The National Guard was excused from active deployment during the Vietnam War, perhaps because the threat of leftist insurrection had so much political potential during the 1960s. Almost unchecked, demonstrators marched against the police, students took over universities, and urban neighborhoods were burned to the ground. It wasn’t until Ohio’s Kent State in 1970 that the National Guard decided to stand up to the growing menace.
America was at its most divided, of course, during its two civil wars: the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War itself, both of which bloodied the fields and streams with unspeakable horror.
The South Dakota National Guard began in 1862 in response to the Civil War, says SDNG historian Duke Doering: “The governor then was Governor Jayne, and the Civil War had started, you see, and all the troops from Fort Randall and that were in South Dakota were called to the Civil War. So there was really no defense here. So that’s how the South Dakota Guard started, Governor Jayne wanted a couple military units here.”
Since then, the SDNG has been deployed to protect the Mexican border against the armed attacks of Pancho Villa. During World War I, Doering says, the vacuum created by National Guard units sent to the European front again left the homeland vulnerable to insurrection, in need of a four-unit force in South Dakota as part of a national Precautionary Measure Service:
Even worse, “The German sympathizers in Canada, whom there were many, and there were many in the Dakotas, the German sympathizers in Canada had sabotaged bridges, railroads, and waterways and other targets. And the United States was clearly remembering of that, and that’s why they activated these four units in South Dakota. Company I out of Rapid City of the 4th Infantry was sent to Pierre to guard the railroad bridge there. Company K out of Lemmon and Company L out of Aberdeen were sent to Mobridge to guard the railroad bridge at that location.”
You are invited to hear Duke Doering talk more about the SDNG’s history on Saturday, December 8, 2018, at EAFB’s South Dakota Air and Space Museum in Box Elder at 9:00 am, a free public event sponsored by the South Dakota Veterans Forum.
