Search results
Darby's Rangers (released in the UK as The Young Invaders) is a 1958 American war film starring James Garner as William Orlando Darby, who organizes and leads the first units of United States Army Rangers during World War II.
Darby's Rangers: Directed by William A. Wellman. With James Garner, Etchika Choureau, Jack Warden, Edd Byrnes. The lives, loves, and battles of fictional characters in the Army's First Ranger Battalion during WWII.
William O. Darby (February 8, 1911 – April 30, 1945) was a career United States Army officer who fought in World War II, where he was killed in action at age 34 in Italy. He was posthumously promoted to brigadier general. Darby was the founding commander of the First Ranger Battalion, which evolved into the United States Army Rangers.
The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Battalions were known as Darby's Rangers. The 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions proudly carried on the Ranger reputation as they entered the war on D-day on the beaches of Normandy.
These were “Darby’s Rangers,” members of the U.S. 1st Ranger Battalion, recruited earlier that month in Northern Ireland from among the 34th Infantry Division and the 1st Armored Division. Their leader was a lean, young West Pointer from Arkansas named William Orlando Darby.
Hundreds of American soldiers surrendered to the Germans when they found themselves surrounded. In the demoralizing aftermath, Maj. Gen. John Lucas, the 45th Infantry Division commander, sent U.S. Army Ranger force commander Lt. Col. William O. Darby to take command of the shattered 179th Infantry.
The 1st Ranger Battalion, currently based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, United States, is the first of three ranger battalions belonging to the United States Army's 75th Ranger Regiment.
