Some Gave All: 49th Field Artillery

Showing posts with label 49th Field Artillery. Show all posts

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Wyoming Army National Guard Museum

These photographs illustrate the location of the Wyoming Army National Guard Museum. As I was taking this photo in an effort to illustrate the older, cavalry related, part of this structure, I failed to get a really good photo of the front of the museum.

The building was built in 1936, during a period of time during which cavalry was actually receiving increased attention in the American military. The Wyoming National Guard (there was only an Army Guard at the time, as of course there was no Air Force at all, that being part of the Army) was cavalry at the time, being the 115th Cavalry Regiment.

Some may wonder about the "AL" below the AD on the corner stone. The AL is the date used in Masonry for the creation of the earth, and many buildings of this type during this era were dedicated with the participation of Masons.

This shows the front of the building. This structure was used as a National Guard Armory from the 1930s until some time until the 1970s, but I suspect hte brick structure was a latter addition. These small armories became very unsuitable for continued use by the 1960s, and were replaced in quite a few instances during the 1970s to contemplate the need for much larger armories. Compounding this need was the fact that in some instances, such as in Casper and Cheyenne, the old armories were well within the city limits by the 1960s making their use for military purposes difficult.

M7 105 Gun Motor Carriage. The Wyoming Army National Guard's 300th Armored Field Artillery used these during the Korean War, during which they won a Presidential and a Congressional Unit Citation for an action in which they directly engaged attacking Communist forces.

This is a M59 Armored Personnel Carrier, two of which are on display at this museum. I'm not aware of any Wyoming Army National Guard unit using these, but some must have as the other items on display here were definitely used by the Wyoming Army National Guard. Wyoming's units included the 115th Mechanized Cavalry, the descendant of the 115th Cavalry and the 115th Cavalry (Horse Mech), in the 1950s and perhaps onto the 1960s, at which point the cavalry was phased out and the 115th lineage was carried on by the 115th Artillery Regiment. The former cavalry units became battalions of the 49th Field Artillery along with the 300th AFA. Today, those units are smaller and are once again the 300th AFA.

This is a USS M777 155mm howitzer, which is a gun still used by the US military.

Some Gave All

Some Gave All is one of a series of our blogs which are basically photographic in nature. The main blog, the "hub", is Holscher's Hub, which is a general photo site. The general blog that we have that receives the most viewing attention is Lex Anteinternet, which started off, and which also remains, a blog for the study of historical topics of the 1890-1920 time frame, but which also deals with about everything else. Our daily Wyoming history blog is Today In Wyoming's History.

We also have four specific photograph blogs with dedicated topics, those being Churches of the West, Courthouses of the West, Railhead and Painted Bricks. Those blogs are dedicated to photographs of the topics their title indicates (more or less). This blog, while a history minded one, fits into the latter category. It depicts monuments, mostly war memorials, that we've run across in our travels.

Many of these photos, indeed probably all of them, were taken as the opportunity arose. It'd be rare here to find a photo in which we had gone out specifically to photograph the memorial. Because of that, they will not have a professional quality, as we have to take the monument, including the light, weather, and other conditions, as we find them. Still, that serves the purpose, which is to record monuments and memorials that otherwise would likely be missed by most people.