Item Detail
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30971
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0
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1
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English
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The National Guard on the Mexican Border in 1916
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Utah and the Great War : The Beehive State and the World War I Experience
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Salt Lake City, UT
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University of Utah Press. Copublished with the Utah State Historical Society.
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5-24
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"On June 18, 1916, less than ten months before the United States declared war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson activated all National Guard units from the forty-eight states, including eight hundred Utah guardsmen, for duty along the border with Mexico. The organization, transportation, and duty in southern Arizona proved to be, in the words of Utah historian Richard Roberts, “a preparatory and hardening period for the catastrophic fighting of World War I.” While guards-men kept watch along the border, regular army forces under the command of General Jack Pershing, soon to be named commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, crossed into northern Mexico in a futile pursuit of Pancho Villa and his revolutionary forces who had carried out a deadly raid on the New Mexican border town of Columbus. Pershing and other regular army officers were appalled at the poorly equipped, ill-trained, and often poorly led and undermanned National Guard units, and instituted policies to strengthen their effectiveness. Utah guardsmen learned much during their nine-month tour of duty along the Mexican border. Ever present in their minds was the possibility of being sent to the battlefields of France. That possibility became a reality when the U.S. National Guard units were activated after the declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917. [Editor]