World War I and the Federal Presence in New Mexico
Military Service
The little town of Xivray [France]—it was a town once but then [September 1918]
only picturesque ruins—was located about three hundred yards out in “No Man’s
Land,” and used only as an observation post where five men of the 356th [Regiment]
were posted to guard against surprise attacks. . . . On one trip there I [Ashley
Pond] was accompanied by Marion Barker of Las Vegas of the 356th and to our
surprise we found one of the five guards was a Pueblo Indian from Laguna, while
the sergeant was also from New Mexico. So in that little out-post in “No Man’s
Land” that day, out of seven men, there were four of us from New Mexico.
Located ten miles east of St. Mihiel in western France, Xivray suffered total
destruction early in the war when overrun by German troops in September 1914. Its
recapture by the Americans began in late June 1918, and at the Battle of St. Mihiel in
mid-September the entire surrounding region—along a forty-mile front—returned to
allied control. The battle proved a turning point in the war, marking both the first
sustained use of aircraft in support of an infantry assault as well as the first tank attack in
U.S. military history, led by Colonel George S. Patton.
Victory at St. Mihiel permitted American Expeditionary Forces (AEF)
Commander-in-Chief, General John J. Pershing, to go on the offensive with the goal of
taking the war into Germany and capturing key railroad and supply depots. In waging the
Battle of Meuse-Argonne (September 26 to November 11, 1918), Pershing and U.S.
troops broke-through Germany’s defenses, which dealt a decisive blow to further
resistance and led to the armistice.
Soldiers from New Mexico fought in both of these final two battles of World War
I. For the New Mexicans assigned to the 356th Regiment, part of a brigade in the 89th
Division, their contributions earned high praise: General Pershing—and military
historians—rated the 89th the best of the National Army divisions within the AEF, and
one of the four best American combat divisions.
How did men from New Mexico get assigned to the 89th Division and fight in the
war’s last battles? To answer that question, it is necessary to look first at how the military
went from about 200,000 soldiers to more than four million between April 1917 and
November 1918.
During World War I, 17,251 New Mexico’s served in the military. The federal
government inducted 9,050 New Mexico men into the National Army. In addition,
another 1,600 served in the New Mexico National Guard, and just over 4,000 enlisted in
the Regular Army while approximately 1,225 joined the Navy and 25 became Marines.
Another 1,350 New Mexicans were in the military prior to April 6, 1917.
Collectively, New Mexicans served in at least twenty of twenty-nine combat
divisions of the American Expeditionary Forces (71 percent). Within these AEF combat
divisions, New Mexicans were present in five of the six Regular Army divisions (83
percent), eight of eleven National Guard divisions (73 percent), and seven of eleven
divisions of the National Army (63 percent). Among the AEF non-combat divisions, New
Mexicans served in four of fourteen and all were National Guard divisions (27 percent).
The dispersal of New Mexican across so many Army units stemmed from two
related needs: at stateside training camps, to bring divisions to their assigned strength of
27,000 enlisted soldiers; in France, to replace casualties.
Soldiers from New Mexico arrived in France in June 1917 and left Europe with
the final AEF contingent, departing in September 1919. In December 1917 New
Mexicans in the 41st Division were a part of one of the first National Guard divisions to
arrive in France. These 190 men from Roswell’s Battery A became part of the 146th Field
Artillery in the 41st Division, which comprised National Guard units from Washington,
Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New
Mexico, and the District of Columbia. Initially sent to Camp Green, North Carolina, in
August 1917, they were relocated within a month to Camp Mills, New York, and from
there shipped out to France between December and February 1918. Upon arrival, though,
the New Mexicans were reassigned as replacements troops to the 32nd Division (from
Michigan and Wisconsin). This unit saw the most combat among New Mexico’s National
Guardsmen: Château-Thierry and Aisne-Marne (mid-July to early August), St. Mihiel,
and Meuse-Argonne. Moreover, the 32nd Division had the highest number of fatalities
(3,028) of any National Guard Division.
