Dogwood: A National Guard Unit’s War in Iraq

The United States was founded upon the martial reliance on militia system over the founding of a Regular Army.  The balance between the two institutions ebbed and flowed, beginning to change most meaningfully once America took its place on the world stage.  Most dramatically, though, the idea and function of the citizen soldier was transformed after the Vietnam War and the onset of the Revolution in Military Affairs.  Shedding its ‘weekend warrior’ image and much of its Pals Battalions feel, the National Guard became much more thoroughly integrated into the Regular Army.  The transformation of the Guard, and thus the American way of war, has been poorly studied and understood.  This paper will investigate the changes that befell the Guard, and the rocky and often bloody road to becoming a more kinetic force amidst the Global War on Terror.  Focusing on one battalion, the 150th Combat Engineers out of Mississippi, this paper will investigate the battlefield truth of the transformation of the US National Guard.

Andrew Wiest is University Distinguished Professor of History and the founding director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & History at the University of Southern Mississippi. Specializing in the study of World War I and Vietnam, he has served as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. This paper derives from his recently published book Dogwood: A National Guard Unit's war in Iraq (Osprey).

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