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Commentary: The Army Reserve turns 92

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (USTCNS) --- The Army turns 225 years old next month and the Army National Guard traces its history back more than three and a half centuries. So the Army Reserve - at 92 -- is the youngest of the Army's three components.

But if that leads you to think the Army Reserve does not have much history, think again.

Army Reserve history includes places like the Meuse-Argonne, Chateau-Thierry, Bataan, the Pointe de Hoc and Utah Beach in Normandy. Reservists were also present at Metz, the Umurbrogol Pocket on Peleliu, the Urasoe-Mura Escarpment on Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir (Yes, the Army was there with the Marines at "Frozen Chosin") and Chu Lai. More recently, Dhahran, Mogadishu, Tuzla and Pristina have been destinations for Reserve members.

Army Reserve history includes people like Charles Lindbergh, Harry S. Truman, Desmond Doss, Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Kissinger, Hiroshi Miyamura, John Page, and Celia Adolphi.

The citizen-soldiers of the Army Reserve have amassed plenty of history in the last 92 years and they add more to that history every day.

The U.S. Army Reserve traces its beginnings to April 23, 1908, when Congress passed Senate Bill 1424. This act authorized the Army to establish a reserve corps of medical officers. The Secretary of War could order these officers to active duty during time of emergency. This was the nation's first federal reserve.

Four years later, a provision of the Army Appropriations Act of 1912 created the Regular Army Reserve, a federal reserve outside the Medical Reserve Corps authorized in 1908. The first call-up of the Army Reserve came in 1916 as a result of tensions between the United States and Mexico caused by the Mexican bandit, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, and the subsequent punitive expedition after Villa led by Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing.

For a time, it looked like there might be a war between Mexico and the United States and for the first, but not the only time, the Army looked to its citizen-soldiers for added strength and expertise.

This first mobilization was an important development for the Army Reserve-and a great shakedown for the Army's reserve components prior to America's entry into World War I-as was another piece of legislation that was passed in 1916.

The National Defense Act of 1916 established, by statute, the Officers Reserve Corps, the Enlisted Reserve Corps and the Reserve Officers Training Corps. One year later in 1917, the initial Reserve organization, the Medical Reserve Corps merged into the Officers Reserve Corps.

On April 6, 1917, America entered World War I. By the end of June 1917, there were 21,543 officer reservists and 35,000 enlisted reservists. Less than a decade earlier, there had been no reservists.

The Reserve's importance to Army medicine, its original specialty, was particularly striking: Reserve medical officers outnumbered Regular Army doctors more than four to one. Of the Army nurses on active duty on April 6, 1917, almost half (170 out of 403) were Reservists.

As the Army expanded for World War I, so did the Army Reserve. In all, about 80,000 enlisted Reservists and almost 90,000 officer Reservists served in the First World War. They served in every division of the American Expeditionary Force, whether those divisions were Regular Army, National Guard or National Army. The Reserve doughboys of 1917 and 1918 -- among whose ranks were America's Ace of Aces Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker and Col. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. of the 1st Infantry Division-set the standard of dedicated service that Army Reservists have followed ever since.

Since World War I, Army Reservists-or Organized Reservists as they were called until 1952 -- have taken part in every major American conflict of the 20th Century. They have been in the forefront of other types of crises as well. During the Great Depression, the Army Reserve provided the majority of the Army officers running the Civilian Conservation Corps camps, an important New Deal program that provided much-needed jobs for unemployed young men.

As World War II neared, the Army Reserve was mobilized again to provide the junior officers needed to build the huge Army necessary to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Almost one of every four Army officers-more than 200,000 of the 900,000 Army officers during the war-was an Army Reservist.

Two wartime studies give an indication of how important the Reserve contribution was to the Army. A 1944 War Department study in one Regular Army infantry division found that 62.5 percent of the battalion commanders, 84.5 percent of the company commanders and 30.3 percent of the platoon leaders were reservists.

Another survey noted that between Sept. 1, 1943, and May 31, 1944, 52.4 percent of the Army officers killed in action and 27.7 percent of those missing in action came from the Organized Reserve.

