75th Ranger Regiment

• 1. Introduction

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  The 75th Ranger Regiment of the United States Army marked 7,000 consecutive days of combat operations on the 17th of December 2020. It is one of the most extensively used units in the American military. The regiment is a light infantry force built for direct-action raids. It can send a Ranger battalion into the air within 18 hours of an alert. Its other missions include seizing airfields, conducting special reconnaissance, recovering people cut off behind enemy lines, and capturing or killing high-value targets. Its lineage runs through frontier riflemen, World War II raiders, and a special force that fought the Japanese in the China Burma India Theater. How did a modern regiment grow out of so many separate pieces? What happened when its first battalions met disaster? And what must a soldier endure to wear its scroll today?

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• 2. Older Than the Nation

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  Captain Benjamin Church led a force called Church's Rangers against Native American tribes in King Philip's War, long before the United States existed. In 1756, Robert Rogers recruited nine Ranger companies to fight in the French and Indian War. People called them Rogers' Rangers. The regiment traces its history to those rifle companies, which struck French forces and their native allies from long range and helped capture Fort Detroit.

  The American Revolutionary War split the old Ranger family. Rogers himself served the Crown as a Loyalist officer, and many of his former Rangers fought on both sides. One of them, John Stark, commanded the 1st New Hampshire Regiment, which became famous at the Battles of Bunker Hill and Bennington.

  In 1775, the Continental Congress formed eight companies of expert riflemen. By 1777 that force, under Daniel Morgan, was known as the Corps of Rangers. Francis Marion, nicknamed the Swamp Fox, organized Marion's Partisans. Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys in Vermont were also designated a ranger unit. Perhaps the most famous Revolutionary War unit was Butler's Rangers, from upstate New York.

  During the War of 1812, companies of United States Rangers were raised from frontier settlers as part of the regular army. They patrolled from Ohio to western Illinois, on horseback and by boat, and fought skirmishes with the British and their American Indian allies. Units such as the Loudoun Rangers, the 43rd Virginia Rangers, and the Texas Military Rangers kept the name alive. That continued until the modern Ranger battalions took shape in World War II.

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• 3. Darby's Volunteers

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  In Belfast, Northern Ireland, Major William Orlando Darby was serving as an aide to General Russell P. Hartle and chafing at his lack of hands-on experience. Then General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, decided to build an elite unit of fifty volunteers drawn from the 34th Infantry Division. He chose Darby to lead it. On the 8th of June 1942, Darby took charge of the 1st Ranger Battalion. He is now remembered as the founder of the modern Rangers.

  On the 19th of August 1942, fifty Rangers joined Canadian and British Commandos in the Dieppe Raid on the coast of occupied France. It went badly. Three Rangers died and several were captured. Among the dead was Lieutenant E. V. Loustalot, the first American soldier killed in Europe in the war. After the British captain leading the assault fell, Loustalot took command. He was wounded three times while trying to reach a machine gun nest at the top of a cliff, and he was killed there.

  The whole battalion first fought together in November 1942, landing at Arzew, Algeria, during Operation Torch. Split into two groups, the Rangers went after Vichy-French batteries before the 1st Infantry Division came ashore. They took few casualties. On the 11th of February 1943, they marched 32 miles and crept at night to within 50 yards of an Italian outpost at Sened Station. The garrison fell in 20 minutes. Seventy-five Italians were killed and eleven surrendered. The Italians gave the battalion a nickname, the Black Death, and Darby and thirteen others received the Silver Star. Soon afterward, the Rangers walked 12 miles overland to outflank enemy positions near El Guettar. After eight hours of fighting they held the objective and had taken 200 prisoners.

  Success created a problem. Darby asked to expand the Rangers into a full regiment, and the Army approved. But Rangers took only volunteers, and Darby knew the best soldier was not always the one who stepped forward. Within that limit, he gave speeches, put up posters, and urged his officers to scout candidates around Oran. The 3rd and 4th Ranger Battalions were trained and led by veterans of the 1st. By June 1943, three battalions were operational, under Darby, Major Herman Dammer, and Major Roy Murray.

  In Sicily, the 1st and 4th landed outside Gela with General Terry Allen's 1st Division. They took the town just after midnight. Then they held it through 50 hours of constant artillery, tank, and air attack. Their next target was Butera, a fortress town on a cliff 1,319 feet high. The Rangers nearly withdrew and asked for artillery to level it. Instead, a platoon volunteered. Two privates, John See and John Constantine, slipped behind enemy lines and talked the Italians and Germans into surrendering. Meanwhile the 3rd occupied Campobello, Naro, Favara, and Porto Empedocle. Darby received the Distinguished Service Cross and a promotion offer from General George Patton. He turned it down to stay closer to his men.

