In 1941 President Jake Featherston created the Confederate Veterans' Brigades. These were manned initially by volunteers who were veterans of the Great War and who were over age or partially disabled and so not fit for the regular Army. Featherston's intention was to free up younger men for regular service.
The assignments of the Brigades included patrolling the dams of the Tennessee Valley to guard against sabotage and to guard prison camps containing Negroes supposedly taken in arms against the C.S.A. The latter was misleading as the mass murders known as "population reductions" had already begun and Brigade personnel were expected to participate.
Shortly after the announcement of the formation of the Brigades, Hipolito Rodriguez volunteered. He was motivated both by patriotism and the fact that wages he would be paid along with the allowance his wife would receive would be greater than what he would get if he remained on his farm.
In the closing months of the war, as the Confederate States' armies were depleted and it began scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower, the Veterans' Brigades were increasingly thrown against better equipped and more able forces of the United States Army.
See also[]
- Volkssturm, the national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II in OTL.
