Blum takes helm of National Guard Bureau
by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, April 16, 2003) -- The Army National Guard two-star general who helped form the United States Northern Command, the new military organization responsible for homeland security, has become the 25th chief of the National Guard Bureau.
H. Steven Blum will be promoted to lieutenant general and pinned with his third star as chief of the 466,000 members of the Army and Air National Guard now that the U.S. Senate has confirmed his Jan. 6 nomination by President George Bush. The Senate confirmed the four-year appointment on April 11.
Blum, 56, succeeds Lt. Gen. Russell Davis who retired as the Guard Bureau's chief in August. Maj. Gen. Raymond Rees has been acting chief since then.
Nearly 160,000 members of the Army and Air Guard, almost 35 percent of the total force, are on active duty or belong to units that have been identified for mobilization for the war against terrorism as Blum becomes the Guard Bureau's chief. Guard forces are involved in the largest mobilization of reserve-component troops since World War II.
The chief is the senior uniformed National Guard officer responsible for formulating, developing and coordinating all policies, programs and plans affecting Army and Air National Guard personnel. The general serves as the principal adviser to the secretary and chief of staff of the Army and the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force on all National Guard issues. As NGB chief, he serves as the Army's and Air Force's official channel of communication with the governors and adjutants general.
Blum has been chief of staff for the commander of the Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado since August.
The Maryland Army Guard general coordinated the activities of all members of the five uniformed services, including the reserve components, assigned to the Northern Command. NORTHCOM was officially activated in Colorado Springs in October. It was the first military command formed solely to defend the continental United States since the Continental Army, commanded by General George Washington, was organized in 1775.
"There is no more important mission than the defense of this nation and the homeland," said Blum during an interview in September. "We cannot fail the American people. They have high expectations of us. We are defending our families, our friends, our way of life."
Now he will oversee the National Guard's overall commitment to that cause as well as to the war on terrorism overseas, including the war with Iraq. He will also be concerned with how well the Guard performs its traditional jobs of training for war and supporting civil authorities during natural disasters, such as floods and wildfires, and civil disturbances.
Blum paid his dues on the foreign front as commanding general of the Multinational Division North in Bosnia Herzegovina from September 2001 to April 2002. He commanded troops from other countries, including Russia and Turkey, during that time.
Blum assumed command in August 1999 of the Virginia Army Guard's 29th Infantry Division that provided the command and control element for that peacekeeping rotation in Bosnia. He commanded the 29th until last August when he was assigned to the Northern Command in Colorado.
The late historian Stephen Ambrose, who died in October, gave Blum high marks as a soldier and as a commander in his final book, "To America."
"At 55, he has had made 1,500 air drops. He has had open-heart surgery. He talks so well and thinks so swiftly and knows so much that he reminds me of Eisenhower in 1945, when Ike was fifty-five years old," wrote Ambrose after meeting Blum while visiting Bosnia with a group of World War II veterans during Thanksgiving 2001.
"We flew in helicopters together, we attended ceremonies, briefings, meals with the troops," Ambrose continued. "[Blum] was always fully concentrated. He is outstanding in his job as military commander and diplomat, as good as Ike was in Germany after World War II, although on a much smaller scale."
Blum is a native of Maryland and earned his bachelor's degree in history from the University of Baltimore in 1968. He received a master's degree in social science in 1973 from Morgan State College in Baltimore, and he attended the Army War College in 1989.
He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in August 1971 when he graduated with honors from the Maryland Army Guard's Officers Candidate School. He has been a Special Forces officer throughout his career, and has commanded at every level since taking charge of a detachment in the Maryland Army Guard's 20th Special Forces in November 1977.
Blum received his first star when he was promoted to brigadier general in August 1996, and he was promoted to major general in February 2000.
(Editor's note: Master Sgt. Bob Haskell is a senior correspondent for the
National Guard Bureau.)
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