  The reckoning came at Cisterna. On the night of the 30th of January 1944, the 1st and 3rd battalions slipped into the town. German soldiers they passed never seemed to notice. The 4th, coming from the opposite end, met resistance almost at once. By dawn the two lead battalions had drifted about 2 miles apart, and daylight caught the 1st in an open field. German armor and infantry sprang the ambush. The Rangers fought until their ammunition ran out, while the 4th tried to reach them and was driven back. After five hours the surviving Rangers surrendered. The 1st and 3rd lost 12 killed, 36 wounded, and 743 captured, and only eight escaped. The 4th lost 30 killed and 58 wounded.

  About 400 remaining Rangers were scattered among the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and the 137 original Rangers went home. The 1st and 3rd battalions were disbanded on the 15th of August 1944. The 4th followed on the 24th of October 1944 at Camp Butner, North Carolina.

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• 4. Cliffs and Beaches

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  On the 6th of June 1944, companies D, E, and F of the 2nd Ranger Battalion stood at the foot of the cliff at Pointe du Hoc. Ahead lay a climb up rope ladders under machine gun fire. Their orders were to take a German outpost believed to hold several 155 millimeter cannons aimed at the beaches. The Rangers took the heights despite fierce resistance, but the guns were not there. Their commander was Colonel James Earl Rudder, who later became president of Texas A&M University.

  A patrol went looking. Leonard Lomell and Jack Kuhn later described the search in an interview. They noticed markings on a secondary road, then leapfrogged forward, each covering the other, along a sunken lane hidden by tall hedgerows. Looking over the hedge, one of them said, "God, here they are!" The guns sat in an orchard, camouflaged among the trees, about a mile away. The patrol disabled them quickly.

  On the beach at Omaha, the rest of the 2nd and the 5th Ranger Battalion spearheaded the attack. An apocryphal story tells of General Norman Cota meeting Major Max F. Schneider, commander of the 5th. Someone shouted "5th Rangers!" and Cota answered, "Well then Goddammit, Rangers, lead the way!" The drive cut the German line and let conventional troops move in. The phrase "Rangers lead the way" later became the regiment's motto.

  Both battalions went on to the Battle for Brest and the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The 2nd captured the Le Conquet Peninsula, disabling a 280 millimeter gun and taking many prisoners. Near Zerf, in the Saar, the 5th seized an overlooking German position and cut the supply routes to the enemy forces.

  Far away, the 6th Ranger Battalion fought in the Pacific, mostly in New Guinea and the Philippines. It worked in company or platoon strength behind enemy lines, and its soldiers reached the Philippines three days before the first army invasion. At Cabanatuan, on the island of Luzon in January 1945, a company crawled a mile across an open field on their stomachs. Major Robert Prince planned and led the raid. The Rangers destroyed a Japanese garrison twice their size and rescued 500 prisoners of war. The battalion's final mission was to secure a drop zone for 11th Airborne Division paratroopers, 250 miles into enemy territory.

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• 5. A Borrowed Lineage

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  In August 1944, Merrill's Marauders were folded into the 475th Infantry, which later became the 75th Infantry Regiment. They had spent five months fighting the Japanese Army in the China Burma India Theater. Brigadier General Frank Merrill led this special force. Its badge carried the sun from the national emblem of the Republic of China. It also carried the star from Burma's flag, honoring its companion Chinese Expeditionary Force. A lightning bolt stood for the swiftness of its strikes. The 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional) had been organized on the 3rd of October 1943, and it became the root of the regiment's official lineage.

  Korea brought the Rangers back. After fighting began in June 1950, the Army formed fifteen Ranger companies drawing on the World War II battalions. Six airborne companies, averaging 125 soldiers each, served in the war. They scouted, patrolled, raided, ambushed, spearheaded assaults, and counterattacked to retake lost ground. Attached first to one regiment and then to another, they were nomadic. One hundred Rangers were killed in action and 296 were wounded.

  In Vietnam, the story twisted. Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol units, pronounced "Lurp," grew out of provisional detachments. General William C. Westmoreland ordered them created in infantry brigades and divisions on the 8th of July 1966. On the 1st of February 1969, the Army redesignated them as lettered Ranger companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment. Despite the shared name, they drew their lineage from Merrill's Marauders, not from the World War II and Korean War Ranger battalions.

