19th Infantry Regiment
Modern Era, United States, Infantry
The 19th Infantry Regiment was organized during the Civil War expansion of the Regular Army and then continued into the postwar frontier Army. It served in western posts, later on the Great Plains and in overseas service, gradually becoming one of the stable lineages of the permanent Army in the late nineteenth century. As with several neighboring numbered regiments, its modern story took shape only when the Army fully adopted the divisional system in the twentieth century.
In World War I the regiment was assigned to the 18th Division, but that formation was demobilized before it could develop a major combat record overseas. After the war the regiment entered a more durable divisional relationship with the 24th Infantry Division, and in World War II it fought as one of that division's regiments in the Pacific. The 24th Division connection also defined the regiment's Korean War service, where it again fought under the 24th Infantry Division in the difficult opening campaigns of the war and in the fighting that followed.
The postwar Army later shifted the regiment into the 25th Infantry Division before the Combat Arms Regimental System reorganized old line regiments into battle groups and battalions. In that sense, the regiment's twentieth-century history centers on three phases: late World War I assignment to the 18th Division, full combat service with the 24th Infantry Division in World War II and Korea, and then Cold War reassignment into the 25th Infantry Division structure.
Modern battalions preserved the 19th Infantry lineage in later decades, but its defining historical image remains that of a Pacific and Korea regiment of the 24th Infantry Division. The lineage links the Civil War Regular Army to the island and peninsula wars that marked the U.S. Army's mid-century experience in Asia.
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 19th Infantry Regiment Battalions page.