Silk Stockings or the Danger Zone

The World Wars, SAGEBRUSH, and the Past, Present, and Future of USAR Legal Support

By Sergeant Major (Retired) Stephen W. Minyard

June 1, 2026 | Army Lawyer, 2026 Issue #2

Read Time: < 17 mins

Graduation of the ninth class of The Judge Advocate General’s School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in April 1943. (Source: Bentley Historical Library: Bentley Image Bank)

The history of legal support from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) elements, as the largest pool of reserve legal support on the planet, provides a rich tapestry of wisdom as the Army transforms for tomorrow’s near-peer, high-end fight. For over 100 years, citizen-Soldiers have answered the call to mobilize and join their Active Component (AC) brothers and sisters, from War Department offices in Washington, D.C., through caves and prison camps in the Philippines, mobilizations throughout the Cold War, to Operations DESERT SHIELD, DESERT STORM, ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM. With our Soldiers arrive at the S.A. Woods Machine Company in August 1942. Then-MAJ Charles Burnett accompanied these armed troops as they enforced Government efforts to quickly expand war material production. (Source: Boston Public Library) rucksacks facing tomorrow and boots firmly planted in today, this four-part series examines citizen-Soldiers’ service and the remarkable history of USAR JAG Corps units through the past century. Part I, below, explores the USAR through the World Wars. Part II will explore the same during the Cold War, and Part III, the post-Cold War era and the creation of the U.S. Army Reserve Legal Command. The series will then conclude with Part IV, which will glean how we may prepare for large-scale combat operations (LSCO) and the challenges facing the Army in decades to come. Far more stories remain to be told here; the following is only a rough mantle upon which to post the deeds of thousands of Reserve legal Soldiers in our Regiment.

The Beginning: The Judge Advocate General’s Reserve Corps

On 3 June 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act of 1916.1The act created the Officer Reserve Corps (ORC), and authorized the accession of specialty branch officers, such as judge advocates (JAs), directly into the new organization. While the Army Reserve traces its establishment to 23 April 1908, it was primarily a medical officer corps; in 1916, JAs joined its ranks and immediately wrote themselves into our Regiment’s history.

The first twenty ORC JAs were commissioned as majors, among over 21,000 other members of the ORC. In announcing these new Soldiers, the War Department emphasized that legal branch commissions were by no means “silk stocking,” rear detachment jobs; rather, they would be in the “danger zone,” likely to suffer the same casualty rates as doctors fighting in France.2By the end of 1917, fifty-six JAs had been commissioned into what The Judge Advocate General (TJAG) dubbed the “Judge Advocate General’s Reserve Corps.”3Forty-seven of these ORC JAs were activated, and assigned both to the Judge Advocate General’s Office (today’s OTJAG), and to field units to assist divisions and ports of embarkation with “wills and other legal instruments” for a rapidly expanding Army.4Former Regimental Historian Fred Borch’s excellent Judge Advocates in the Great War, 1917-1922 recounts the experiences of these first Reserve JAs in combat.5

Soldiers arrive at the S.A. Woods Machine Company in August 1942. Then-MAJ Charles Burnett accompanied these armed troops as they enforced Government efforts to quickly expand war material production. (Source: Boston Public Library)

The Organized Reserve: Service Between World Wars

The Reserve Officer and Enlisted Reserve Corps were amorphous pools of Soldiers awaiting activation and orders for training before and just after World War I (WWI). The experience of the war’s mobilizations drove Congress to comprehensively reform the Army’s non-active forces via the National Defense Act of 1920.6Both groups of Soldiers were merged and structured into divisions and lower echelon units like the Regular Army force structure and reported to active-duty corps headquarters that in turn had responsibility over geographic regions across the country.

Active-duty officers were detailed as cadre for the various Organized Reserve divisions to serve a similar purpose as the Active Guard/Reserve (AGR) program today, although no JAs appear to have been detailed for this purpose.7These divisions and their OSJAs were largely formations bloodied in Europe then inactivated shortly after the armistice; they form the lineage of the vast majority of USAR embedded units and some AC divisions today.8JAs could go A C-87 “Liberator Express,” the type of aircraft COL Charles Burnett traveled in across the Pacific on his ill-fated secret mission in 1944. (Source: Library of Congress) years between periods of summer training active duty. With no Reserve Centers, inactive training was held in civilian offices or municipal buildings, and until 1941, the Reserve divisions were almost exclusively officer-manned organizations, so enlisted clerks to assist Organized Reserve officers during summer training were probably nonexistent.9

As the lean years of the 1930s ended, the world once again faced global war. Japan, raging through China and creeping toward French possessions in modern-day Vietnam, seemed poised to strike British, Dutch, or American forces in the Pacific, and Germany sparked war in Europe in September 1939. On 27 August 1940, Congress authorized the President to mobilize both the Organized Reserve Divisions and the National Guard for up to twelve months.10This was no division-level mobilization though; senior commanders across the country drafted lists ranking JAs who were ready, truly needed, and whose absence would not cripple their local community.11In September 1940, Congress authorized conscription, adding another mission Reserve JAs happily filled.

