WILLIAM O. DARBY

William O. Darby was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a bachelor of science degree and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Field Artillery on 13 June 1933.

As a major he activated the 1st Ranger Bn on 19 June 1942 at Carrick-fergus, Northern Ireland. Darby’s men took their name from Major Robert Rogers’s Rangers of the colonial wars, and survivors of the first course in the wilds of Scotland were presented with green berets. The charismatic Bill Darby led the I st Ranger Bn in North Africa. In April 1943 the initial force was split into cadres for the 3d and 4th Bns. Volunteers from units in North Africa filled the three battalions to a strength of 419 officers and men in six companies, each having two rifle platoons of about 30 men and a support section.

The Rangers landed with the assault waves in Sicily, 10 July 1943, the 3d Bn attached to Truscott’s Joss Force, whose objective was Licata, and the other battalions landing with Dime Force to take Gela. At Salerno, 9 September 1943, Maj Roy Murray’s 4th Bn secured the beachhead at Maiori, and Darby led the 1st and 3d Bns to objectives held some five miles inland by the crack Hermann Goering Div. At Anzio, 22 January 1944, the three battalions formed the 6615 Ranger Regt. They took the port of Anzio unopposed, but two battalions were virtually destroyed in defending the beachhead. Col Darby assumed command of the 179th RCT, 45th Inf Div, in early 1944, and then was assigned to staff duty in Washington.

In mid April 1945 the 34-year-old colonel was escorting War Department officials on a visit to Italy when he was recruited to replace the wounded assistant commander of the 10th Mtn Div. Darby was ending a pursuit up the east side of Lake Garda, two days before the cease-fire in Italy, when mortally wounded on the afternoon of 30 April 1945 by a parting artillery shot from the Germans somewhere north of Riva. He died 45 minutes later. Promotion to brigadier general was posthumous.