The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution by Charles H. Harris III, Louis R. Sadler (review)

In The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution, Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler examine the mobilization of the National Guard during 1916 and its deployment along the United States/Mexico border in response to various cross-border raids from Mexico. Their work addresses a gap in the historiography of the early-twentieth-century U.S. military that developed as a result of scholarly focus on the so-called Punitive Expedition into Mexico (1916) and World War I. The mobilization occurred at the end of the former event and before the latter. Through extensive use of local newspapers, Harris and Sadler provide a chronology of each state’s mobilization and their troops’ deployment along the border. The authors’ chronological style is useful but allows little room for historical analysis.

Harris and Sadler’s thesis is that the call-up of National Guard units was an important dress rehearsal for mobilization during World War I because it allowed the U.S. military to learn from its logistical mistakes and to experiment with new weapons and equipment. The 1916 call-up also allowed the guardsmen to train extensively to improve their physical condition and tactics and let officers learn how to manage large-scale military maneuvers at the regimental and division levels. It was the beginning of shifting the guard from its various militia traditions (such as electing officers and minimal training) to a professional military force that could easily integrate itself into the regular army. The strength of The Great Call-Up is its detailed chronology of events, which scholars can use to tease out subjects for future investigation.

However, the decision “to give the states their due by treating the guard in each of the major concentration points” is a major weakness (pp. 6–7). It results in a presentation of similar issues shared by various guard units that could have easily been dealt with as thematic subjects with historical analysis. Instead, the reader is presented with repetitive discussions of logistics, training, and adjustment to camp life. The only difference in each chapter is the unit being examined. It is clear that Harris and Sadler’s decision to focus on locations of deployment is the result of the inclusion of almost every news article concerning mundane events such as women from local communities providing food or entertainment for the guardsmen. Their account is a blow-by-blow presentation based on newspaper reporting.

Their failure to tease out important issues that need historical analysis leaves many questions open for further study. For instance, community reception varied based on whether units were white or African American. Other than reporting the resulting racial conflicts, this subject is not treated with any analysis. Another topic that should be examined is the political relations between the states and the federal government. Indeed, for professional military historians there is a wealth of topics that could be explored further. Harris and Sadler claim that their work is a synthesis, but a synthesis entails analysis. The Great-Call Up is a work that should be on the shelf as a reference for those studying U.S. military history during the 1910s because of the detailed reporting that it provides, but the book is most useful as a place to identify topics that need additional study.