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ARMY RESERVE

A CONCISE HISTORY

Office of Army Reserve History

United States Army Reserve Command

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

ARMY RESERVE

A CONCISE HISTORY
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OFFICE OF ARMY RESERVE HISTORY

U.S. ARMY RESERVE COMMAND

The Office of Army Reserve History reports to the commanding 

general of the U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC) and has 

been in existence since 1992. The office provides advice and 

recommendations to the USARC commanding general and the 

leadership of the Army Reserve on Department of Defense 

and Army historical policy, operations, and developments, 

and exercises overall staff responsibility for military history 

programs within the Army Reserve community. The office is 

comprised of the director, Publications Section, Field Programs, 

the U.S. Army Reserve Historical Research Collection, and the 

National Museum of the Army Reserve. One of its functions is 

to write the official history of the Army Reserve. This history 

not only provides a comprehensive account of Army Reserve 

activities in peace and war, but also serves as an important 

tool in the on-going training of officers and noncommissioned 

officers in the profession of arms. The office prepares and 

publishes historical monographs and special historical studies 

on topics and events of historical significance to the Army 

Reserve and the Army.

2013

For copies contact: 

The U.S. Army Reserve Command, AFRC-MH, 

4710 Knox St, Fort Bragg, NC 28310-5010

or call 910-570-8194/8180/8183.
The Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 2

A Military Manpower Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4

The Strategic Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8

The “Operational Reserve” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 12

CONTENTS

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The Army Reserve of today can trace its roots as a “national” or federal 

Citizen-Soldier force back to the French and Indian War (1756-1763) on 

through the Civil War (1861-1865) to the Spanish-American War and 

Philippine Insurrection (1898-1902). From its birth in 1776 through the 

nineteenth century, the United States remained a regional power, protected 

from invasion by the vast expanses of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A large 

standing army was not required and the nation’s defense was based primarily 

on the militia systems of the individual states. 

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, with the absence of any real 

foreign threat, a small standing army was all that was needed to maintain 

peace on the frontier between the settlers and American Indians. With the 

crisis of a major war, the federal government mobilized large Citizen-Soldier 

forces and trained them for combat operations. At the close of these conflicts 

the Soldiers were sent home, again leaving a small standing army. However, 

by the turn of the twentieth century, the United States emerged as a world 

power with global trade routes and security concerns beyond the Western 

Hemisphere.

Consequently, during this transition, the United States Congress created an 

official Army Reserve organization in order to place a major portion of the 

nation’s Citizen-Soldier establishment under federal control during times of 

peace, as well as war. Financially, this was the best option for maintaining and 

projecting overseas a land-power force capable of facing the military might of 

the other world powers. Four significant events in United States history shaped 

the modern Army Reserve: (1) the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898; 

(2) the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; (3) the defeat of communism with the 

fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; and (4) the terrorist attacks of 11 September

2001 that live in infamy as “9/11” for most Americans.

THE HERITAGE

1756-1908
Stand Your Ground, Lexington, Massachusetts, 19 April 1775. In the early hours 

of 19 April 1775, Captain John Parker was alerted to mobilize the “minutemen” 

of Lexington, Massachusetts, in anticipation of the British who were marching 

to Concord to capture provincial arms. Captain Parker’s minutemen fought 

the first battle of the American Revolution. The “minuteman” was established 

as a part of the heritage of the Army Reserve by the War Department in 1922. 

(A National Guard Heritage Painting.)

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At the end of the Nineteenth Century, a new “manifest destiny” wave 

carried the Americans beyond the continental United States and into the 

Pacific and Caribbean. Consequently, on 15 February 1898, the sinking of 

the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor ushered in the SpanishAmerican War and Philippine Insurrection (1898-1902). Mobilization 

problems of the Army during these conflicts, specifically shortages of medical 

professionals, trained officers and non-commissioned officers, caused the 

national leadership to finally establish a formal structure for federal volunteers 

during peacetime. 

