(Seated left to right) Captain Arthur Moncrieff, Captain Francis Bowman, Major Richard Dolbeare, Captain Roy Surrette and Captain Charles Carr. (Standing, left to right) 1st Lieut. Philip Pasqualino, 2nd Lieut. Winsor Finney, 1st Lieut. Frank DeFazio, 2nd Lieut. Myron Wing, Adj. A. Anderson, Battalion instructor Sergeant Ernest Monroe, 1st Lieut. Francis Walsh, 2nd Lieut. Abbott Fiendel, 1st Lieut. Cecil Ward, 2nd Lieutenant Robert Batten, and 1st Lieut. Samuel Levine. The Wakefield High School Battalion was created in October 1885, when the "boys of Wakefield High School" formed a military company and entered into the Second Massachusetts Regiment with cadets from Reading and Andover. During the 1920-21 school year, the Battalion was said to have "advanced farther" than in other years under the instruction of Sergeant Monroe of the United States Army. The battalion's four companies met for drill three periods each week, with an officers' school held every Tuesday afternoon to instruct the officers and non-commissioned officers. For several years, the companies which made up the Wakefield Battalion held spring prize drills in the Town Hall and later on the park (common). Due to crowded conditions at the High School and overcrowding of the program, military drills were abolished in 1931. The program was resumed with the entrance of the United States in World War II and was required of all boys in the junior and senior classes, as military training was valuable to the young men entering the service. Image from the Wakefield Municipal Gas and Light Department annual calendar, 2019 Photo courtesy of JC Marketing Associates
