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National Guard

The National Guard is the military reserve force called out twice to back up the Paranatural Incident Task Force: in Massachusetts, where it arrives after the fighting is over, and in Utah, where it fights beside the team and takes heavy losses.
Type Organization (state military forces)
Aliases the Guard; Guardsmen; Utah National Guard
Known members The major; older Guard officer; Sergeant Jefferson (or Johnson); Jordan Gramoire
Status Active
First appearance Summer Service 06; mentioned from Summer Service 03

Overview

The task force has no troops of its own. When a case outgrows four investigators, the request goes up through Big Bill, and what comes back, eventually, is the Guard. Both times it is told a cover story about what it is dealing with. (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 06, Walkers 06)

Members

  • The major, commander of the Utah convoy; the players also call him "the general". Skeptical, but he takes Kurt's advice. (Walkers 09)
  • The older Guard officer, an older man in a lieutenant's uniform who debriefs the team at Marblehead. (Summer Service 06)
  • Sergeant Jefferson, who announces the Guard's arrival at Marblehead by radio. Andre gives the name as Jefferson and then as Johnson within the same broadcast. (Summer Service 06)
  • A young lieutenant at the Marblehead checkpoint. (Summer Service 06)
  • Jordan Gramoire, son of Ma Gramoire, who serves in the Guard: "He's still alive, he just don't call." Mentioned only. (Summer Service 03)

History

Marblehead (June 1992)

With federal health agencies converging on Marblehead, Diane warns that the governor may call out the Guard and close the beaches. Big Bill orders the team to find the missing survey team before it arrives. Ma Gramoire, for her part, will talk to the government only when it brings her Guardsman son back. (Summer Service 03)

The Guard is sent, but the storm washes out the roads. One day Big Bill has no solid numbers on when it will arrive; the next it is blocked about forty miles out, and the FBI cannot send a helicopter. Kurt's message for the soldiers is "don't eat nothing here. Eat from packs". (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 05)

The Guard reaches Marblehead only as the team is finishing the case at the power plant. A sergeant broadcasts on all frequencies: "We have arrived at Marblehead. We've taken command of the situation. There's some awfully weird shit out here. If you're in range, would appreciate a consult." At the checkpoint a lieutenant first turns the team away. They hand over the anti-worm canister, which goes to a chemist, and give the older officer the agreed story: a religious terrorist group that seeded the food supply with a parasite. He tells them the military is handing out deworming medicine, that some townspeople will not pull through, and, on his way out, that "apparently someone used a tactical nuke at the nuclear power plant". The team feigns surprise and goes to sleep in the medical tent. See Terrorist cover story. (Summer Service 06)

Utah (November 1992)

As the Ballard case turns dangerous, Kurt phones Big Bill from the sheriff's office and asks for the Utah National Guard to be put on standby. Big Bill had hoped Ballard would not be "an additional thing I had to worry about on top of the, you know, political stuff". (Walkers 06)

They need it. After the night at Ballard High School the plan is to drive out at sunrise and call the Guard in, but the phones are down, Salt Lake City is 141 miles away, and the roads are blocked. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08)

Unrecorded session

How the Guard was reached is known only from Andre's recap at the start of Walkers 09, which covers the end of session 08 or the unrecorded Walkers 08.5. The team fetched horses to get around the roadblock, carried a generator to the radio station and called the Guard, met it on horseback outside town, fought through the barricade between Ballard and Roosevelt and cleared the Roosevelt police station.

A convoy of Humvees and APCs then drives on the community center at dusk, with the team and the ranch people on horseback and Ned Simpson's killdozer falling in behind. The major's jaw drops when Kurt points out that the cloud ahead is the ranch farmhouse hanging in the sky. When invisible waves start shoving the vehicles he halts the convoy and orders an advance on foot, with a megaphone surrender attempt first. (Walkers 09)

The megaphone party gets as far as "This is the National Guard, please, sir--" before it is answered with gunfire. Two Guardsmen take an APC back with Walt "Coyote" Murphy to knock out the substation. While the team is underground, white powder falls over the battlefield and everyone outside is knocked unconscious; unidentified hazmat teams and black craft move over the field. Kurt takes a medic's Humvee, the party rights the overturned APC, and Kurt uses its long-range radio to put a report on record with the Guard's Salt Lake City outpost: there is a cover-up, and the team did not cause it. The Guardsmen left at the police station with Donald McManley stayed conscious because they were indoors; they had helped with the autopsies, and are evacuated with him. (Walkers 09)

The cost is given in the next arc. At least 50 to 60 Guardsmen are dead. The powder was a mild amnesiac, and most of the surviving soldiers have no idea what happened over the previous twenty hours; searchers find no trace of the hazmat troops. The Guardsmen who watched the autopsies are debriefed by national security officials. Big Bill's public story is a domestic insurgency. (Roulet Estate 01)

Trivia

  • Andre's inventory of the Utah column: "Humvees, a couple of APCs, an armored bulldozer, a bunch of horses, one police car, and one elderly vehicle, Betsy". (Walkers 09)
  • At Marblehead the Guard is the cavalry that arrives late: Diane had asked the team to tell her if something big was trying to kill them "so I can send in the cavalry". (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 06)
  • The major's fate after the powder fell is not shown in the Walkers finale; in the next arc he is carried into the medical tent on a stretcher with the other casualties. (Walkers 09, Roulet Estate 01)

Appearances