Initially, in 1908 Congress created the Medical Reserve Corps, the official 

predecessor of the Army Reserve. Subsequently, using its constitutional 

authority to “raise and support armies,” through the National Defense 

Act of 1916 and the sweeping changes to that law in the National Defense 

Act Amendments of 1920, the federal government created the Organized 

Reserve. Redesignated as the Organized Reserve Corps in 1948, the new 

force served into the 1950s to provide a peacetime pool of trained reserve 

officers and enlisted men for use in war. This manpower reserve existed as the 

officer cadre for as many as 27 reserve infantry divisions and 6 reserve cavalry 

divisions located across the nation. It also included the Officers’ Reserve 

Corps, Enlisted Reserve Corps, and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

Consequently, the Army mobilized nearly 90,000 Reserve officers for World 

War I (1917-1919), one-third of which were medical doctors. More than 

80,000 enlisted Army Reserve Soldiers served of which 15,000 were assigned 

to medical units. The individual Army Reserve Soldiers were placed into 

newly organized units, were trained, and then deployed to the war zone. 

During the interwar period (1920-1940), the Army planned for an Organized 

A MILITARY

MANPOWER RESERVE:

1908 -1945
American Troops Advancing, Northern France, Harold Brett. (Courtesy of the 

Army Art Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History). The Army mobilized 

nearly 90,000 Army Reserve officers for World War I. Over 80,000 enlisted 

Army Reserve soldiers served.

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Reserve force of thirty-three divisions, existing either as paper units or in 

a cadre status. 

The years between the world wars were austere, with few opportunities for 

training. A contingency for service, however, was created during the Great 

Depression. One of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the 

Civilian Conservation Corps, placed young men in barracks and militarystyle organizations to work in national forests and other outdoor projects. 

Between 1933 and 1939, more than 30,000 Army Reserve officers served as 

commanders or staff officers at the 2,700 conservation corps camps. Army 

Reserve participation in the American defense effort began before the United 

States entered the Second World War in December 1941. 

The Army began calling Army Reserve officers to active duty in June 1940. 

In the year that followed, the number of Army Reserve officers on active 

duty rose from fewer than 3,000 to more than 57,000. During World War 

II (1941-1945), the Army mobilized twenty-six Army Reserve (designated) 

infantry divisions. Approximately a quarter of all Army officers who served 

were Army Reserve Soldiers, including over 100,000 Reserve Officers’ 

Training Corps graduates. More than 200,000 Army Reserve Soldiers served 

in the war. World War II signified the beginning of a new era in national 

security, and from that point to the present the United States took-on the 

role as the “arsenal of democracy” and “world guardian,” a new mission in 

which the Army Reserve would play a major role.
Go For Broke, H. Charles McBarron. (Courtesy of the Army Art Collection, U.S. 

Army Center of Military History). France, October 1944. The rain and chill 

which precedes winter in the Vosges mountains of France had started. The 442d 

Regimental Combat Team was weary and battle-scarred after fighting in Italy. 

On 27 October, the 442d was called on to rescue a surrounded U.S. battalion. 

They attacked the heavily fortified defenses of a superior German force. 

Fighting was desperate, often hand-to-hand. By 30 October, nearly half the 

regiment had become casualties. Then, something happened in the 442d. By 

ones and twos, almost spontaneously and without orders, the men got to their 

feet and, with a kind of universal anger, moved toward the enemy positions. 

Bitter hand-to-hand combat ensued as the Americans fought from one fortified 

position to the next. Finally, the enemy broke in disorder. 

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The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 7 December 1941, 

woke the American people from the century-old complacency that the United 

States, as an “island bastion,” was eternally safe behind the “ocean moats” 

of the Atlantic and Pacific. Air power had changed the strategic paradigm 

forever. The 1940s also witnessed the emergence of strategic bombing, rocket 

(missile) technology, and nuclear weapons. After World War II, the world 

divided into two opposing armed camps: the Soviet Union, China, and the 

Warsaw Pact versus the United States and its allies. The communist nations 

maintained armies with millions of highly trained Soldiers and stood poised 

to overrun Europe and Asia at a moment’s notice. The entire world and global 

market lay open to conquest and the spread of communist dictatorships. 

To face this new threat, the United States developed a “Containment Policy” 

to check the growth of communism over the next forty-five years. For the first 

time in our history, a large military force would be required during peacetime 

to implement this new grand foreign policy. The units of this military force 

needed to be manned, equipped, trained, and ready for deployment at all 

times to a combat zone within a few month’s notice. The Department of 

Defense established a system of “unified commands” in Europe, the Far East, 

the Pacific, Alaska, and the Caribbean to provide strategic direction for global 

operations. The old days of relying on untrained citizen Soldiers, which 

required nine months to a year to mobilize into deployable units, were over. 

