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'For this issue of THE BIG PICTURE our camera crews have journeyed into the mountains of North Georgia and the swamps of Florida in order to bring the story of the U.S. Army Rangers to the television screens of America. The Rangers are a proud corps of elite combat-ready troops who undergo the most rugged training in the Army. The first Ranger unit dates back almost 200 years ago when the original thirteen colonies were under British rule. They served with General Washington's Colonial troops and they were active in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. When the Communist aggressors struck in Korea, the call for the Rangers sounded again. This BIG PICTURE episode concentrates on their training as it is practiced today.'
Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Rangers
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The United States Army Rangers are designated U.S. Army Ranger units, past or present, or are graduates of the U.S. Army Ranger School. The term ranger has been in use unofficially in a military context since the early 17th century. The first military company officially commissioned as rangers were English soldiers fighting in King Philip's War (1676) and from there the term came into common official use in the French and Indian Wars. There have been American military companies officially called Rangers since the American Revolution.
The 75th Ranger Regiment is an elite airborne light infantry combat formation within the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). The six battalions of the modern Rangers have been deployed in wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and saw action in several conflicts, such as those in Panama and Grenada. The Ranger Regiment traces its lineage to three of six battalions raised in World War II, and to the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional)—known as "Merrill's Marauders", and then reflagged as the 475th Infantry, then later as the 75th Infantry.
The Ranger Training Brigade (RTB)—headquartered at Fort Benning—is an organization under the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and is separate from the 75th Ranger Regiment. It has been in service in various forms since World War II. The Ranger Training Brigade administrates Ranger School, the satisfactory completion of which is required to become Ranger qualified and to wear the Ranger Tab...
Major General Lucian Truscott of the U.S. Army was a liaison officer with the British General Staff. In 1942 he submitted a proposal to General George Marshall that an American unit be set up "along the lines of the British Commandos".
On June 19, 1942 the 1st Ranger Battalion was sanctioned, recruited, and began training in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland.[13] 80 percent of the original Rangers came from the 34th Infantry Division.
A select fifty or so of the first U.S. Rangers were dispersed through the British Commandos for the Dieppe Raid in August 1942; these were the first American soldiers to see ground combat in the European theater.
Together with the ensuing 3rd and 4th Ranger Battalions they fought in North Africa and Italy commanded by Colonel William Orlando Darby until the Battle of Cisterna (29 January 1944) when most of the Rangers of the 1st and 3rd Battalions were captured. Of the 767 men in the battalions 761 were killed or captured. The remaining Rangers were absorbed into the Canadian-American First Special Service Force under Brigadier General Robert T. Frederick. They were then instrumental in operations in and around the Anzio beachhead that followed Operation Shingle...
The 29th Ranger Battalion was a temporary unit made of selected volunteers from the 29th Infantry Division that was in existence from December 1942 to November 1943.
Before the 5th Ranger Battalion landing on Dog White sector on Omaha Beach, during the Invasion of Normandy, the 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the 90-foot (27 m) cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, a few miles to the west, to destroy a five-gun battery of captured French Canon de 155 mm GPF guns...