peril… You will probably have to go sooner or later.” Better to go now, with the local unit, he advised, than to wait for the random call of the draft. Prince assured readers that he was not urging a course of action to which he himself would be averse. Helpfully, he pointed out that he had offered his own service to the nation as a military chaplain as soon as war was declared. He added, without a trace of irony, that he had also offered “to provide in full for the support of the personal attendant I should take with me and whose assistance I could not do without.”^[24]

On July 3, in preparation for war with Germany, President Wilson ordered the entire National Guard into federal service. The first of two waves to be mobilized, on July 15, included Company G and the rest of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Then, on August 5, the whole force was to be formally drafted into the Army.^[25]

On the eve of the Guard call-up, a Sentinel editorial expressed the depth of public sentiment toward this momentous event: “The members of Company G in entering upon military life tomorrow may assuredly feel that they have the full support, confidence and admiration of the people of Carlisle… The prayers of the whole town will accompany them through all their journeys, and universal will be the feeling of joy when they return home safe once more.”^[26]

In July and August 1917, near-daily newspaper coverage reveals the pride and affection with which Carlisle residents viewed their local citizen-soldiers. Two days after Company G mobilized and began training at its armory, the Sentinel reported, “It was fun for a few minutes this morning to see the drilling of the ‘awkward squads’ by the sergeants and corporals. Some of the boys are learning the drill execution rapidly, however, and promise to become excellent soldiers in this respect.”^[27] When Army inspectors rejected a few Guardsmen for service, due to bad teeth, the editors of the Sentinel came testily to their defense: “We have been impressed for some time with the undue regulations which are made to apply in the selection of the army. It seems like the willful rejection of much good material at a time when the voluntary enlistments in the National Guard and the Regular establishment are not sufficient to fill up the ranks to the desired strength.”^[28]

In the midst of a heat wave, Company G soon decamped from its stifling armory and “capture[d]” a “beautiful cool spot” to continue its preparations for war: the Carlisle fairgrounds.^[29] This would have been an ideal location to conduct parades, maneuvers and other public displays of martial capability. Other units of the 8th Regiment, based in Harrisburg, drew thousands of visitors to band concerts and ice cream socials at the site of their own training camp on City Island.^[30] A letter to the Sentinel asked, “They are doing it everywhere, why not here before leaving?”^[31] Curiously, though, the fairgrounds remained off-limits to civilians for the duration of the company’s stay.

The churches of Carlisle became a common venue for demonstrating community support. Shortly after mobilization, for example, everyone in Company G was invited to attend Sunday morning services at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, adjacent to the armory. The sanctuary was decorated for maximum patriotic effect. A small tent was erected on a raised platform, and “an electric fan kept a cluster of the flags of the nation in constant waving motion.” After the sermon – highlighting Joshua as a soldier – the Women’s Missionary Society presented each Guardsman with a carnation and a pocket edition of the Gospel of John.^[32] The Guardsmen were honored that evening in a special service at Dickinson College. The presiding pastor offered eloquent praise, with a distinctly local touch:

You can be assured that your names will go down in the history of Carlisle and the county, that your names will be recorded just the same as those of the men who went out from here to fight in the Revolutionary war, the war of the Rebellion and the Spanish-American war… As you go out remember that the honor of your country rests with you.^[33]

A week later, Carlisle’s Allison Methodist Episcopal Church paid tribute to local Guardsmen with a special service that featured a selection of hymns by “the Company G quartette.”^[34]

