Hamilton County’s military service stretched from the Civil War through the wars of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with local men serving in Confederate and later U.S. forces on battlefields from Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida to France, Europe, the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the Civil War, many Hamilton Countians served in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, especially the 2nd FL Infantry, while others fought in the Army of Tennessee and in Florida, including at Olustee, before Florida troops surrendered at Sailor’s Creek and Appomattox. After the old militia system gave way to the National Guard, Hamilton County men entered U.S. service in World War I, where Floridians fought as replacements in France under the harsh conditions of trench warfare until the armistice of 1918. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hamilton County men served in World War II on land, at sea, and in the air against Germany and Japan, including in the Atlantic, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, the Ardennes, New Guinea, and Mindanao. In the Korean War, local men served in reactivated Florida formations and other units amid bitter fighting in mountainous terrain, while the 159th Fighter Squadron carried out air missions. In Vietnam, Hamilton County men served across the conflict in dispersed assignments amid jungle, river, urban, and psychological warfare, returning home between 1971 and 1975. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Hamilton County men and women joined the war on terror, fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Florida troops including the 53rd Infantry Brigade took part in operations marked by desert combat, urban warfare, insurgency, and repeated deployments.