Another fourteen hundred New Mexico National Guardsmen left the state in midOctober after completing five month’s training on the campus of the University of New
Mexico. The summer spent in Albuquerque was devoted to physical fitness and drill
because, aside from the Roswell Battery, only a very few of the men who served during
the Punitive Expedition continued with the state’s National Guard after demobilization.
On October 19, 1917 the New Mexico National Guard joined guardsmen of
California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado at Camp Kearny, near San Diego,
California to form the 40th Division. For the next nine months, until the end of July 1918,
the New Mexicans trained in several machine gun companies within the 143rd and 144th
Machine Gun Battalions. Other New Mexico Guardsmen were dispatched to duties in the
camp headquarters and or with the military police. The 40th Division’s convey sailed for
France on August 9, 1918 and began arriving on August 24. Immediately upon
disembarking, 11,000 members of the 40th Division were transferred as replacement
troops to fill vacancies created by casualties. These reassignments took New Mexicans to
a number of combat units.
A list of the officers (mostly lieutenants) reassigned from New Mexico’s 143rd
Machine Gun Battalion gives one a sense of the dispersal’s scope: three went to the
Regular Army’s Third Division; the 26th, 27th, 28th, 35th, 36th, and 37th National Guard
Divisions each received New Mexico officers. While no officer from the 143rd went to a
National Army Division, one was assigned to the Fourth French Army and another was
placed with the Air Service as an aerial reconnaissance observer. Enlisted guardsmen of
the 40th Division did serve as replacements in at least five National Army Divisions
seeing combat: 77th, 80th, 81st, 82nd, and 89th.
The remainder of the 40th Division performed supply and transportation duties as
well as served as military police in the 6th Depot Division in Bordeaux. The division
reassembled after January 1919 and prepared to sail home in March. They demobilized at
Ft. Bliss, Texas, in April 1919.
The newly created National Army trained the overwhelming majority of soldiers
during World War I. These men were drafted between September 1917 and November
1918 under provisions of the Selective Service (Draft) Act of May 18, 1917. Inductees
comprised 77 percent of the total troops in uniform during the war, over three million in
all. The first draft registration occurred on June 5, 1917, and over 30,000 New Mexican
men ages twenty-one to thirty (inclusive) signed up. In September inductions began, with
Bernalillo County seeing off the state’s first draftees on the 5th. Twenty-one countries
sent a total of 659 inductees that month and another 320 left in October. All were sent for
training to the newly opened Camp Funston in Kansas, which received 50,000 enlistees
by the end of the year, the largest number of inductees of any of the nation’s sixteen new
National Army camps.
At Camp Funston New Mexicans joined inductees from six other states—
Missouri, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Arizona, and South Dakota—to form the 89th
Division. Their training proved especially effective, which largely accounts for their
combat success. Also at Camp Funston were all the black inductees from throughout the
United States, including between twenty and thirty from New Mexico. These men made
up the all-black 92nd Division of the National Army.
Beginning in February 1918 and continuing monthly through June, a total of
about 5,000 New Mexicans received notice to report for military training. While some of
these men went to Camp Funston, the majority went to National Guard or Regular Army
training camps to fill out divisions to the required 27,000 soldiers.
In the summer of 1918 three additional draft registrations occurred, in June,
August, and September. In each of these the age range for inductees expanded. The final
call for registrants included all males between the ages eighteen and forty-five. Monthly
quotas for New Mexico increased slightly as well. The last of the state’s inductees
reported on November 7th and arrived for training at Camp McArthur, Texas (both a
Regular Army and National Guard training base) just as the fighting ceased on November
11. Along with all other inductees reporting after early September, they were quickly
released and the last ones were home by February 1919.
