Thread by @pptsapper

ok so i know it's been a hot minute since i yeeted this meme into the internet but i've only just now had enough bourbon to explain it in its full glory

https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1456030793961181190

right, so this whole story revolves around my dude clarence ransom edwards from the great STATE OF OHIO. Born in the Land of Cleve, he's a bit of an irascible SOB, so I guess that's why he runs of to West Point to do whatever it is that they do there to make ossifers

My boi doesn't go great at the point of west. Like, not great at all. Fully last in his class. And not gonna lie, kinda respect him for that

the reason? Dude has a tongue sharper than a razor and isn't cray about the rules. Which yeah, would make time at WP pretty tough

Anyways he gets his shit together and graduates in 1883. Does some of the normal army shit of the era, random remote posts, guards the tomb of president Garfield, you know, the usual. Finally gets that 1LT in 1891 & goes to @FordhamNYC to command their corps of cadets

WHERE

WHERE I kid you not he had his cadets render customs and courtesies to the Jesuits and other faculty as of they were officers and I'm cracking tf up thinking about cadets saluting these confused priests who r like what do we do, give them a blessing?

Anyhoo, they high key ❤️ him

At this point you're like whatever, I'm bored, and so was Clarence, until finally - A WAR. 1898, time for American to prove its masculinity and imperialize and shit, and everyone's going to Cuba, and Clarence is all set to go...but - CRUCIAL PLOT POINT AHEAD

IT'S TIME TO GO TO WAR AND CLARENCE IS READY AND...there's no transports to be had. None. Nada. Prolly because the goddam idiots in the War Dept decided that TAMPA was a good place for a port of embarkation. Tampa, ffs. With one rail line in and out. Goddam amateur hour

So Clarence, he misses out on the glory and whatever of dying from fevers in Cuba or whatever the hell the Army was doing. Btw teddy Roosevelt only got to Cuba because he STRAIGHT UP stole a ship and got his guys on board but shit, the horses for the riders of rough...

... well they couldn't bring a lot of them and then when they got to Cuba they had no way of getting the horses off the transport because they sucked at planning being a bunch of rich kids, & so just pushed the horses off and hoped they'd swim to land

They hoped

Aaaaand that's why TR and the rough riders charged dismounted up Kettle Hill. Pro tip: don't entrust your war stuff to rich brats who don't understand logistics. Now you see why, in 1917, when TR came with his plan to recruit a division, everyone was like

OK so, but back to Clarence, who doesn't get to fight Spain like his classmates, but who goes and spends some time on the Philippines like everyone in the Army, prolly doing sketchy shit, then does some insular affairs stuff, some Panama Canal zone stuff...Army stuff, yeah

There's something ya gotta know about the Army at this time. It is TINY. like, everyone knows everyone. Esp the west pointers. Everyone knows whomst snubbed whomst at what garden party and then got syphilis from whomst's wife. Small army. Which means an Army that's petty as fuck

Everyone is competing for promotions, for assignments, for who gets to design the next silly hat, you name it. Petty petty petty, in this Army of 120,000.

And then, enter...the First World War. Or I guess...the US enters the 1st World War

Either way,

All of a sudden, the Army has gotta growwwwwwww by like a lot. So Clarence, by now a brigadier general, in no small part due to the William Howard "Bulkmeister" Taft, gets sent to oversee the Department of the Northeast. A buckeye amongst new englanders. The mind reels.

The War Department is like "yo Clarence, we finna fight the Kaiser, so form the New England National Guard into a division and then go south for training, k?" So ol Clarence does that, and forms the cranky, pretentious, snobby, and ornery new englanders into the 26th Division

Ok but here's a problem. Clarence is racing the clock, he wants to get to France, who knows how long this war will last? But his division is understrength. Not enough dudes. But there's a whole other section of the New England National Guard he has been told he can't take...

The Coast Artillery Corps. These are the dudes who are supposed to sit at the comically oversized guns and make giant pew pew against any German invasion fleet. Clarence does some risk assessing and assesses the German Navy is probably not gonna invade Pawtucket just right now

So, by his power as department commander of the Northeast, he brings his division to full 28,000 man strength by sorta kinda pulling in thousands of dudes from the coast artillery

Now the war department doesn't like that. That causes more paperwork. They are very upset

They tell Clarence so. And in one of the most boss moves EVER, Clarence writes back, "my bad, I'll make sure not to do it again IN THE NEXT WAR"

That alone should put him into the books of legend for responses to cranky bureaucrats

But wait. There is More.

