Force
US Army Rangers
Elite American light infantry tracing their lineage to Rogers' Rangers, reborn at Pointe du Hoc and leading the way since.
American Rangers trace their name to Rogers' Rangers of the French and Indian War — frontier troops fighting by Robert Rogers' 28 'Rules of Ranging,' still printed in the modern Ranger Handbook. The modern lineage began in 1942, when Darby's 1st Ranger Battalion formed in Northern Ireland on the British Commando model to give the U.S. Army a raiding and spearhead force.
The Second World War made the legend in hard coin: Arzew, Gela, and the Cisterna disaster in the Mediterranean; and on D-Day two feats in one morning — the 2nd Battalion scaling the sheer cliffs of Pointe du Hoc under fire to destroy the guns, and the 5th punching off Omaha Beach behind the words that became the motto: 'Rangers, lead the way!' In the Pacific the 6th Battalion executed the Cabanatuan prison raid, freeing over 500 POWs.
Disbanded and reborn through Korea and Vietnam, the battalions were made permanent in 1974 as what became the 75th Ranger Regiment: the Army's premier light-infantry raiders — airfield seizures, direct action, and the standard-bearers of the school whose tab is the Army's hardest common badge. From Grenada through decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, the regiment has been in continuous combat rotation longer than any comparable American unit.