By Professor Barry Stentiford
Throughout the twentieth century, the South Carolina National Guard served the state as the organized militia during peacetime. However, during the World Wars, the South Carolina National Guard fought as part of the Army of the United States and was unavailable to perform state missions. During those times of turmoil, South Carolina created a new organized militia for local service. Although the service of this little-remembered force is small compared to that of the National Guard on distant battlefields, it gave South Carolina security and provided service when disaster struck or order was threatened during the wars.
During the First World War, South Carolina created what it called the Reserve Militia to replace its National Guard. It was authorized a strength of 1,187 men, but maintaining that number proved difficult. These militiamen served their state without pay, with few pieces of equipment, and the force was disbanded and forgotten soon after the war ended. In the year prior to the entry of the United States into the Second World War, the National Guard of the entire nation entered federal service for what was supposed to be a year of training. The subsequent entry of the United States into the war meant that the National Guard remained on active federal service as part of the army until after the end of the war. South Carolina, along with most other states and territories, created a new organized militia to respond to labor and racial unrest, natural disasters, or even invasion, providing service to the state during the war.
The South Carolina Defense Force was established by an act of the General Assembly, signed by Governor Burnet R. Maybank on 21 March 1941. Commanding the new force was Brigadier General James C. Dozier, a Medal of Honor recipient from World War, who had served as South Carolina’s adjutant general since 1926. The new force was authorized four regiments and one separate battalion. Each battalion had four companies, but with an authorized strength of forty men in each company, the battalions were small. Units were organized in eighty towns. Finding recruits proved relatively easy. By the end of June, 1941, the new South Carolina Defense Force filled more than half of its authorized strength of 6,553 men. The bulk of men in the State Defense Force were too old for the draft. The State Guardsmen averaged forty years of age for officers and thirty-four years for enlisted men. Of these, about three quarters of the officers and almost half of the enlisted men had previous military experience, usually in the National Guard or during World War I.
As befitting the original state to attempt secession before the Civil War, state law stipulated that the uniforms for this new state militia be of Confederate Grey. These were replaced in 1943 with an olive drab uniform similar to that worn by federal soldiers, although with the required patches indicating state rather than federal standing. Another change was the name of the force. In January, 1944, in line with War Department suggestions, the force took the name “South Carolina State Guard,” although the legend on the shoulder patch worn by members of this and later incarnations would continue to read “South Carolina Defense Force” into the 1990s.
Originally, the War Department issued .30 caliber rifles, plus associated slings, bayonets, ammo, and spare parts, for use by state forces, but demands to arm allies led to a recall of the rifles in July, 1942. To replace the rifles, the federal government issued shotguns, submachine guns, and gas grenades to the State Guard. Each South Carolina company got seventy-five shotguns and four submachine guns, indicating the size of companies had increased. Although State Guardsmen resented losing the rifles, shotguns were better suited to the more likely missions State Guardsmen were to face, such as racial or labor unrest. In September of that year, the Judge Advocate General ruled that using shotgun slugs against enemy soldiers would violate international rules of warfare, but none of this type of ammunition was ever issued to State Guardsmen, and commanders ensured none of the men carried any of their own. Still, this concern shows that state military officials took seriously the possibility that the State Guard would have to oppose enemy raiders or invaders.
The pre-war National Guard had received most of its training funds from the federal government, but due to the war effort, the federal government was unable to provide much assistance to the State Guards in the early years of American involvement in the war. Training of the State Guard became more regular as the war years progressed. South Carolina’s troops held their summer encampments at Camp Jackson and at the Army Air Forces field at Myrtle Beach. At these encampments, they trained for holding the coastline against an invasion with the idea that federal soldiers from Camp Jackson would relieve the State Guard after the initial thrust. But federal authorities saw invasion as unlikely, especially after 1943.