  The last Rangers killed in Vietnam died on the 9th of June 1972. Sergeant Elvis Weldon Osborne Jr. and Corporal Jeffrey Alan Maurer of H Company fell to enemy action. They were also the last US Army infantrymen killed on the ground in the war. H Company, of the 1st Cavalry Division, was the last of the Ranger companies to inactivate, on the 15th of August 1972.

  In January 1974, Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams directed the formation of a Ranger battalion. General Kenneth C. Leuer was charged with activating and leading it. The 1st Battalion parachuted into Fort Stewart, Georgia, on the 1st of July 1974, carrying the lineage of Merrill's Marauders through Company C. The 2nd Battalion activated at Fort Lewis, Washington, on the 1st of October 1974. The 3rd Battalion and Headquarters Company followed on the 3rd of October 1984 at Fort Benning, Georgia. On the 3rd of February 1986, the three battalions were consolidated with the World War II lineages. The unit became the 75th Ranger Regiment.

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• 6. Raids and Rescues

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  In 1980, elements of the 1st Ranger Battalion took part in Operation Eagle Claw, the attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. The modern battalions led their next major operation three years later. In October 1983, the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions spearheaded Operation Urgent Fury. They made a dangerous low-level parachute assault onto the Point Salines Airfield in Grenada. They also rescued American citizens at the True Blue Medical Campus.

  Operation Just Cause, from December 1989 to January 1990, involved the entire regiment. Rangers made simultaneous parachute assaults on Torrijos/Tocumen International Airport, Rio Hato Airfield, and General Manuel Noriega's beach house to neutralize the Panamanian Defense Forces. They captured more than 1,014 prisoners of war and more than 18,000 weapons.

  The Gulf War brought smaller roles. From the 12th of February to the 15th of April 1991, elements of the 1st Ranger Battalion deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Storm. These were Company B and the 1st Platoon of Company A. They ran raids and served as a quick reaction force. In December 1991, the 1st Battalion and the regimental headquarters went to Kuwait for Operation Iris Gold, a show of force. The Rangers jumped onto Ali Al Salem airfield near Kuwait City. Then they marched 50 kilometers on foot through minefields and wreckage left by the ground campaign. They held a live fire exercise and then left on foot.

  Somalia was different. In August 1993, elements of the 3rd Ranger Battalion deployed as Task Force Ranger. This was part of Operation GOTHIC SERPENT, which aimed to help United Nations forces restore order in a starving country. On the 3rd of October 1993, the Rangers and Delta Force raided in daylight and captured their high-value targets. Then the Battle of Mogadishu began. A series of planning and command errors left American forces trapped by Somali militias for hours. Eighteen American soldiers died. The Rangers held improvised positions for nearly 18 hours and killed between 500 and 1,000 Somalis. American reinforcements with Pakistani and Malaysian troops and armor finally rescued them. The mission came to be seen as a pyrrhic victory.

  Danny McKnight commanded the 3rd Battalion in that fight, and Michael D. Steele commanded its Company B. Randy Shughart began his career in the 2nd Ranger Battalion. As a Delta Force sniper, he was killed defending a downed helicopter and received the Medal of Honor. Jeff Struecker, a squad leader in Task Force Ranger, won the Best Ranger Competition in 1996 with his partner Isaac Gmazel. In 2000, he was commissioned as a chaplain.

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• 7. The Long War

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  On the 19th of October 2001, 200 Rangers of the 3rd Battalion jumped to seize Objective Rhino, the opening battle of Operation Enduring Freedom. Specialist Jonn J. Edmunds and Private First Class Kristofer T. Stonesifer became the first combat casualties of the war on terror. Their MH-60L helicopter crashed at Objective Honda, a staging site in Pakistan.

  At Tora Bora in December 2001, a CIA Jawbreaker team asked for the 3rd Battalion to be inserted into the mountains. Their job would be to block escape routes into Pakistan. The Rangers would be the anvil, with Special Forces and Afghan militia as the hammer. With attached Air Force combat controllers, the Rangers could have directed airstrikes or sprung ambushes. Their requests to do so were denied.

  Iraq came in 2003. On the 24th of March, the 3rd Battalion made a combat drop onto the H-1 Air Base in western Iraq. On the 1st of April, 290 Rangers from the 1st and 2nd Battalions helped rescue Private First Class Jessica Lynch. The same day, Delta Force and the 3rd Battalion captured the Haditha Dam and held it for five days.