Residents of Carlisle also had opportunities to promote the welfare of Guardsmen directly. The local Red Cross chapter solicited donations of toothpaste, combs, writing tablets, and other personal items – or the cash to buy them – so it could assemble “comfort kits” for the departing “soldier boys.” Among the contributors, duly recognized in the Sentinel, were “Eckels Drug Store, 150 cakes of soap… Wagner’s Hardware Store, 3 pen knives, 8 pairs scissors… [and] Miss Kate Dale, one dollar.”^[35] On the Dickinson campus, Company G held a festival to raise money to buy extra rations, over and above the official Army allotment. They brought in over $700, which a breezy Sentinel reporter noted “reminds one of the old fire company stunts when they used to clean up $1000.”^[36] Another Guard project combined recreation, fund-raising and public relations. The Company G baseball team challenged the local powerhouse, the Lindner Athletic Club, with proceeds going again to benefit the unit mess fund. Bellicose rhetoric surrounded the game; in “a boldly fought pitchers’ battle,” Company G beat Lindner 2-1.^[37] In a follow-up contest, the Sentinel joked that Lindner was “coming back for revenge and the soldier boys will have their first ‘battle.’” The paper went on to urge people to “turn out and give the boys a good send off, or buy a ticket as they can make good use of every dollar they get.”^[38]

Starting on the Road to War

August 1917 saw the first local Guardsmen head off for the next step on their way to war. To augment its personnel contribution to the war effort, Carlisle had raised a small National Guard truck company during June and July. This unit left for Army training camp on short notice, on Monday, August 6. Sunday evening, about two thousand people – alerted that morning by their church pastors – assembled at Dickinson for an impromptu farewell ceremony. In lieu of a formal parade, the Carlisle Band led a brief “walk-around” on campus. The Sons of Civil War Veterans fired their cannon again; the crowd sang hymns; and a college headmaster offered homely guidance, “admonish[ing] the young men to bring honor on their families and to remember their mothers.” The next morning the Guardsmen were escorted to the train station by their comrades in Company G. Hundreds of local citizens gathered there to see them off. “There were some quite pathetic scenes,” said the Sentinel, “and there were too many moist eyes to count them… Camera enthusiasts could have gotten a pretty picture when a baby of about ten months old was twice lifted to a [train] car window for ‘daddy’ to kiss and embrace.”^[39]

On September 10, Company G was set to join the rest of the 8th Regiment troops as their train passed through Carlisle on the way to camp in Georgia. The night before, a Sunday, four to five thousand people gathered on the Dickinson campus for a patriotic and religious program in their honor. Each Guardsman received a copy of the New Testament, donated by the churches of the town through the efforts of the Carlisle Ministerial Association. The Red Cross handed out its donated “comfort kits.” As the president of the Ministerial Association pointed out, the kits had a significance beyond personal hygiene: “[They] are filled not only with material things but with the love and prayers of everyone in this community; they are a symbol of our faith not only in you soldiers but in our cause.”^[40]

The next morning, in a show of camaraderie, the men of Company G marched from the fairgrounds to the train station, accompanied by Carlisle’s first contingent of draftees. The Chamber of Commerce had made extensive arrangements for a parade to honor their departure. Factories and businesses were asked to close two or three hours in advance. A half hour before the start, a general fire alarm alerted residents to take their places in the parade or along the street.^[41] Seven thousand showed up. The parade kicked off with the town burgess and Chamber executives in the lead. Escorting Company G were the Carlisle Band and three local veterans’ groups. Further back in the ranks came the band and cadets of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The following day, the Sentinel reminded its readers, in no uncertain terms, of the lasting import of the event. “The Sentinel published a complete roster of Company G in Monday evening’s issue,” said the editors. “Preserve a copy,” they ordered.^[42]

Twenty miles away, the Harrisburg Telegraph saw fit to cover what it described as Carlisle’s “monster ceremony for the National Guard and National Army.”^[43] The Telegraph also recorded a touching footnote to the departure of Company G. Two days before they left, the Guardsmen were guests of honor at the country estate of local shoe magnate John Lindner, whose son had recently enlisted in Company G. There, on the eve of real military training – and one step closer to combat in Europe – “the bunkers and hazards of the golf course were used for entrenchments while the men worked out problems in the war game.”^[44]

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

By mid-September 1917, the entire National Guard division of Pennsylvania had arrived at Camp Hancock, Georgia, outside the city of Augusta. The camp was one of sixteen hastily set up across the South to handle the post-mobilization training needs of more than 400,000 Guardsmen now incorporated into the U.S. Army. With their departure from their hometowns, the logistics of news-gathering in the pre-electronic era brought an immediate drop in local coverage.

