Lineage from a military standpoint - and strictly speaking - must stem in the current or present organization from military units having a continuity and from which the present unit has drawn troops no matter how fax back in history_' that con­tinuity may have had its source.

But in the National Guard there is a different type of lineage continuity. The troops of the National Guard come from communities and these communities are not masters of their own fate. They may supply troops to units of Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry, Signal Corps, Engineers, Quartermaster unit’s - but the continuity of such supply - rather than the type of unit must be the basic principle on which National Guard lineage must have its foundation.

So the lineage of the 196th Regimental Combat Team finds unit support clear back to the Civil War in one instance Yankton with an unabated continuity. In Sioux Falls, Brookings, Aberdeen, that continuity embraces both the 1st and 2nd Dakota Infantry of our pre-state territorial days. Watertown and Huron both had Territorial National Guard but there is a hiatus in their record when they produced no unit for service on the Mexican Border. Pierre, Rapid City, and Lead date onward with continuity since the Spanish-American War,

Forgetting the community and thinking only of the present unit, the 196th Infantry Combat Team is derived from Company A (later always designated as Troop) 1st Dakota Cavalry which for four years made an enviable record as a patrolling troop, a garrison troops, and an Expeditionary troop when it went with General Alfred Sully's expedition into North Dakota that culminated in the defeat of the enemy hostiles at the Battle of Kildeer Mountain in 1864.  South Dakota furnished no troop units to the Union cause in the battles against the Confederacy but it did produce two troops of cavalry that guarded the Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota frontier.

So soon as Dakota Territory organized National Guard troops, no less than eleven communities now furnished troops to the 196th Regimental Combat Team had functioning units. These were Aberdeen, Brookings, Canton, Flandreau, Huron, Mitchell, Redfield, Sioux Falls, Watertown, Webster, and Yankton. These units, on Statehood, went into the South Dakota National Guard and it was originally called the 2nd Infantry but that was so obvious a misnomer that in 1893 it was properly changed to the 1st South Dakota National Guard Infantry. When the Spanish-American War broke out South Dakota furnished two outfits, the 1st South Dakota Volunteer U. S. Infantry, derived largely from the 1st South Dakota National Guard Infantry and the 3rd U. S. Volunteer Cavalry.

In the Infantry, which indeed had a most unusual record and was cited by General MacArthur, the father of General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur and who was the commander in the Philippines, were units from Aberdeen, Brookings, DeSmet, Huron, Lead, Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Watertown, and Yankton. As is usual after a war is over a new organization arises and so thru the 2nd and 3rd South Dakota Infantry came the 4th South Dakota Infantry and no less than 9 communities of the present 196th were repre­sented on the Mexican Border, a bloodless affair, but still a significant service to the Nation in a time of stress.

No sooner were these troops back from the Border than World War I ensued. Aberdeen, Brookings, Canton, Howard, Madison, Mitchell, Pierre, Redfield, Sioux Falls, and Yankton supplied units to the 4th South Dakota which in turn became units of the 147th F. A. organized at Camp Greene in October of that year and which went overseas with the 41st Division but saw its service in the main with the 32nd Division on the Marne-Aisne and Meurse-Argonne Battles, achieving an outstanding record. Some of these units went into the 148th Machine Gun Battalion and the 116th Supply Train and units from Flandreau, Huron, Mitchell, Sioux Falls, Watertown, and Webster were in the 1st South Dakota Cavalry which had war service but not overseas. Nor in any study of the lineage of the 196th should the fine service rendered by the Rapid City and Lead units be overlooked, for they, although not currently member cities, contributed troops to the units cited in this lineage.

As is usual, after a War, a new National Guard organization is effected and this was inaugurated in South Dakota by the reactivation of the 147th F. A., followed by the 136th Engineers with units at Brookings and Madison soon superseded by the 109th Engineers. Later the 109th Quartermaster Regiment was organized and so when World War II ensued these three units and the 34th Signal Company from Watertown were called out. The 147th F. A. was actually on the high seas between Honolulu and the Philippines when Pearl Harbor made a hot war of the cold war.

The 147th F. A. in Australia, New Guinea, Noemfoer, and in three separate cam­paigns in the Philippines achieved a memorable record, a heritage of the 196th Regimen­tal Combat team for units from Aberdeen, Flandreau, Mitchell, Pierre, Sioux Falls, Vermillion, and Yankton were part of it. No less splendid was the record made by the 109th Engineers in North Africa and Italy, where accompanied by the 34th Quartermaster Company, the 196th Dump Track Company, both with their genesis in the 109th Quartermaster Regiment and the 34th Signal Company from Watertown, they served with the 34th Division which achieved a record of the most time in line of any unit of the United States Army_. The 132nd and half the 109th Engineer became the 132nd and 242nd Engineer Battalions who fought at Guam, Leyte, and the Rykukus. Thus the communities of Brookings, Hot Springs, Huron, Lead, Madison, Pierre, Rapid City, Sturgis, and Watertown, through these units, enhanced the glorious lineage of the 196th Regimental Combat team.

So today, of the communities which are fortunate to currently have units with membership in the 196th Regimental Combat Team one dates back to the Civil War, 11 to pre-statehood days; ten to the Spanish American War, ten to the Mexican border, fourteen to World War I and eleven to World War II and all have the experiences of the Korean War as an achievement on a record that no doubt will go on so long as the United States of America persists, which will be for eternity if the same spirit that animated these units we have named heron before is maintained in our Nation.