The First Mobilizations: America Prepares for War

In Washington, D.C., the Judge Advocate General’s Department (JAGD) (not yet renamed the JAG Corps) enthusiastically called for volunteers, with a voracious appetite for attorneys. Three lines of effort dominated the JAGD’s requirements: legal support to the Selective Service, navigating War Department control of vast swaths of American industry, and providing JAs to training camps swelling with draftees and volunteers across the Nation.12Any mobilization requires people and equipment, and the Regiment was deeply involved in getting both ready for war. Through the spring and summer of 1941, mobilization warnings flowed to Reserve JAs, some with frustrating delay. A few departed directly for far-flung outposts in the Philippines or Hawaii; some traveled to Washington, D.C., for a few weeks of training, and others simply waited. Captain (CPT) Charles Burnett, Jr., a Seattle attorney and Reserve JA, said farewell to friends and family several times in May 1941, awaiting final orders. He knew only he would join dozens of JAs in Washington, D.C., but had no idea when.13

When he finally mobilized and reported for active duty, Burnett quickly made an impression on JAGD staff as an officer with a talent for navigating new territory for the Regiment. In August 1942, then-Major (MAJ) Burnett, accompanied by 200 armed Soldiers, found himself in South Boston, taking control of the S.A. Woods Machine Company Plant. The factory Burnett had to help manage ran twenty-four hours a day to produce vital war materials, but it refused to abide by wartime labor laws enforced by President Roosevelt. The President, in turn, ordered the Army to occupy the company’s grounds.

While Burnett and other Reserve JAs helped balance the rule of law with the needs of industrial mobilization, MAJ Troy W. Lewis mobilized in 1941 to help the massive conscription bureaucracy. An Arkansas native, he stayed close to home, working in the Selective Service’s Arkansas headquarters. He, like dozens of other Reserve and Guard JAs through the war, reviewed requests for conscientious objection and other deferments from military service and assignments of men for non-military “work of national importance” at camps around the country. He and JAs throughout the Selective Service system balanced the massive need for immediate manpower with fairness and other strategic manpower requirements. Future LSCO could place the same demands on the JAG Corps.14

The massive influx of Reserve JAs, some of whom may have never had more than a few weeks of on-the-job training in military law, drove the JAGD to institute a refresher training course in Washington, D.C. Started just three months into the war in February 1942 at National University’s Law School, the course provided a basic, specialized, and refresher curriculum for JAs before shipping out for duty. By the middle of 1942, most officers in the JAGD were from the Organized Reserve. Of 771 total officers assigned, 435, or 56 percent of the force, were Reserve officers, with another 53 mobilized from the National Guard.15The small active-duty nucleus of the JAGD would remain just a fraction of JA strength throughout the war.16

A C-87 “Liberator Express,” the type of aircraft COL Charles Burnett traveled in across the Pacific on his ill-fated secret mission in 1944. (Source: Library of Congress)

Fighting in Europe, the Pacific, and One Last Mission for the JAG Reserve

Although the Organized Reserve was a division-based organization, pre-war piecemeal mobilizations gutted most of their officer staff and leadership. Thus, by the time full divisions did mobilize, they were cobbled together with conscripted men; retiree recalls; a smattering of Guard, Reserve and active-duty veterans; and new Reserve officers brought directly into the JAGD.

Nicholas E. Allen, an attorney working for the U.S. Department of Labor in 1942, was one such reservist commissioned as a second lieutenant and sent, like many new JAs, to work in the JAGD’s War Department offices in Washington, D.C. He attended one of the first classes of The Judge Advocate General’s School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1943, and he joined the vast flotillas of Soldiers and machinery sailing for England in January 1944. While in England, he reviewed records of trial through the massive invasion of D-Day in June 1944; but, he finally got his chance to join a Reserve division heavily engaged in combat in August 1944: the 82d Airborne Division.17Allen served in the division through Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and the eventual surrender of German forces in May 1945. Allen stayed a Reserve officer after the war, transferred to the new U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1949, and retired as a brigadier general.18

By 1943, Reserve JA Charles Burnett was still in Washington, where promoted again to lieutenant colonel (LTC). He was working in the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division and planning for the liberation of Europe. Once again handed a thorny legal issue, he drafted the Department’s policy on the preservation of artistic treasures, monuments, and museums during what promised to be a bitter fight.19

