Return to Communications & News > National Guard Magazine

Guard Roots: Maine
Part of a Monthly Series

FOLLOWING A LEADER
A professor turned soldier who held the Union flank at Gettysburg still inspires the Maine National Guard

By Bob Haskell
March 2009

The ghost of a Civil War hero still dominates and defines the Maine National Guard.

His name is Joshua L. Chamberlain. More than 145 years after he found fame at Gettysburg and 95 years after his death in 1914, Chamberlain remains the state’s foremost citizen-soldier—even though he had little direct impact on the Guard as it existed then or as it functions today.

But not everyone agrees about the extent of his influence.

Maj. Gen. Bill Libby, the Pine Tree State’s adjutant general and a fulltime Maine Guard soldier since 1976, believes his force still benefits from Chamberlain.

“Joshua Chamberlain is a pre-eminent example of a citizen-soldier,” Libby says.

Indeed, the Army in October 1983 published a field manual, FM 22-100, about leadership that featured Chamberlain as the ideal leader. Chamberlain also was a key figure in Michael Shaara’s Civil War novel The Killer Angels, which spawned the movie Gettysburg.

On the other hand, retired Maj. Gen. Earl Adams, a former Maine adjutant general, correctly points out that Chamberlain never actually served in the Guard. In addition, his record as commander in chief for the four years that he was Maine’s governor, 1867 to 71, was not all that remarkable. But that may be because there wasn’t very much to command.

“The volunteer militia’s lowest ebb occurred during 1865 to 1877,” writes Michael Doubler in I Am The Guard, his 2001 history of the Army National Guard. “Exhausted by the bloodiest war in American history, men were not interested in
voluntary military service.”

There When Needed

Chamberlain was, however, ready to serve when he believed the Union needed him. He left his post as a professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to join the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment as a lieutenant colonel in 1862, serving as second in command.

He commanded the regiment during its heroic stand at Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Six times the 20th Maine held off Confederate attacks. Knowing the unit lacked the ammunition to repel a seventh, he ordered a counterattack with fixed bayonets. The 20th charged down the slopes and into the startled Confederates, breaking their attack and holding the Union line’s critical left flank.

Chamberlain later survived a near-fatal wound at Petersburg, Va. He was brevetted to major general and received the Confederate infantry’s formal surrender at Appomattox, Va., in April 1865.

He left the service after the war and returned to Maine where he was elected governor before serving as president of Bowdoin from 1871 to 1883. He received the Medal of Honor in 1893 for his actions at Gettysburg.

Libby and Adams do concur on one point. People who talk about the Maine Guard invariably come to the name Joshua Chamberlain. But his shadow looms large over a military organization that scarcely resembles the one that he knew.

The Maine Guard’s history officially begins in 1820 when the northeastern province that was formerly part of Massachusetts became the State of Maine as part of the Missouri Compromise.

The militia in the Royalist Province of Maine, however, dates back to December 1636 when the Guard was born in Massachusetts. It responded to Indian conflicts in York and Wells in 1692. Maine also furnished about 6,000 men to Massachusetts units during the Revolutionary War.

Militia units were not actively engaged outside of the province during the War of 1812 when many Maine communities were destroyed or occupied by British troops. After statehood, the Maine militia served with federal troops in 1839 during the bloodless Aroostook War, a boundary dispute with Britain over control of the upper St. John River Valley that was settled peacefully.

But beyond that, the Maine militia was largely inactive until the Civil War, when its ranks swelled with volunteers, like Chamberlain, eager to help preserve the Union.

Maine was “generally unprepared at the start of the Civil War,” according to historical reports. Still, the state furnished 33 infantry regiments, three cavalry regiments, eight field artillery batteries, seven companies of sharpshooters, 70 coast artillery companies, 30 companies of unassigned infantry and six companies of coast fortifications.

But none would be more famous than the 20th Maine. Its lineage lives on in the 133rd Engineer Battalion.

In 1893, a revision of the military law changed the designation from Maine Volunteer Militia to National Guard, State of Maine.

The Maine Guard’s pace quickened considerably as the 19th century came to a close. Maine Guardsmen served in virtually all of the century’s major conflicts since.

The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery deployed to Cuba during the Spanish-American War, according to the Brief History of the Maine Guard. The 2nd Maine Infantry Regiment served as a security force in Texas during the Mexican Border campaign in 1916.