To defray the cost of maintaining such a large military force, Congress placed 

heavy reliance on establishing and sustaining a more combat ready Army 

Reserve to deploy together with the Active Army for operations worldwide.

Recognizing the importance of the Organized Reserve to the World War 

II effort, Congress authorized retirement and drill pay for the first time in 

1948. The Korean War (1950-1953) saw more than 240,000 Army Reserve 

Soldiers called to active duty. That large number reflected the Army’s need 

THE STRATEGIC RESERVE:

1946 -1990
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K1950 Withdrawal From KAT’O-RI, Master Sergeant Henrietta Snowden. 

(Courtesy of the Army Art Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History). 

The Korean War saw over 240,000 Army Reserve soldiers called to active duty. 

More than seventy Army Reserve units served in Korea. 
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for organized, trained personnel in a short period of time. More than seventy 

Army Reserve units served in Korea. While the Korean Conflict was still 

underway, Congress began making significant changes in the structure and 

role of the Army Reserve. These changes transformed the Organized Reserve 

Corps into the United States Army Reserve (USAR). This new organization 

was divided into a Ready Reserve, Standby Reserve, and Retired Reserve. 

Army Reserve units were authorized twenty-four inactive duty training 

days a year and up to seventeen days of active duty (called annual training). 

The president was given authority to order up to one million uniformed 

personnel of the reserve components from all services to active duty. These 

congressional actions were directly related to experiences gained during the 

activation and subsequent service of Army Reserve units in the Korean War. 

Acting to signify the new vital role of the Reserves to the nation’s defense, 

President Harry S. Truman established the Armed 

Forces Reserve Medal by executive order in 1950. 

For the first time, Army Reserve Soldiers received an 

official award for consecutive periods of service in ten 

year increments. 

In operations following the Korean War, the Army 

intended to maintain the integrity of mobilized Army 

Reserve units. As a standard, officers and enlisted 

men were not stripped out of organized units and sent into operations as 

replacements. Instead, the Army attempted to mobilize and deploy fully 

trained and manned Army Reserve units at the outbreak of the conflict. Thus, 

the lessons learned from the Korean War set the precedent for readiness of all 

Army Reserve organizations in future call-ups. During the period from 1968 

to 1974 and with the end of the Vietnam War (1961-1975), Congress reduced 

the Army end-strength from 1.5 million to 785,000 Active Duty Soldiers. 

The end of the draft coincided with the announcement of the Total Force 

Policy in 1973. This new policy, also known as the Abrams Doctrine for 

Army Chief of Staff General Creighton W. Abrams, Jr., placed an increased 

reliance on reserve component units for rapid deployment to military 

operations. It called for the United States to maintain an active force capable 

of maintaining peace and deterring aggression across the globe. Those forces 

would be reinforced, when necessary, by a well-trained and equipped reserve 

component within a month’s notice. 
The effect of an all-volunteer Army and the Total Force Policy was a shift 

of important responsibilities and resources to the Army Reserve. The intent 

was to ensure that the Army would never again engage in a major conflict 

without the reserve components. To support this concept, after 1967 the 

Army Reserve became increasingly combat support and combat service 

support oriented, and in that same year Congress established the Office 

of the Chief, Army Reserve (OCAR) within the Army Staff to give Army 

Reserve Soldiers an official spokesman at the Department of the Army level. 

However, throughout the entire Cold War period, after the Korean War, the 

Army Reserve was mobilized only twice; over 68,500 Army Reserve Soldiers 

for the Berlin Crisis (1961-1962) and nearly 6,000 for the Vietnam War 

during the period from 1968 to 1969. In reality, it existed as a strategic reserve 

and the Active Army handled most military operations without the reserve 

components. This would all change with the end of the Cold War and the 

further draw-down of the Active Army in the 1990s.

Convoy from Cu Chi to Tay Ninh, Vietnam 1967, William Linzee Prescott. 

(Courtesy of the Army Art Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History). 

Forty-two Army Reserve units were mobilized in 1968, with thirty-five going 

to Vietnam.