However, the South Carolina State Guard performed missions more closely tied to the war. In February, 1943, a detachments of three officers and thirty-one enlisted men were called out to aid local police in protecting ration books in Charleston. The same mission would occupy nine men that October. Responding to airplane crashes became one of the most common missions for the wartime State Guardsmen. On no less than eight occasions, aviation disasters brought out the State Guard. Four men from Winnsboro protected a crashed P-39 at Buck Lick in Fairfield County in February, 1943. Crashes near Winnsboro, Walhala, and Fort Lawn similarly required the services of State Guardsmen. State Guardsmen were also called out to perform long-term sentry duty at key bridges in the summer and fall of 1943. Detachments of Guardsmen from Beaufort protected the Whale Branch bridge, while men from Georgetown protected the Sampit, Black, Pee Dee, Waccamw, and the North and South Santee River bridges. The Charleston company was responsible for protecting the Cooper and Ashlet River bridges.
Despite these missions connected with the war, most missions performed by the State Guard were more similar to the normal peacetime missions of the National Guard. The first use of the State Guard came before the United States entered the war, when Guardsmen protected property following the explosion of at a small factory in Orangeburg, in May, 1941. Two units from Greenwood patrolled streets on 16 April 1944 after a tornado struck their town. Three officer and twenty-seven men from the Hampton unit spent the afternoon of 16 November 1944 searching for a lost woman, who was found in the early evening. The Clemson and Seneca companies were needed on 28 and 29 January 1945 to keep three thousand spectators away from a train wreck involving twenty-two freight cars.
Two companies performed a somber duty on 13 April 1945, when they formed an honor guard for the train carrying President Roosevelt’s body as it passed through South Carolina on its way to Washington from Warm Springs Georgia, where the President died.All State Guard units from Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Kingstree were mobilized on 17 September 1945 because of a hurricane threat. An officer and nine enlisted men from Seneca spent two days in April 1946 searching for the body of a boy who drowned in the Seneca river, which they found. The Clemson unit worked at the scene of a fire on Clemson University in August, 1946, where they removed equipment from the ruined Chemical Building. The last official use of the State Guard came just before Christmas in 1946, when sixty enlisted men and an officer were needed to patrol downtown Greenville after a gas explosion destroyed a laundry.
Responding to civil unrest, a common employment of the South Carolina National Guard during peacetime, also employed the State Guard on numerous occasions. The first such use came in September 1944, when the Lake City unit was activated on the 16th and the 23rd to assist police in restoring order. As a precaution, the Florence company was also mobilized. The sheriff of Georgetown employed the local company all afternoon until midnight on 19 November 1944 to disperse what the adjutant general described as a “mob” beyond city limits on US Highway 701.
The Hampton Country State Guard unit, which was Headquarters Detachment, 2nd Battalion, 4th regiment, provides some insight into a South Carolina State Guard unit late in the war. They trained one evening a month for ninety minutes, although prior to 1946 they had trained weekly. Instruction usually consisted of a lecture, which may reflect that this was a headquarters unit rather than a line unit. The detachment was authorized seven officers, and fifteen enlistedmen, although it seldom carried a full complement. Unlike most units in South Carolina, the Hampton County unit reported in June 1946 that it had lost no men to the federal armed forces since the organization of unit.
The enlisted men in the Hampton unit were a mixed lot, with a varied amount of prior military experience. One forty-four-year-old man had taken ROTC for three years, one sixty-two-year-old sergeant, who died in 1944, had no prior military experience. A fifty-year-old man had served on the Mexican Border in 1916. These men were generations older than their counterparts in the army, and even older than members of the former National Guard. The Hampton detachment was one of the first units of the South Carolina State Guard of World War II to disband, when orders for its demise came on 14 February 1947.
For their efforts, the State Guardsmen got little in the way of tangible rewards. Most of the men who served in the State Guard trained one evening a week for no pay. Pay came only for active service, which was based on standard army pay rates. Members did receive ribbons for longevity, red for one year, red and white for two, and red, white, and blue for three years of service. Few men would remain in the force to earn the three-year ribbon though. The high demand for labor in the wartime economy as well as federal conscription led to annual turnovers in men approaching one hundred percent. The state estimated that by June 1946, the State Guard had lost 170 officers and well over six thousand enlisted Guardsmen due to federal inductions. However, the South Carolina State Guard maintained its strength through a means unusual in a 20th century American militia. Although state law set the minimum age for enlistment in at seventeen, many members were as young as fourteen, although they were not legally enrolled. Evidence indicates that units carried these underage boys on the roles, and they drilled and trained with their units, but formal enlistments were not carried out on them.