The Army Reservists of World War II included men like Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. He was the first general to land on a Normandy beach on D-Day and received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led the first raid to strike back against Japan and also received the Medal of Honor. Lt. Col. Strom Thurmond crash-landed in a glider with the 82nd Airborne Division into Normandy. Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder led Rudder's Rangers up the Pointe du Hoc cliffs on D-Day. Another officer did his assigned duties well, but whose greater claim to fame would come later, was Capt. Ronald Reagan.

Five years after victory in World War II, the Army Reserve was desperately needed again.

In 1950, Army Reserve men and women were called up to rebuild the dangerously weak U.S. Army during the Korean War. Almost a quarter of a million Army Reservists were called to active duty to serve in Korea, at home and elsewhere in the world during the Korean War. Among the Army's Korean War Medal of Honor recipients were Army Reservists Staff Sergeant Hiroshi Miyamura and Captain Raymond Harvey.

Miyamura received his Medal of Honor after his release from a Chinese POW camp in 1953, by which time it was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who presented it to him. Harvey received his earlier, in 1951, so it was given to him by a fellow Army Reservist, President Harry S. Truman.

World War I veteran Truman joined the Organized Reserve in 1920, rose to the rank of colonel and retired from the Army Reserve in 1953.

During the Berlin Crisis of 1961, some 60,000 Army Reservists were called to active duty. The Cold War stayed cold in Berlin but not on the other side of the world in Vietnam. Although the Johnson administration opted for no large Reserve call-ups for Vietnam, thousands of individual Army Reservists did serve in Vietnam, as did 35 USAR units deployed there in 1968.

USAR soldiers took part in the aftermath of the 1983 Grenada and 1989 Panama operations, but the next major crisis took place in the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991. More than 84,000 Army Reserve citizen-soldiers provided combat support and combat service support to the Army, at home and in the combat zone, during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM.

Among the hardest hit Army units of the conflict was the USAR's 14th Quartermaster Detachment, victim of a SCUD missile attack on Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Thirteen men and women from this unit were killed in the attack.

Since 1991, the USAR has been engaged almost constantly around the world, in combat, humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. Reserve citizen soldiers went to northern Iraq following the Gulf War, provided hope in Somalia from 1992 to 1994 and went into Haiti in 1995 to restore democracy. More than 13,000 have been mobilized for the Bosnia operations JOINT ENDEAVOR, JOINT GUARD and JOINT FORGE.

In 1999, Army Reservists supported the NATO operations against Yugoslavia in a number of ways. One of these was by conducting the refugee operation at Fort Dix, N.J., assisting more than 4,000 men, women and children displaced from their homes in Kosovo. That same year, more than 7,200 USAR soldiers went to Central America to assist the people there to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. Also in 1999, USAR soldiers took part in peacekeeping operations in East Timor and in Kosovo, following the end of hostilities there. As the 20th Century ended and the 21st began, Army Reservists continued to serve in the Balkans.

Today, the Army Reserve is the Army's essential support force. Without the Army Reserve, the Army cannot perform its missions. Thus, unlike its earlier "for emergency use only" history, today's Army Reserve is used every day. Army Reservists can be found wherever the Army operates at home and abroad. The area of operations for the Army Reserve is global.

The reason is simple: many critical types of support units and capabilities are either exclusively or primarily in the Army Reserve. The Army Reserve has all of the Army's training divisions, railway units, enemy prisoner of war brigades and chemical brigades. It has most of the Army's civil affairs, psychological operations, medical and transportation units and a large portion of its public affairs, engineer and power projection assets, too.

As vital as are Army Reserve units -- 1,600 units located in 1,100 Army Reserve Centers all across America-the individual men and women of the Army Reserve are even more important. These dedicated citizen-soldiers carry their civilian-acquired skills and expertise with them to meet the needs of the Army and the nation, then return home with even greater skills and expertise to make their communities better. They volunteered to be "twice the citizen" and they are.

Today's Army Reservists, with a 92-year legacy of outstanding service to our country, are committed to ensuring the Army Reserve remains the Army's indispensable component in the new millennium and that the United States Army continues to be what it is-the best Army in the world. (FROM ARMY NEWS).

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