The 126th Infantry Regiment has been in active military service since 1855, beginning as militia companies in Grand Rapids that provided the core of the Third Michigan Infantry Regiment in the Civil War. After the war, the companies were reorganized as part of the Second Infantry, Michigan State Troops, forerunners of the Michigan National Guard. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the 126th was organized and assigned to the Thirty-second “Red Arrow” Division, which was honored by the French with the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in the 1918 Oise-Aisne offensive. During World War II, the regiment served with the Thirty-second Division in New Guinea and the Philippines and saw 654 days of combat, more than any other American unit. In peacetime, the regiment demonstrated the value of the National Guard by assisting civil authorities during strikes, riots, and natural disasters, including rioting at the Muskegon County Jail in 1873, a railroad strike in Durand in 1909, the Upper Peninsula copper strike in 1913, the General Motors Sit-Down Strike in Flint in 1937, the Detroit riots in July 1967, an April 1956 tornado in the Grand Rapids area, and a west Michigan blizzard in January 1978.