Commissioned from West Point in 1933, William O. Darby served in routine field artillery assignments until the United States entered World War II.  His subsequent meteoric rise in rank paralleled the evolution of the Ranger battalions, units formed early in 1942 and patterned after the British Commandos.

Darby was among the first American soldiers to go overseas and he served initially as aide to the commanding general of the Army’s Northern Ireland Force.  From this position, Darby secured command of the embryonic 1st Ranger Battalion and was promoted from captain to lieutenant colonel in less than ten weeks.  He ed the battalion in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Anzio, and in all of the conventional fighting in between.  He earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts.

A dynamic and courageous leader, Darby twice refused promotion to colonel because he would have had to leave his beloved Rangers.  Eventually, the battalion was expanded into a regiment-sized Ranger Force, which consisted of the 1st, 3d, and 4th Ranger Battalions, but it was not authorized a force headquarters until much later.

In trying to break out of the Anzio beachhead in 1944, the 3d and 4th Ranger Battalions were decimated by the Germans at Cisterna, and only 6 out of 767 Rangers returned to friendly lines; the others were either killed or captured.

Shortly thereafter, Darby took command of the battered 179th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division and led it for two months before being called to Washington.  He returned to Europe in early 1945 and talked his way into the assistant division commander’s position in the 10th Mountain Division in Italy.  He was mortally wounded on 30 April 1945, just one week before the war ended in that country.  On that same day, Darby’s name appeared on a list of nominees for promotion to brigadier general.  Shortly afterward, he was promoted posthumously, the only Army officer promoted in that manner to flag rank during the war.

Michael King, author, has served in Ranger units and also as visiting associate professor of military history at the Army’s Command and General Staff College.  His research for this volume has been quite extensive, and the actions of the Ranger battalions and related units are chronicled in accurate detail.  King does make one obvious mistake, though, when he refers to Terry Allen as a lieutenant general; Allen was a major general.

This book is highly recommended to the student of elite units and to those who favor biographies of combat commanders.

Book Review, William Orlando Darby: A Military Biography, by Michael J. King, Infantry 72 (March-April 1982): 46-47.