  The pace of deployments was relentless. During a single Afghanistan deployment, the 1st Ranger Battalion conducted more than 900 missions. It captured nearly 1,700 enemy combatants, including 386 high-value targets, and killed more than 400 fighters. By mid-2015, each Ranger battalion had completed its twentieth deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Sergeant First Class Kristoffer Domeij enlisted in 2001 and was killed in 2011 during his 14th deployment. At the time, that was the most deployments of any Ranger killed in action.

  The regiment reorganized to fit this tempo. It activated the Regimental Special Troops Battalion on the 17th of July 2006 to move from short contingency missions to continuous combat. In October 2007, each battalion added a D Company. On the 22nd of May 2017, the Ranger Regiment Military Intelligence Battalion was created. It specializes in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber, and electronic warfare, and is based at Fort Benning.

  In June 2008, Rangers killed Abu Khalaf, deputy leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. A reinforced platoon assaulted his house, codenamed Objective Crescent Lake. Two sentries on the roof were killed by a four-man sniper team. Inside, the Rangers shot a man who reached under his clothing, and he proved to be wearing a suicide vest filled with ball bearings. Khalaf ran to the road with a pistol and was shot dead by the snipers. The Rangers also found a plan for a chemical weapon attack on a coalition base.

  Some missions ended in loss. On the 6th of August, a Ranger platoon in Afghanistan's Wardak province came under fire in the Tangi Valley. They were trying to capture a senior Taliban leader. A CH-47 helicopter sent to help, carrying 38 American and Afghan servicemen, was shot down. All 38 died, in the deadliest single incident for Americans in the Afghanistan campaign. On the 26th of April 2017-50 Rangers of the 3rd Battalion joined 40 Afghan commandos. They raided the headquarters of Abdul Hasib, emir of ISIS-K, in Nangarhar Province. In a three-hour firefight, 35 militants died, including Hasib, and two Rangers were killed.

  Rangers also supported the biggest operations of the era. On the 1st of May 2011, a Ranger element served as a quick reaction force for Operation Neptune Spear, which targeted Osama bin Laden. It also protected a refueling point north of Abbottabad. Afterward, a Ranger team carried his body to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson for burial at sea. On the 26th of October 2019, Rangers, Delta Force, and the 160th SOAR killed the ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

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• 8. Earning the Scroll

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  Forty-one hand-release push-ups, a two-and-a-half-minute plank, a five-mile run in 40 minutes or less, and six chin-ups make up the Ranger Fitness Test. It is only one gate. Applicants must also pass a water survival assessment and a 12-mile foot march in under three hours, carrying a 35-pound rucksack and a weapon. They need a General Technical Score of 105 or higher. Their record must show good character, and they must qualify for at least a Secret clearance. The regiment calls its soldiers triple volunteers: for the Army, for Airborne School, and for the 75th Ranger Regiment itself.

  Everyone goes through the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, known as RASP, from new recruits to officers chosen to command. RASP 1 lasts eight weeks and is for junior enlisted soldiers in pay grades E-1 through E-5. It tests endurance with road marches, land navigation, leadership, and weapons training, all under continuous food and sleep deprivation. RASP 2 lasts 21 days and is for senior noncommissioned officers, officers, and warrant officers, who also learn how to lead and develop young Rangers. Graduates receive the tan beret and the regiment's scroll. In December 2016, Army Times reported, the first female officer completed RASP. That made the regiment the first special operations unit with a woman graduating its selection course.

  Training never stops. Rangers drill the Big 5: marksmanship, physical training, medical training, small unit tactics, and mobility. They can also attend schools such as Jumpmaster, Sniper, Pathfinder, Military Freefall, and Scuba. Leaders are expected to graduate Ranger School.

  The medical training rests on a blunt premise. About 90 percent of deaths from wounds happen before a casualty reaches a medical facility. There are not enough medics and doctors to go around, so Rangers learn to give themselves immediate treatment. A 2011 study found a 3 percent death rate from potentially survivable causes in the regiment between October 2001 and April 2010. A previously reported set of US military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan showed 24 percent.

  Standards stay high after selection. A Ranger who falls short may be released for standards, known as being RFSed. One who cannot perform because of illness or injury is relieved for medical reasons. The regiment's motto is Sua Sponte, Latin for "Of their own accord."

  The tan beret has its own story. In June 2001, General Eric Shinseki ordered black berets issued to regular soldiers, though only Rangers had worn them. Retired Rangers staged road marches to Washington, D.C., in protest. The regiment lacked presidential authorization for exclusive use of black, so it adopted tan. The change was approved in March 2002. Past and present Rangers put on the new berets in a private ceremony on the 26th of July 2002. Tan recalls the buckskin worn by Robert Rogers' men in the French and Indian War.

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