The twentieth century: the stations went elsewhere

1917 – 2026 · the wartime state force, the rebuilt Guard, and the modern map

The wartime state force, 1917–1920: When the National Guard went into federal service for the First World War, Indiana raised a state force in its place — the Indiana Militia of the war years, an emergency body of the too-young, the deferred and the exempt, which guarded the home ground until the Guard came home. The adjutant general's report of 1920 prints the force's passing: on its page 231 the Third Infantry of the Indiana Militia musters out company by company — Company E at Elkhart, 6 February 1920; Company F at Goshen, 26 April 1920; Company I at Cambridge City, 23 February 1920; Company K at Richmond, 19 April 1920; Company M at New Castle, 26 February 1920. No Mishawaka company stands on the page, and no source reached for this section names a Mishawaka company of the wartime force. The page is one page of a biennial report — the regiment's earlier letters and the force's other regiments stand elsewhere in the adjutant general's reports of 1917–1920, which are named as the settling source in this section's closing entry — but the pattern the page shows is the pattern of every record in this section: when the northern companies were listed, Elkhart and Goshen were on the list and Mishawaka was not.

The Guard rebuilt, without Mishawaka: The same report turns the page to the new National Guard then organizing — a regiment of infantry, a regiment of field artillery, a battalion of engineers, a signal company, a field hospital, for the 38th Division. The Guard that rose from that organization kept stations across northern Indiana for the century that followed, and its stations in St. Joseph County were South Bend's: the rendezvous of the 113th Engineers' South Bend company in 1941, the battalion headquarters of the 151st Infantry's Second Battalion, the artillery and support detachments of the present establishment. The modern published structure of the regiment makes the map plain — headquarters and headquarters company of the Second Battalion, 151st Infantry, at South Bend; Company A at Gary; Company B at Logansport; Company C at Warsaw; a detachment of the 163rd Field Artillery's headquarters battery and a forward-support company at South Bend beside them. No company, detachment or headquarters of the regiment — or of any Guard unit — is stationed at Mishawaka, and none has been since Company D was disbanded in 1892.

The activations, at documented size: They are none. After 1892 no unit of Mishawaka was ever ordered into federal service as a unit — not in 1917, not in 1941, not for Korea, not for the Gulf, not after 2001 — because after 1892 there was no unit of Mishawaka to order. The city's wars were fought by its people as individuals: volunteers and draftees who trained at other places' camps and served in other places' companies, whose rolls, dead and home fronts stand whole in the Wars record of this history and are not repeated here. This section's negative rests on the whole run of the record reached: Pratt's "Mishawaka's only company"; the muster-out page of 1920; the adjutant generals' organizations as the published structures carry them through the century; and the Military Department of Indiana's own community directory of November 2026, in which the city's only uniformed institution is a recruiting station. A history that printed a Mishawaka deployment would be inventing one; the record prints a city's men, everywhere, and a city's unit, nowhere after 1892.

Sources:

1. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana (1920), p. 231 — the Indiana Militia's Third Infantry mustered out by company and station, February–April 1920, and the organization of the new National Guard for the 38th Division; read first-hand in the Indiana Memory digital collection.
2. Indiana National Guard, published order of battle of the 151st Infantry and supporting units (Second Battalion headquarters and detachments at South Bend; companies at Gary, Logansport and Warsaw), as carried in the Guard's reference listings, checked November 2026.
3. Military Department of Indiana, "Indiana National Guard in Your Community" (in.gov), November 2026 — no Mishawaka station, armory or unit entry.
4. Wars record of this history — the city's service, rolls and dead in every war, at individual size.