Like I said, this 26th Division is supposed to go with the rest of the Guard divisions to a training camp down south to, you know, learn what this war thing is all about. But Clarence...he remembers what happened last war. And he's like "not on my watch, biatch"

It's like, August of 1917, and his "division" is still trying to figure out what it is as all these old militia organizations fuse together. He sends of his aide, Captain Pendleton, and is like "dudebro, find me some ships. Don't care how, don't care where. Just ships"

So this LITTLE BABY CAPTAIN goes running up and down the Northeast and Lo, he findeth ships! Ships, but reserved ships. Ships for the 42d Division.

Ok, so a word about regional politics at this time, no, don't BOO ME like that, this is Important Context, dammit

Prior to WWI, when the War Dept needed sojers, they'd be like "erry state, you got a quota for volunteers, gimme some regiments" and so the states would shit out the required number of regiments & they'd go off to war as like the 890th Pennsylvania Vol Infantry or something

Regions and states got proud of this, they liked it when their boys did something cool that everyone was reading about how the Eleventy Fifth Illinois stormed some breastworks with gallantry and whatnot. But for the world war, the war Dept was like, "ugh, we need organization"

So they made allllllllll the state National Guards give up their state designations for boring ol federal numbers. But they also realized that even with this, states were super duper gonna compete for regional glory in this war & it would detract from the overall mission

sO

So they devised a cunning plan. The 42d Division would be National Guard, but not from one state or area. It would be from allllllllllll across the nation, from Ohio to Alabama to Iowa. A 🌈 across the nation, hence the kickass nickname. This would be the 1st NG unit to France

to top it off, they gave it its very own prima donna, Dougie MacArthur. Yep, this was the pride and joy of the US, and the 42d was doing as it was told, going to it's training camp in the south while its transports sat in Boston, NYC, and Hoboken

Just waiting for CPT Pendleton

I dunno what that captain did, but it was epic. He was like "you've got ships, I've got troops, they should meet"

They're like "we're for the 42d tho!"

He's like "k, but where are they"
He had a point. And this convinced them, APPARENTLY. and so 28000 men start loading up

Just like that, Clarence has his whole division afloat. They steam up to Halifax, NS, assemble there, and then convoy off to France

You're probably like, ok, so, whatever, he was going to France, so what

Uh, well

He never told the War Department

So the moment the last ship departs Halifax, Clarence wires back to the War Department: "26th Division en route to France"

The profanity in the War Dept must have been EPIC that day. Pershing must've chewed off half his mustache.

28000 US troops just scootin off to France

So that's the origin of the meme, there. Clarence doing his own thing and absolutely pissing off Pershing, which, granted, it didn't take much to do since Pershing was a prima donna in his own right, and he and Clarence had already clashed before

Petty army, remember?

Pershing was ripshit mad about this and so treated Clarence and the 26th like shit for the entirety of the war. The division and their boss were on the front lines longer than any other US unit except the 1st Division & got the fewest replacements. Pershing was kinda a petty dick

Meanwhile, all those cranky unloving New Englanders LOVED Edwards, giving him the nickname "Daddy Edwards," which also made Pershing mad because Pershing believed that casualties created results. As evidenced by the 1st Division whick took pride in having the most losses

Now, Clarence and the French, they got along great. Clarence and the US...not so much. Clarence kept asking for dumb stuff, like tanks, because it seemed stupid for infantry to charge machine guns, and other heretical things of that nature to Mr Win the War in the Open

Finally, Pershing gets the opportunity to fire Clarence at the end of October of '18 mid campaign, with his understrength guys literally in battle, after Clarence has just found out that his daughter has died of pneumonia & his aide has died of influenza

Classy, Pershing

Daddy was loved forever by his Yankee Division: "Medals of honor? We didn’t need them. Who could yearn for decorations knowing that his general held such an opinion of his men and had told the world about it?" said one private

they named things they didn't like after Pershing

Clarence stopped Armying in 1922. He later said when he "graduated from West Point he rated 80% of his class as of the finest type of men and only 20% as S.O.B.’s…that after forty-five years of active service he had exactly reversed his percentages"

One can see why

So, uh, yeah, that's how the Yankee Division bounced its war into being the first full US division in France and how a kid from Cleveland, last in his class at West Point, flouted all the rules and ran off to fight Kaiser Bill without telling anyone

#drunjhistory

oh, and POST SCRIPT

the war department need not have bothered trying to curb regionalism: Pennsylvania just built huge monuments to itself anywhere the 28th Division of the PA Guard went in france

The PA Guard, the Marine Corps of the National Guard