11th Infantry Regiment
Modern Era, United States, Infantry
The 11th Infantry Regiment was created during the Civil War expansion of the Regular Army in May 1861. Unlike the older prewar regiments, it was born directly out of the Union's need for a larger permanent force and therefore came into being as part of the Army's modernization under wartime pressure. In the Civil War it served in the eastern theater and gained the professional reputation typical of the Regular Army battalions that fought alongside much larger volunteer formations.
After the war the regiment continued on frontier and garrison duty, following the same pattern as many Regular Army units of the late nineteenth century. It participated in western service, occupation and border missions, and eventually in the overseas duties that marked the transition from a continental army to one with global commitments. By the early twentieth century the 11th Infantry had become a standard regular line regiment of the expanding American Army.
In the twentieth century the regiment entered the divisional system through the 5th Division. In World War I it served as part of that division in France, and in the Second World War the 11th Infantry again fought with the 5th Infantry Division in western Europe. That divisional association gives the regiment its clearest twentieth-century combat identity, even though later reorganizations fragmented the old regimental structure.
During the Cold War the regiment shifted through the Army's new battle-group and battalion arrangements. Elements of the regiment served in the 2d Infantry Division and the 5th Infantry Division as the Combat Arms Regimental System replaced the old linear regiment model. In Vietnam, battalion-level descendants of the regiment served in the field rather than as a full regimental organization, reflecting the Army's modular practice by the 1960s.
The 11th Infantry later survived mainly through battalions and training roles rather than as a classic combat regiment in the older nineteenth-century sense. Even so, its lineage preserves the record of a Civil War-born Regular Army regiment that fought with the 5th Division in the world wars and then adapted to the battalion-centered Army of the Cold War and after.
Battalion Page
A dedicated battalion subpage now collects the regiment's known battalion icons and short sketches for the 1st, 2d, and 3d Battalions. Open the 11th Infantry Regiment Battalions page.