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Army Reserve turns 93 years old
   The U.S. Army Reserve traces its beginnings to April 23, 1908, when Senate Bill 1424 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt.  A citizen-soldier himself, President Roosevelt's four sons became Army Reserve officers and served their country with the same dedication and distinction as had their father. Of the four sons, one was killed in World War I, two died in World War II and the fourth was severely wounded in both world wars.  The 1908 act authorized the Army to establish a reserve corps of medical officers. The Secretary of War could order these officers to active duty during time of emergency. This was the nation's first federal reserve. By July 7, 1908, the first 160 Medical Reserve Corps officers had been commissioned.  Four years later, a provision of the Army Appropriations Act of 1912 created the Regular Army Reserve, a Federal Reserve outside the Medical Reserve Corps authorized in 1908. It grew slowly; by Aug. 31, 1913, there were eight enlisted men in it. The first call-up of the Army Reserve came in 1916 as a result of tensions between the United States and Mexico caused by the Mexican bandit, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, and the subsequent punitive expedition after Villa led by Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing. Some 3,000 Army reservists answered this call-up.  The National Defense Act of 1916 established, by statute, the Officers Reserve Corps, the Enlisted Reserve Corps and the Reserve Officers Training Corps. One year later, the initial Reserve organization, the Medical Reserve Corps merged into the Officers Reserve Corps.  America entered World War I in 1917. Less than a decade before, there had been no Army Reserve. During World War I, more than 170,000 Organized Reservists (as they were called then) served in the Army. Reservists served in every division of the American Expeditionary Force.  Beginning with World War I, Army reservists have taken part in every major American conflict of the 20th Century. They have been in the forefront of other types of crises as well.  During the Great Depression, more than 30,000 Organized Reserve officers helped run the Civilian Conservation Corps camps, providing the majority of Army officers involved in this important New Deal program.  As World War II neared, the Army Reserve was essential to building the huge Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Almost one of every four Army officers -- more than 200,000 of the 900,000 Army officers -- was an Army reservist.   These included Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the first general to land on a Normandy beach on D-Day and who received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day; Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, who led the first raid to strike back against Japan and who also received the Medal of Honor; Lt. Col. Strom Thurmond, who crash-landed in a glider with the 82nd Airborne Division into Normandy; Lt. Col James Earl Rudder, who led Rudder's Rangers up the Pointe de Hoc cliffs on D-Day; and another officer who did his assigned duties well but whose greater claim to fame would come later, Capt. Ronald Reagan.  In 1950, Army Reserve men and women were called up to rebuild the dangerously weak U.S. Army during the Korean War. Almost a quarter

of a million Army Reservists were called to active duty to serve in Korea, at home and elsewhere in the world during the Korean War. Among the Army's Korean War Medal of Honor recipients were Army reservists Staff Sgt. Hiroshi Miyamura and Capt. Raymond Harvey.  More than 60,000 Army reservists were called up during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Thousands of individual reservists and 35 Army Reserve units served in Vietnam. 1st Lt. Sharon Lane, a nurse assigned to the Army Reserve's 312th Evacuation Hospital at Chu Lai, was the only American servicewoman killed in Vietnam by direct enemy fire when her hospital ward was rocketed in June 1969.  Although Army reservists took part in the Grenada and Panama operations in 1983 and 1989, respectively, the next big call-up came in 1990. More than 84,000 Army Reserve soldiers were mobilized during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. They served in Southwest Asia, in Europe and in the United States, contributing significantly to victory over Iraq.  The Army Reserve paid a price for that victory. A SCUD missile killed 28 Army Reserve men and women on February 25, 1991, and wounded almost 100 others. Thirteen of those killed in action and 43 of the wounded were from the 14th Quartermaster Detachment, giving this unit from Greensburg, Pa., an 80 percent casualty rate. No other allied unit in the war suffered such a high casualty rate.  Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the Army Reserve has entered the busiest phase of its history. Army Reserve soldiers have taken part in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Iraq, in Haiti, in Somalia, in Central America, in East Timor, in Bosnia, in Kosovo and at Fort Dix, N.J., during Operation PROVIDE REFUGE.  From a force originally made up of male doctors, the Army Reserve is now the most diverse of all the nation's reserve components. More than 40 percent of the force consists of members of minority groups. Almost a quarter of the soldiers in the Army Reserve are women. Men and women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds serve at the highest officer and enlisted ranks. Unlike it's earlier "for emergency use only" history, today's Army Reserve is used every day. Wherever the Army is today, so is the Army Reserve. Its area of operations is global.  Some types of support units and capabilities are either exclusively or primarily in the Army Reserve. The Army Reserve has all of the Army's training divisions, railway units, enemy prisoner of war brigades and chemical brigades. It has most of the Army's civil affairs, psychological operations and medical units and many of its transportation units, too.  The Army Reserve today has 1,600 units located in 1,100 Army Reserve Centers all across America.