New Mexico’s Camp Cody, at Deming, served as one of the National Guard’s
sixteen training bases. Built to handle 44,959 soldiers, it housed the 34th Division. Threequarters of the 34th’s troops were from the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and
North and South Dakota. A quarter of the troops were inductees, including some from
New Mexico. The first of these draftees came from San Juan County in April 1918. By
May nearly all of New Mexico’s counties had sent inductees to Camp Cody, and a total
of 1,820 New Mexicans trained at the Deming camp. The 34th Division started arriving in
France on October 3. All troops were designated as replacements, but none actually saw
front line combat.
The armistice signed November 11, 1918 ended only one phase of World War I—
hostilities against Germany and Austria. The AEF had more than two and a half million
soldiers at the end of the war, including thousands of New Mexicans. They remained in
Europe for varying lengths of time, but the last troops to arrive, for example the 34th
Division from Camp Cody, were shipped back first. They began departing in January
1919.
An army of occupation, designated the American Forces in Germany, remained
throughout 1919, and the last of these troops did not leave for home until January 25,
1923. The 32nd and 89th divisions, both of which included New Mexicans as officers and
enlisted men, were two of only four non-Regular Army divisions assigned to the
occupation force. They did duty in northern Germany as part of the post-war occupation,
but General Pershing soon had the Regular Army assume full authority for the
occupation. The 89th began to depart France in late May, and the final troops boarded a
homebound ship on July 10, 1918.
Another part of the war took New Mexicans into Russia for over a year beginning
in the summer of 1918 to fight the Bolsheviks and prevent large caches of supplies and
munitions from falling into their hands. These soldiers were in the 85th National Guard
and the 8th Division of the Regular Army. They were assigned, respectively, to bases in
the Russian port cities of Archangel, on the White Sea, and Vladivostok, on the Pacific
Ocean. The incursion into northern Russia sent five New Mexicans to Archangel (today,
Arkhangelsk) for just over a year. These men were from Gallup, Hot Springs (today,
Truth or Consequences), Las Vegas, East Las Vegas, and Portales. Among the 15,000
U.S. troops occupying Vladivostok in 1918 and 1919 were at least five New Mexicans,
and it is likely that other soldiers from the state served there as well. In the first half of
1918, more than 400 inductees from numerous New Mexico counties were sent to Ft.
McDowell in San Francisco, which was near Camp Fremont, the training headquarters of
the 8th Division. It is possible some were shipped from San Francisco to Vladivostok in
the fall of 1918.
About 100,000 men decided a soldier’s life fit them and re-enlisted in 1919-20,
and “two-thirds of these enlistments came from small towns, where boredom was
probably keenest after they had seen ‘Paree.’” It is unknown how many New Mexicans
re-enlisted after World War I, but the number was surely low since local newspapers
rarely carried such stories.
New Mexico’s soldiers departed the state in great waves, sent off with their
town’s applause amid much fanfare. They returned in small clusters from demobilization
centers or hospitals. By early spring 1919, town parades gave way to family reunions. No
doubt most of New Mexico’s returning soldiers would have nodded their approved of
what a fellow soldier wrote upon arriving home in February 1919:
Though we have been through hell together and know that many times in the years
to come we shall miss the comradeship of the buddies and friends in our army days,
we are, after all, essentially a peaceful lot, quite ready to forget the shot and shell, the
gas and flame, and return, each in his own way, to the pursuits of civilian life, to win
our future laurels in the fields of peace.
Albuquerque Morning Journal. April 6, 1917. Pg. 1.
Hodgin, C.E. “War Service of the University of New Mexico.” University of New
Mexico Bulletin. No. 33. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico, 1919. pp. 2829.
Hodgin, C.E. “War Service of the University of New Mexico.” University of New
Mexico Bulletin. No. 33. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico, 1919. pp. 3233.
A Company Street, Camp Cody, Deming, NM. 000-186, John Trujillo Collection, Center
for Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.
On the Border, Camp Cody, Deming, NM. 000-186, John Trujillo Collection, Center for
Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.
A Birdseye View, Camp Cody, Deming, NM. 000-186, John Trujillo Collection, Center
for Southwest Research, University Libraries, The University of New Mexico.