吃瓜头条

War Stories: National Guard

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Since the inception of the Dale Center, its faculty fellows and graduate students have researched and wrote about the history of the militia and the National Guard.  To capture the history and changing nature of the modern National Guard, in 2019 the Dale Center partnered with 吃瓜头条's award-winning Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage.  This foundational project, known as 鈥淲ar Stories: Preserving National Guard Voices,鈥� began by first capturing and chronicling the documents and oral histories of the 吃瓜头条 National Guard and then made them publicly available for researchers, students, and teachers.  It was this project that proved the desperate need for a central hub for the history of the National Guard in the United States, which resulted in the founding of the the Center for the Study of the National Guard (CSNG) at 吃瓜头条 in 2024.  The Dale Center, through the efforts of Dale Center Founding Director Dr. Andrew Wiest* and Faculty Fellow Dr. Kevin Greene, is proud to be a foundational partner to CSNG and continues to support its mission through the efforts of our faculty and students.

*To read Dr. Wiest's blog post about how "War Stories: Preserving National Guard Voices" got started, please . 

The Need for a National Research Center on the National Guard

In the twenty-first century the U.S. National Guard has undergone an epic transformation from a status as largely 鈥渨eekend warriors鈥� and disaster first responders, to a kinetic battlefield force in combat of all types. This change in the role of the Guard has formed a quiet revolution in the way that the United States fights its wars. It also has transformed the relationships between the Guard and the local communities it has hereditarily served.

Written large, this story of transformation needs to be understood as a matter of international strategy and warfighting for leaders who still make decisions about deploying the Guard overseas. Written small, this story of transformation needs to be understood to write the history of our brave National Guard men and women into the epic of America at war.

Despite its over 380-year history of service in every American conflict, the National Guard is the one major component of the armed forces without an all-encompassing archive and research center, leaving its story all-too-often ignored, scattered, and underrepresented. Quite simply, conducting research of this nature on the 54 state and territorial National Guard organizations requires travel to a minimum of 10 archives and over 60 different research sites. Further, the quality of archival holdings within the Guard across the 54 organizations ranges from non-existent to quite substantial, depending on each state and territories approach to data collection and preservation. The National Guard and the 54 are long overdue for its own archival and research hub.  That hub is now being created at 吃瓜头条 with the inception of the Center for the Study of the National Guard.

The Mission of The Center for the Study of the National Guard

The CSNG's mission is to create and apply knowledge to facilitate research and scholarship on the National Guard.  The CSNG will:

鈼� Locate, identify, collect, and preserve the documentary history of the National Guard

鈼� Plan, execute, transcribe, and preserve the oral histories of members and veterans of the National Guard

鈼� Serve as a centralized repository to facilitate research and publication on National Guard history

鈼� Evolve to meet the changing needs of the National Guard and the scholarly community

To learn more about the Center for the Study of the National Guard, visit

鈻� To help the Dale Center preserve the vital stories of 吃瓜头条 National Guardsmen and -women, consider making a donation to our fund #2483. "Sharing 吃瓜头条 Nation Guard Stories Endowment": .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^{Photo Information:} 

^{Note: The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.}

^{Top: Soldiers with Troop C, 1st Squadron, 98th Cavalry Regiment, 吃瓜头条 Army National Guard, perform an area reconnaissance at the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center as part of an Exportable Combat Training Capability exercise on July 28, 2015.} 

^{Bottom: Sergeant Dustin R. Cooley (right), of Company B, 1st Battalion, 155th Combined Arms Regiment, 吃瓜头条 Army National Guard, and Staff Sgt. Pearl R. Allen, of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1-155th CAB, assist evacuating a Bay St. Louis, Miss., resident in need of medical care in 2008. Cooley, of Gulfport, Miss., and Allen, of McComb, Miss., were serving on state active duty as part of Operation Secure Magnolia - Hurricane Ike, on the 吃瓜头条 Gulf Coast.}