For the first two months, newspapers like the Carlisle Sentinel tried to keep community ties alive through periodic, first-hand reports of camp life. A sergeant from Company G was said to be fattening up “a very fine goose” for Thanksgiving dinner.^[45] Meanwhile, his buddies were trying to catch pet snakes.^[46] One notable evening was enlivened by a performance from “one of the southern negroes in the mess shack… He sure could dance some and for a while he had the whole bunch in an uproar.”^[47] Observing camp conditions overall, a visiting colonel declared approvingly, “This is heaven compared to El Paso [site of Company G’s Mexican border service]. Since coming south, I have smelled liquor on the breath of only one man. The drink situation and the matter of disorderly houses are both under control. The folks at home have no cause for worry.”^[48]

A greater cause for concern emerged at the hands of the federal government. The Selective Service Act which had allowed the Guard to be drafted into the Army on August 5 “stipulated that Guard units were to retain their identities ‘so far as practicable.’” However, this provision was largely ignored, as the War Department quickly reorganized Army formations to better meet the demands of mechanized warfare in Europe.^[49] By early October five Pennsylvania regiments, including the 8th, ceased to exist. Company G and most of the other companies in the 8th were folded into a new, much larger regiment, the 112th.^[50] Then, as replacements from throughout the Army gradually entered its ranks, Company G lost its character as an exclusively Carlisle-based unit.^[51]

Most Guardsmen on the ground in Georgia probably took the transition in stride. In a letter to his brother, reproduced in the Sentinel, Carlisle’s Emory Bretz endorsed the move to a new regimental training area: “We like the new camp very much. We have board floors and electric lights in our tents. This is quite an improvement over the other camp. When we arrived here we were given a warm reception by the men. We have fine officers, and the men treat us very good. The mess couldn’t be better, and we get all that we can eat. They have a very good band in this regiment.”^[52]

Inevitably, Company G began to fade as a focus of local sentiment. Civic leaders increasingly undertook programs that benefitted all service members. Especially prominent was the local portion of a nationwide campaign to raise money for the YMCA, which operated recreation centers at Army camps at home and abroad. The Sentinel heartily approved of the Y’s work, which “keeps the fellows out of trouble by filling their spare hours with useful and enjoyable occupations.”^[53] As Christmas approached, the Carlisle chapter of the Red Cross sought cash donations to enable it to send 400 holiday packages to every soldier and sailor from town. Handkerchiefs, magazines, fruitcakes, and other contents were meant to “[exemplify] in small measure the love and esteem in which those who have gone are held by those who remain at home.”^[54]

In December, collective ties between Pennsylvania communities and their Guardsmen in training suffered a final blow. Citing a need for domestic censorship, the Army effectively cut off journalistic access at Camp Hancock. Hometown reporters could no longer go straight to individuals or specific units for news. All information was now controlled at division headquarters, where it would be doled out only when and if a “counter-espionage” officer deemed it appropriate.^[55]

By early 1918, press coverage of Carlisle Guardsmen at Camp Hancock was limited to occasional excerpts from letters submitted by family members. Company G – as a distinctive military organization with local roots – had essentially disappeared from public discourse. By the time they and the entire Pennsylvania division finally landed in France, in May 1918, they were simply soldiers of the AEF, doing their duty in the “war to end all wars.”

Unheralded and largely unnoticed, the boys of Carlisle were now in combat. Private correspondence between them and their families obviously flourished. From time to time, too, individual stories of valor and loss found their way back to the local papers. The Sentinel, for example, carried accounts of 30 soldiers – wounded, captured, killed, or missing in action – who can be identified as part of the group of Guardsmen that had first marched through town and boarded the train for Georgia.^[56] But by mid-1918, the old Company G no longer served as an inspiration for community support, as it did in the months immediately before and after mobilization.

During that anxious time in 1917, the call-up of the Guard brought painfully home the stern reality of war. It helped condition “a normally pacifistic-minded America” to the need for conscription and military intervention in Europe.^[57] And, in honoring the departure of their “boys,” the people of Carlisle – like those in hundreds of other communities – took to heart the noble cause that drew their fellow citizens away.