Courtesy Photo | 142nd MI Linguist Company leadership, Dec. 1961. L-R: Capt. Lawrence K. Raty, training...... read more read more
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On Feb. 12, 1960, the 142nd MI Linguist Company was organized and federally recognized in the Utah Army National Guard. The only unit of its kind at that time, it endures today, more than sixty-five years later, as one of six battalions within the 300th MI Brigade (Linguist).
Amid mounting global tensions during the Cold War, the Army took steps to rectify a glaring challenge faced during the past two major conflicts: a lack of proficient linguists in critical languages. On Feb. 12, 1960, the 142nd MI Linguist Company was established to provide linguistic support where and when the Army needed it.
Headquartered at Fort Douglas, a Civil War era post on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, the unit was commanded by Lt. Col. Walter C. Blakemore, a 51-year-old native of the city who had entered military service in 1942. Sfc. John Blankenstein, a native of the Netherlands, served as first sergeant; Maj. Chris S. Metos, a Greek linguist, was executive officer; and Capt. Lawrence K. Raty was the director of the unit’s training program.
The company was divided into three platoons with a total strength of fifty-four officers and enlisted personnel, most of whom came from the state’s large population of Morman missionaries with their extensive knowledge of the cultures, economies and languages of myriad countries abroad. Initially, unit personnel covered the European languages of German, French, Italian, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish.
The company held its first summer training session at nearby Camp Williams. The following year, the 142nd soldiers attended summer training at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, which would become the Defense Language Institute in 1963. Upon returning to Utah, the company began offering weekly two-hour immersion classes in Russian, Rumanian, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, and Ukrainian. Instructors for these classes were native-born speakers provided by the Salt Lake Brigham Young University Adult Education Center.
Classes focused foremost on developing fluent speakers to ensure the soldiers were qualified as interrogators and interpreters. To aid in this training, in 1961, the company created what they referred to as the “electronic secretary.” Each week, a new twelve-to-fifteen-minute dialogue in the target language was recorded and then played on a loop twenty-four hours a day. Soldiers could dial in to the recording on one of two private telephone lines and practice their pronunciations along with the recording.
By late 1961, the unit had grown to ninety personnel, and Colonel Blakemore indicated his unit had a long waiting list of potential personnel. The unit would continue to expand. By 1980, it had more than doubled in size, at which point it was reorganized and redesignated the 142nd MI Battalion (Linguist). The battalion then had seven platoons divided into twenty-three different language sections, which, in addition to the original eleven European languages, now included African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and West Pacific languages.
Throughout the 1980s, the unit members began lending their talents to other units, roleplaying as prisoners of war during exercises, evaluating interrogation and language skills, and instructing language refresher courses. They also conducted open source analysis of Chinese newspapers and translated foreign military manuals and other materials.
In 1981, part of the 142nd’s senior staff had been tapped to form the nucleus of the newly established 300th MI Brigade, to which the 142nd was subordinated in 1988. At that time, counterintelligence agents and voice interceptors joined the interrogators in the battalion. Two years later, nineteen of the battalion’s soldiers were mobilized to provide linguistic support during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. It would later provide similar support to various nation building operations, medical readiness exercises, and liaison missions, as well as during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
Today, the 142nd MI Battalion is one of six similar battalions in the 300th MI Brigade (Linguist). While no longer unique in its mission, it still holds the distinction of being the first Military Intelligence unit established in the Army National Guard.
Article by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
| Date Taken: | 02.06.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 02.06.2026 12:08 |
| Story ID: | 557625 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 13 |
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