2nd Infantry Regiment Battalions
Modern Era, United States, Infantry
This subpage gathers the battalion insignia associated with the modern 2nd Infantry Regiment. The 1st and 2d Battalions are the regiment's clearly documented modern maneuver battalions in public U.S. Army lineage records, while the 3d Battalion icon is included here as a heritage graphic from the local image set.
1st Battalion, 2d Infantry Regiment
The 1st Battalion descends from Company A of the old 6th Infantry, constituted on 12 April 1808 and folded into the 2d Infantry during the post-War of 1812 consolidation. Through that company lineage the battalion carries the regiment's long record from the Canadian frontier and Mexican War through Civil War service, the Indian Wars, the Santiago campaign, the Philippines, and the 5th Infantry Division's fighting in Europe during World War II.
Its modern battalion identity took shape through the Pentomic and ROAD reorganizations. The line became Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battle Group, 2d Infantry in 1957, then Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 2d Infantry in 1962. It went to Vietnam with the 1st Infantry Division in 1965, later inactivated in 1983, and was redesignated as the 1st Battalion, 2d Infantry Regiment on 1 October 2005 before activation in Germany in 2008 with the 172d Infantry Brigade.
2d Battalion, 2d Infantry Regiment
The 2d Battalion descends from Company B of the same 1808 6th Infantry lineage and shares the regiment's core nineteenth-century service. Its honors run from Chippewa and Lundy's Lane through Mexico, the Civil War, the frontier campaigns, Santiago, and later service in the Philippines and Europe. In 1957 it became the 2d Battle Group, 2d Infantry, and by February 1962 it had been reorganized and redesignated as the 2d Battalion, 2d Infantry.
The battalion fought in Vietnam after assignment to the 1st Infantry Division in July 1965, then served in later decades with the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, the 1st Infantry Division in Germany, the 3d Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, and finally the 3d Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. Its public lineage sheet records campaign credit not only for Vietnam but also for the Global War on Terror, Afghanistan, and Iraq, showing that it remained the regiment's most continuously field-oriented battalion into the twenty-first century.
3d Battalion, 2d Infantry Regiment
A 3d Battalion icon exists in the local artwork set, but the current public U.S. Army Center of Military History index for the 2d Infantry Regiment lists only the 1st and 2d Battalions as publicly documented battalion lineages. That suggests the 3d Battalion was not one of the regiment's enduring modern active battalions in the same way, or at least not one represented by an accessible current CMH battalion sheet.
For that reason this section should be read as a heritage placeholder rather than a full lineage entry. The icon fits the regiment's broader tradition of expansion and reorganization during different force structures, but until a battalion-specific lineage document is identified, the 3d Battalion of the 2d Infantry is best treated here as part of the visual battalion set rather than as a fully reconstructed narrative history.
Research note: The 1st and 2d Battalion summaries follow U.S. Army Center of Military History lineage sheets. The 3d Battalion section is intentionally cautious because the current public CMH infantry index I checked for 24 March 2026 does not list a `3d Battalion, 2d Infantry Regiment` page.