The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
National Guard marks 383rd birthday
A 21-year old Airman with two years of service, and a 59-year old Soldier who has served since 1984 cut the birthday cake on Friday, Dec. 14 as New York National Guard headquarters in Latham, marked the 383rd birthday of America’s oldest military force.
Airman 1st Class Caleb Lapinel, a Stamford resident, and Master Sgt. Roger Townsend, from Waterford, joined Major General Timothy LaBarge, the commander of theNewYork Air National Guard and a Tupper Lake resident, in a short ceremony recognizing the creation of a part-time military force by the Massachusetts Bay Colony on Dec. 13, 1636.
Using a ceremonial saber, Townsend, Lapinal, and LaBarge cut the birthday cake during a short ceremony at New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs headquarters.
Traditionally the oldest and youngest service members present cut the birthday cake at this observance. The old Soldier represents the history and traditions of the National Guard while the young Soldier represents the future of the National Guard, according to a news release.
While theNationalGuard as an idea is older than the United States, role of the militia, which is now the National Guard, is built into the Constitution, LaBarge told 100 Soldiers, Airmen and civilian employees during the ceremony.
It is great to recognize the institution, but the National Guard is really about the people who belong and who are ready to fight our nation’s wars and respond to emergencies and disasters here at home, LaBarge said.
“So this is really happy birthday to all of you,” LaBarge said. “Because theNational Guard is all of you.”
It’s the people who responded to Herkimer County to help clean up after the flooding in November, and it is the people who will deploy to Kuwait with the 42nd Infantry Division in 2020, he said.
“You are our home game and our away game,” LaBarge said.
Lapinel, who is assigned to the 109th Airlift Wing at Stratton Air National Guard Base in serves as an intelligence analyst in the 109th Operations Support Squadron.
He joined the New York Air National Guard because he’s always been interested in the military and he wanted to do something that would help pay for college, Lapinel said.
So far he doesn’t regret it at all, Lapinel said.
“My career as a whole to this point hasbeenanamazing experience,” he said.
He just returned from a survival, evasion, resistance and escape training course in Spokane, Washington where he learned how to survive behind enemy lines, he said.
“Throughthat I learneda lot, met some great people, and really opened my eyes to the realities that some military members face,” he added.
It was an honor to represent the young Soldiers and Airmen of the New York National Guard during the birthday event, he said.
Townsend, who served in the Active Army for three years before transferring to the National Guard, said he never expected to serve so many years.
Townsend, a transportation specialist assigned to the Army component of the New York National Guard Joint Force Headquarters, also serves as information branch chief for the National Guard’s information technology section.
He joined the National Guard after leaving active duty because he wanted to serve his community, Townsend said. He’s proud of the many times he’s responded to weather emergencies and other state disasters over the years, Townsend said.
Now, his plan is to serve as long as he can, until he turns 60 in eleven months.
“I am proud to have outlasted my own expectations and to have served with my fellow Soldiers,” Townsend said.
The National Guard, today composed of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard, traces its birthday back to December 13, 1636, when the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law establishing formal militia companies in the colony. These companies were made up of all adult males older than 16 and were expected to meet and train in military skills regularly.
Today the units which trace their lineage back to those original three regiments are the oldest in the Army.
The U.S. Army, meanwhile, traces its birthday back to June 14th, 1775, the day the Continental Congress voted to take command of a colonial army besieging British troops in Boston.
In New York, the first citizen-soldiers were members of the Burgher Guard, organized by the Dutch East Indian Company in 1640 to help protect New Amsterdam from their English neighbors in Massachusetts andVirginia or fromhostile natives.
After New Amsterdam became the English colony of New York in 1665, a militia modeled on the system used in Massachusetts and other English colonies was put in place.
Citizen Soldiers of the militia and National Guard have fought in all of America’s wars from King Philips War against Native Americans in the New England Colonies in 1675 to Afghanistan today.
There are 10, 000 members of the New York Army National Guard and 5,800 members of the New York Air National Guard.