Service in the State Guard, unlike service in the National Guard, did not count for longevity pay if the former State Guardsman later entered federal service, and state ribbons could not be worn on the federal uniform. Still, prior State Guard service did benefit conscripted soldiers. In the greatly expanded wartime army, anyone with prior military experience quickly rose above other conscripts, and most men who served in the State Guard before being drafted became corporals or sergeants immediately upon entering the federal military. Still, the constant loss of men to federal conscription placed a heavy burden on commanders and the entire State Guard structure.
By late 1946, Congress had authorized a new National Guard. The men in the National Guard who had entered federal service in the year prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor had all either been individually discharged or had died in service. The units that returned to the states from federal service were empty lineage. State staffs had to recruit a create a whole new National Guard, meaning that the State Guard was retained for several more months. Some of the younger and fit State Guardsmen were eligible, if they so desired, to transfer into the National Guard, but for many, their military service to the state came at an end with the disbandment of the State Guard. The last unit of the wartime South Carolina State Guard furled its colors on 3 June 1947. During its existence, the South Carolina State Guard of World War II gave state authorities the means to deal with crises without the need to ask for federal forces.
Sources:
Notes 1 William W. Moore, Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the Fiscal Year 1918 (Columbia: Gonzales & Bryan, State Printers, 1918), pp. 3-7. 2 . Section 2, Act No. 54, An Act to establish a South Carolina Defense Force (State Guard) approved 21 March 1941. See also Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the Period Beginning July 1, 1941, and Ending June 30, 1942 (Columbia: Printed Under the Direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 17. 3 . Ibid., pp. 18-21. 4 . Ibid., p. 23. 5 . Major General John F. Williams, Chief National Guard Bureau, “Report to the Secretary of War on the Activities of the State Guards for the Year Ending October 31, 1941,” p. 2. 6 . Ibid. 7 . Dozier, Report of the AG for 1941-1942, p. 23. 8 . Stephen D. Johnson, and Gary S. Poppleton, Cloth Insignia of the U.S. State Guards and State Defense Forces (Hendersonville, Tenn.: Richard W. Smith, 1993), pp. 104-105. 9 . James C. Dozier, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the period beginning July 1, 1942, and ending June 30, 1943 (Columbia: Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 49. 10 . Dozier, Report of the AG 1942-1943, p. 59. 11 . Dozier, Report of the AG 1942-1943. pp. 32-33. 12 . James C. Dozier, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the period beginning July 1, 1943, and ending June 30, 1944 (Columbia: Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 12. 13 . Dozier, Report of the AG 1942-1943, p. 33-34. 14 . Dozier, Report of the AG for 1943-1944, p. 11. 15 . Williams, “Report for the Year Ending October 31, 1941,” p. 10. 16 . Dozier, Report of the AG 1943-44, p. 14. 17 . James C. Dozier, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the period beginning July 1, 1944, and ending June 30, 1945 (Columbia: Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 14. 18 . Ibid., p. 17. 19 . Dozier, Report of the AG for 1944-1945, p. 18. 20 . James C. Dozier, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the period beginning July 1, 1945, and ending June 30, 1946 (Columbia: Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 14. 21. Ibid., p. 16. 22 . James C. Dozier, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of South Carolina for the period beginning July 1, 1946, and ending June 30, 1947 (Columbia: Printed under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing General Assembly of South Carolina), p. 65. 23 . Ibid., p. 66. 24 . Ibid., pp. 13-14. 25 . Ibid., p. 16. 26 . One lieutenant colonel, two majors, two captains, and two first lieutenants. 27 . Records “S. 192119 Hampton County State Guard enlistment, attendance, duty records, 1940-1947.” South Carolina State Archives, Columbia. 28 . Ibid. 29 . Ibid., SCSG General Orders no. 99 (14 Feb 1947) mentions the deactivation of Hampton’s unit. Also, Gwen R. Rhodes, The History of the South Carolina Army National Guard, 1670-1987 (Columbia: South Carolina Army National Guard, 1988), p. 76. 30 . Annual Report, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, 1946. pp. 306-308. 31 . Report of the AG for July 1 1942 through June 30 1943. 32 . Annual Report, Chief National Guard Bureau, 1946, Appendix G. 33. Rhodes, South Carolina Army National Guard, p. 76.