The 2nd Maine mobilized for World War I in 1917 and was reorganized and redesignated as the 103rd Infantry Regiment. It became part of the 26th Yankee Division from  Massachusetts and saw action in France.

The possibility of U.S. involvement in World War II led to the mobilization of the Maine Guard in February 1941. The 103rd Infantry, the 152nd Field Artillery and the 86th Brigade joined other New England units in the 43rd Infantry Division that saw extensive action in the South Pacific.

Other Maine units served in later conflicts. An anti-aircraft artillery battalion helped provide defense for New York City during the Korean War. The 2nd Battalion, 20th Armor served at Army posts in Kentucky and Florida during the 1961 Berlin Crisis.

Many Maine Guardsmen volunteered for duty in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era. And small units, including headquarters of the 286th Supply and Service Battalion and the 3620th Transportation Detachment, were sent to the Middle East for Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. The winds of war again blew the Pine Tree State’s way after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“As of 2008, the Maine National Guard has deployed 17 units and groups as well as dozens of individuals to Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to the Brief History.

More than 1,600 Maine soldiers have served since February 2003. Some have been military police personnel, who have taken the place of the 1st Battalion, 152nd Field Artillery, which has passed into history, reflecting a national trend prompted in part by the end of the Cold War.

“There has always been a direct correlation with the needs of the country and the way that the National Guard has looked,” explains Libby, an artillery soldier. “The artillery battalion in [northern Maine] has gone away, and Maine now has military police personnel. Artillery is not needed as it once was. Military police is a better fit for the requirements in this country and overseas.”

The 133rd Engineer Battalion has been the biggest Maine outfit to deploy during the war against terror. More than 500 soldiers served in Iraq from December 2003 to February 2005. Three soldiers were killed and 35 wounded during combat operations, according to a recommendation for the Army Meritorious Unit Commendation.

Members of that battalion have since served in Louisiana during the Hurricane Katrina relief mission and in Arizona and California to support Southwest border security during Operation Jump Start. The 133rd is set to return to Iraq next year.

The battalion was originally an armor group until the Maine Army Guard was reorganized during the late 1960s, also because of changing needs by the military. The 133rd was converted and redesignated as an engineer battalion in 1967.

Maine Air Guard Power

The Air Guard took root in Maine seven months before the U.S. Air Force, with its reserve components, became a separate service Sept. 18, 1947. Now, the 101st Air Refueling Wing in Bangor is Maine’s major Air Guard unit.

The Maine Air Guard also includes the 243rd Engineering Installation Squadron and the 265th Combat Communications Squadron.

Headquarters of the 101st Fighter Group at Camp Keyes in Augusta, Maine, was the first Maine Air Guard unit organized. It was federally recognized in February 1947, according to a Maine Air Guard history. Subordinate units, including a fighter squadron and weather station, were located at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor, Maine.

The group was reorganized into a “wing-base” in 1950. Maine Air Guard members were called to active duty for the Korean War from February 1950 until February 1952.

Maine’s jet fighter era ended in 1976 when the unit was redesignated as an air-refueling wing and began converting to KC-135 Stratotankers.

The 101st has been conducting air-to-air refueling operations ever since. It is now the major Air Force command in Maine where two Strategic Air Command bases were once located.

The wing became the first Air Guard unit to host a tanker task force in August 1979. It began leading the Northeast Tanker Task Force in September 1994. The wing was asked to organize and lead the task force to support operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom in January 2003.

The wing now maintains a Northeast Tanker Task Force air-bridge office in Bangor that schedules all of the air-bridge refueling missions for Air Guard tanker units in the Northeast, says Lt. Col. Deborah Kelley, a wing spokeswoman.

It’s a busy operation. Most of the refuelings take place over Newfoundland. The air bridge pumped 98.6 million pounds of fuel during 2,333 missions in fiscal year 2008. The “Maineiacs” flew about 13 percent of those missions.

They are as highly regarded within the Air Guard as Joshua Chamberlain is renowned in Maine.

“They do a remarkable job, and they have a remarkable reputation,” Libby says. “It reflects well on the entire Maine National Guard and the state as a whole.”

Bob Haskell is a Falmouth, Mass.-based freelance writer who recently retired from the Maine Army National Guard.

 Email This Page       Printer Version