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THE OPERATIONAL RESERVE:

1990 - Present

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the symbolic end of the 

Cold War and a victory of the free world over totalitarianism. The likelihood of 

the Soviet Union posing the threat it once did seemed unlikely. The world looked 

safer. Thus, in the post Cold War period, the United States perceived a reduced 

danger and sought a “peace dividend” through significant reductions in military 

budgets and manpower levels. The mission for America’s armed forces to remain 

the “world guardian,” however, did not change. In fact, by this time, the unified 

command system had expanded to include Latin America, Africa, and the Middle 

East. Meanwhile, the late twentieth century experienced a revolution in military 

affairs through advances in information management (digital technology), which 

seemed to render past forms of warfare obsolete. This new technology was 

significant because it allowed Soldiers to view the battlefield in real-time and 

enhanced logistical management to better control supplies. Also, throughout the 

twentieth century, the demands of modern warfare caused the number of combat 

support and combat service support specialty branches to multiply and grow in 

complexity, making the manning of such units more difficult. 

Faced with implementing a global peacekeeping mission with a greatly curtailed 

military budget and active military force, Congress intended to leverage the 

reserve components and the new technologies to make up the difference. 

This required the Army Reserve to be manned, equipped and trained at levels 

comparable to the Active Army. Such a capability allowed the Army components 

to be more versatile and function as one team on the battlefield. It was from 

this concept that the Army Reserve “Operational Reserve” would evolve over 

the next twenty years. Consequently, to improve the combat readiness of Army 

Reserve units, Congress mandated the creation of the United States Army 

Reserve Command (USARC) in October 1990 to provide for more centralized 

management. In addition, a major post Cold War effort to restructure the Army’s 

reserve components culminated with the 1993 “Offsite Agreement.” This 

compromise stabilized force structure and end-strength reductions, so the Army 

could place more reliance on the reserve components for military operations. 
Saudi Arabia, January 1991. The 316th Quartermaster Company distributes water 

at an XVIII Airborne Corps site in central Saudi Arabia. The 316th, an Army Reserve 

unit from San Diego, California, distributed 8.4 million gallons of water during the 

Persian Gulf War and in support of Kurdish relief efforts in northern Iraq. Army 

Reserve Units contributed significantly to the Total Army’s success by providing 

the bulk of water purification and distribution, civil affairs support, enemy 

prisoner-of-war handling, postal work, petroleum handling, military history, 

and psychological operations. Other participating Army Reserve units included 

chemical decontamination, transportation, military police, maintenance, and 

engineer. (An Army Reserve Historical Painting.)

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The agreement led to the National Guard specializing in combat arms 

and divisional level combat support and service support, allowing the Army 

Reserve to specialize in combat support and service support at corps levels and 

above. This enabled the Active Army to maintain higher levels of combat arms 

troops. Nothing epitomized this change in mission better than the amendments 

made in the 1990s for the Armed Forces Reserve Medal, 

which authorized its award for mobilization and later added 

an “M” Mobilization Device and numbers for each different 

contingency operation a Reserve Soldier was called-up to serve.

Meanwhile, the hope for world peace was soon shattered by new 

crises and instabilities. Countries with their regional tensions 

once held in check by the bipolar superpower struggle surfaced, 

creating a multi-polar threat. The period of relevant calm was 

shattered on 2 August 1990, when more than 100,000 of Saddam 

Hussein’s soldiers invaded Kuwait. For forty years, the reserve component 

units had been a warfighting force trained and held in strategic reserve for low 

probability/high intensity conflicts. Now, because of massive manpower cuts, 

the Active Army could not deploy without the Army Reserve. Consequently, the 

invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 led to the largest call-up of reserve component 

personnel since the Korean War for operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT 

STORM. Approximately 80,000 Army Reserve Soldiers provided combat 

support and combat service support to the coalition forces fighting Iraq in the 

Persian Gulf and site support to the armed forces of the United States elsewhere 

in the world. Of that number, over 35,000 Army Reserve Soldiers deployed to 

Southwest Asia. Included in the call-up were 21,000 members of the Individual 

Ready Reserve (IRR) who filled vacancies in units or performed other specialized 

duties. Army Reserve Soldiers were among the first called to active duty, and 

were among the last to leave the desert. Army Reserve units prepared equipment 

for retrograde to the United States or Europe long after the conflict ended. 