The war in the Pacific, however, drew Burnett into a dangerous, secret mission in July 1944. Promoted once more to colonel, Burnett boarded a C-87—a B-24 “Liberator” bomber outfitted for passenger travel—en route to Amberly Field in Australia. War still raged across the South Pacific, and Burnett was likely dispatched by the War Department with plans of coming offensives as General Douglas MacArthur’s troops fought north to the Philippines and into Japan itself. On 26 July 1944, as Burnett’s long journey to Australia was nearly complete, his aircraft disappeared. A frantic search found a recently burned patch of jungle about 30 miles north of Guadalcanal, the plane’s next stop, and a search party confirmed the deaths of all aboard.20He was just thirty-nine years old.

Four of the eight JAs serving in the Philippines at the outset of the war were mobilized reservists, and they would comprise the majority of the JAGD casualties suffered during the war. Three of the four—LTC Arch M. McKeever, MAJ Frank G. Aigrisse, and MAJ Samuel L. Heisinger Jr.—would die in Japanese captivity. For more on the ordeal of the JAs of the Philippine Department, see this author’s Lore of the Corps article in issue 3, 2025, of The Army Lawyer.21

Reserve JAs continued to serve around the world, helping the Federal Government rally millions of men, women, and American industrial might to the front lines. As early as 1942, however, signs emerged of one final, gargantuan mission for them and our Regiment: the prosecution of those who flaunted the laws of war. On 7 October 1942, President Roosevelt declared his intent to join with Great Britain and other European nations to establish a United Nations Commission for Investigation of War Crimes. This commission would ensure “just and sure punishment” for those who, according to the President, “violated every tenet of the Christian faith.”22In 1941, most Reserve JAs were captains with a few weeks of active duty; by 1945, they were field-grade officers, fluent in international law and keen to help with one final World War II mission.

Two Reserve JAs, COL William F. Fratcher and LTC Clio Straight, played pivotal roles in war crimes trials, lending their expertise to the Corps while hundreds wearing the quill and sword demobilized and went home. Fratcher mobilized first as a Cavalry officer in 1941 and, holding a law degree from the University of Michigan, transferred into the JAGD in November of that year.23By the end of the war, Fratcher was the chief, War Crimes Branch, Legal Division, Office of Military Government for Germany. He was responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s charge to hold the German military, and civilian population (notably those who beat or killed Allied fliers) to justice. In 1948, Fratcher wrote an extraordinary first-hand account of this massive undertaking and the toll it took on the JAs working within one of the Regiment’s finest hours.24

LTC Clio Straight was a Reserve JA and attorney in Sioux City, Iowa, at the beginning of the war, but he activated in February 1942. He spent most of the war in Washington, D.C., working contract law across the Pacific, and assisting in the gathering of evidence for war crime prosecutions in Europe.25At the conclusion of the war, Straight returned to Washington as deputy chief of the War Crimes Branch of the JAGD, overseeing the JAGD’s role in trials in Germany.26

In this role, he had the unfortunate duty of reviewing the record of trial of Ilse Koch, the “belle” of Buchenwald prison camp, for whom he recommended a reduction in sentence from life to just four years due to a lack of “credible evidence.” His recommendation, and the Army’s perceived lack of candor in publicizing the recommendation, created a firestorm for the Army and President Truman. Nevertheless, Straight continued a fruitful post-war career; he retired as a brigadier general in 1961 and died in 1991 at the age of ninety-six.27

The War Crimes Group’s Apprehension and Clearance Section. Reserve JAs formed the core of this massive, JA-led effort to bring war criminals to justice. (Source: Library of Congress)

Looking to the Future: Legal Units

The system Straight and Fratcher worked in was so enormous, and required so many distinct resources, that the Army created an entire command dedicated to the mission, the 7708 War Crimes Group, with Straight serving as its commanding officer.28This novel JA-led unit was dissolved as the trials wound down in the late 1940s, but this foray into a unit of lawyers and legal personnel created an impression across the Regiment.

One of thousands of case records supported by the work of Straight and Fratcher, within the JA-led War Crimes Group. (Source: National Archives)

Just a year after Straight returned from Europe to Washington, D.C., in 1949, TJAG convened a conference at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, to discuss the best means of keeping his large number of Reserve JAs trained. The Soviet Union was no longer the close ally it had been during the war, and a completely new system of military justice, borne of lessons during World War II, was on the way: the Uniform Code of Military Justice. TJAG’s proposed solution was to form “JAG Training Units” across the country in areas where twelve or more JAs resided. The UCMJ and the Korean War would intervene with this plan, but by the mid-1950s, the Regiment dove into creating the largest Reserve pool of military legal expertise in history.29 TAL

Notes