Fighting Man

The American Rangers were always expendable. They were the Army's cestus in punch after armed punch on the slogging road across North Africa, in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. Black-haired, chunky, 34-year-old Colonel William Orlando Darby, who had organized the Rangers in Northern Ireland during the anxious summer of 1942, stayed with them through thick & thin.

West Pointer Darby was a soldier's soldier, undismayed by his command's suicidal missions, full of cool recklessness and the yeast of humor and enthusiasm. At Gela, with 18 blackfaced men, he caught 52 Italian officers holed up in a hotel, unhesitatingly went in with grenades and automatics, killed or captured all. Once, with one companion, he took on a tank with a .50-caliber machine gun and knocked it out.

He fought in front of his men, was thrice wounded, ten times decorated (e.g., D.S.C., British D.S.O., French Croix de Guerre, Russian Order of Kutuzou), became a figure of legend to U.S. foot soldiers. Thrice he refused new commands. But finally, last summer, his Rangers were withdrawn from combat--of 1,500 original members of three battalions, only 199 were still alive.

Bill Darby, assigned to a War Department desk job in Washington, itched to go back to combat. When General "Hap" Arnold took an inspection party to Europe last month, he went along. In Italy he headed for the headquarters of the 10th Mountain Division--its assistant commander had just been wounded. He got the job, went happily back into action at the head of a combat team. But his fabulous luck had only eight days to run. Last week, shortly before German resistance crumpled, Bill Darby was killed by a German 88-mm. shell.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.