Follow-on short-term contingency operations started to show a similar pattern, 

including Operation RESTORE HOPE (the Somalia relief expedition), where 

nearly fifty Army Reserve volunteers staffed a postal company. Army Reserve civil 

affairs and public affairs Soldiers also served in Somalia until United States forces 

departed in 1994. Four hundred Army Reserve Soldiers from seventeen units 

served in Haiti as part of Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY. In 1995, fortyone volunteers served as engineers, military police and radar specialists in the 

multi-national peacekeeping force in Egypt. Army Reserve Soldiers from 1995 

to 2000 made up 70 percent of the combat support and service support element 
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for the United States Army peacekeeping implementation force (IFOR), and 

subsequent stabilization force (SFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The total number 

of Reserve Soldiers mobilized for Bosnia-Herzegovina exceeded 16,000. By the 

close of the twentieth century, the Army Reserve comprised almost 25 percent of 

the Army’s total combat support and 45 percent of combat service support units. 

The terrorist acts of 11 September 2001, soon after abbreviated to just “9/11”, 

ushered in the new millennium and established a milestone in the nation’s history. 

Over ten years of persistent conflict, with the attendant continual rotation of 

Army forces, required paradigm changes in the way the Army fights and generates 

forces. The size of the active Army proved insufficient to the demand required. 

Accordingly, both the United States Army Reserve and the Army National 

Guard were routinely called upon to satisfy requirements both in the Homeland 

and globally – but primarily in the Southwest Asia Theater of Operations, Iraq 

and Afghanistan. Prolonged force generation required the Army to develop a 

new force provision model titled “Army Force Generation” (ARFORGEN). 

As a result of increased resources for training and the experience derived from 

multiple combat rotations, the Army Reserve achieved unprecedented levels of 

readiness. This confluence of events led to the Army Reserve being “dubbed” as 

an “operational force.” 

Not willing to sacrifice the decade long investment in this Army Reserve 

reformation, the nation now calls upon Army Reserve Soldiers to expect 

mobilization as a probability, not a possibility. Business as usual, one weekend 

a month and two weeks in the summer, is anachronistic, representing the “old 

legacy” strategic reserve, not the evolving operational, “expeditionary” Army

Reserve, the seeds of which had been planted in the 1990s. Since, 9/11 over 

200,000 Army Reserve Soldiers have been activated in the Global War on 

Terrorism (GWOT). Today, almost 150,000 Army Reserve Soldiers serve 

in over 1600 units progressing through the Army’s five year, rotational 

ARFORGEN model. Quite simply, the nation cannot go to war without the 

critical capabilities resident in the Army Reserve. Accordingly, victory can only 

be attained with a totally integrated, three component (active Army, Army 

National Guard, Army Reserve) expeditionary force capable of persistent decisive 

action together with the other branches of the armed forces. Army Reserve 

Warrior Citizens have been tested in the crucible of combat, earning their status 

as full partners in those operations; no longer a supplemental, strategic reserve 

force but rather an able and operational force upon whom the Nation must 

routinely call.
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Plan Accordingly, Gary Cassidy. Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 

2001, over 200,000 Army Reserve Soldiers have been activated in the Global 

War on Terrorism. Those attacks hastened the transformation of the Army 

Reserve from a strategic force to an operational force. (Courtesy of the Army 

Art Collection, U. S. Army Center of Military History) 

 
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During Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, the 459th Engineer Company (MultiRole Bridge), an Army Reserve unit from Bridgeport, West Virginia, lays an 

aluminum float ribbon bridge under enemy fire across the Diyala River 

southeast of Baghdad. The spearhead of the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force 

required the crossing in order to expand its dismounted infantry bridgehead 

with tank support before entering Baghdad. Other missions accomplished 

by the 459th included bridging the Euphrates River and convoy security. (An 

Army Reserve Historical Painting)
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Army Reserve Heritage, 1775-Present. The citizen-soldiers of the American 

Revolution were the precursors of Army Reserve Soldiers who proudly 

serve our country today. Since 1908, the federal citizen-soldiers of the Army 

Reserve have answered the call to duty in all of the nation’s major conflicts. 

Army Reserve Soldiers have also contributed to our national security through 

humanitarian and nation-building actions both overseas and at home. Today’s 

Army Reserve is ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century as it has in 

the past. (An Army Reserve Historical Painting.)
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