Vintage Military - Part 78

National Guard, 1937

Previous Vintage Military posts have featured the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.  Today we look at the National Guard.  The August 9, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine had an article about an exercise conducted by the National Guard near Fort Bragg, North Carolina in conjunction with Army observers.  They were testing a new technique to fire artillery at a target a mile away that they could not see, using aerial photographs to calculate the direction and range for the guns.

Among the photos of the Guardsmen and their guns, LIFE published the photo above of naked Guardsmen washing off after the exercise.  That photo is rather dark, so you can't see much, but ...

here's the original photo from the LIFE photo archive.  All these photos were taken by LIFE photographer Thomas McAvoy.  And yes, they certainly have stripped naked.  Click on the photo for a larger view.

Other photos in the archive, not published in the magazine, show them at the edge of the water ...

and as the photographer pans out a bit, we see another Guardsman with a nice rear end and something hanging between his legs.

We end with the Guardsmen heading back after bathing.  Most have put their shorts back on, but not all.