State Military Reserve Growing Despite Its Role on Sidelines

In 1940, with a war against Japan on the horizon, California lawmakers worried about the safety of the state if President Roosevelt sent the state’s National Guard units marching away. So the Legislature created a little army of its own.

Forty-six years later, it is still on duty.

After several name changes, service in two wars, a scandal and nine years in mothballs, the State Military Reserve is alive and growing.

Other than the 1,558 men and women who belong to it, few Californians have ever heard of the reserve.

Far smaller than the 25,000-member National Guard and Air National Guard, the SMR, as it is usually called, is the end of the bench on the military sidelines, reserves to the reserves. But it is not short on experience. Most of the members are retired professional officers and noncommissioned officers, or retired National Guard officers, according to the office of the state adjutant general, which commands the reserve and the guard.

Experience Not Required

Previous military service is not required, however, and some members are enlisted on the basis of civilian skills.

The reserve’s official mission is to form the nucleus of a force that can take over the functions of the National Guard--a mostly part-time army with a small core of full-time officers and sergeants in peacetime--when the President orders the guard into service during a war.

It also serves “as a kind of retirement club,” said one full-time National Guard member.

“Most of them are over 40 and a lot of them are over 60, but they’re a great resource,” he said. “They’ve got years of experience and they were forced out by the mandatory retirement age in the military. But they’re still energetic and they don’t want to sit in a rocking chair.”

As one reservist, a former Army Special Forces career officer, said: “We’re standing by to stand by.

“We’re just about all of us too old to fight any more wars. . . . But I like to go back to the flagpole and hear the bugle toot and know I’m serving my country somehow.”

Weaponless, Unpaid

The military reserve units have no weapons. Unlike members of the guard, SMR members draw no pay, except for one full-time administrator and a secretary in Sacramento. They pay dues to keep their units alive if the state’s annual appropriation of $200,000 fails to cover expenses.

Members buy their own uniforms, which are almost indistinguishable from those of the National Guard and the Army, except for a tab with the letters “SMR” on one shoulder and red name tags instead of the regulation black.

Members must undergo at least 100 hours of training a year, and some members train with National Guard units in the summer.

First formed as the California State Guard in 1940, the reserve grew to 11,000 men during World War II, when its part-time troops guarded bridges, defense plants, armories and other facilities after the California National Guard was drawn into federal service.

Its ranks dwindled after the war, but the organization remained alive as the State Military Reserve.

In 1950, it was renamed the California Defense and Security Corps. When the Korean War broke out and the California National Guard was federalized, it was renamed the California National Guard Reserves and again filled some of its World War II roles.

Spied on Militants

It was briefly in the headlines in 1962, when it was discovered that the commanding officer of a Los Angeles unit was recruiting “intelligence agents” to spy on Black Muslims, campus leftists and the Minutemen, an armed right-wing group. The officer was ordered to resign.

In 1967, it was deactivated when the Legislature refused to approve a budget appropriation for it. But it was reactivated in 1976 with a small headquarters and a military history center, which researches and prepares exhibits on the 130-year history of state militia forces, and has a band that dresses in Civil War-era uniforms for ceremonies.

It has grown to include a medical brigade, two aviation groups and five infantry brigades, headquartered at Los Alamitos, Sacramento, San Francisco, Corona and Fresno. The aviation groups have no aircraft, but plan ways to use civilian-owned planes in emergencies.

The membership has grown from 635 in 1981 to 1,558 now, nearing the strength authorized by the state Legislature of 1,590.