42nd Infantry Regiment
Modern Era, United States, Infantry
The 42nd Infantry Regiment was one of the twentieth-century regiments created as the Army expanded for modern war. Its history is less widely known than that of the older nineteenth-century line regiments, but it forms part of the same larger story of rapid mobilization, reorganization, and selective inactivation.
Units like the 42nd illustrate how the Army repeatedly created organizations to meet wartime requirements and then reduced or reorganized them once those emergencies passed. In that respect, the regiment is historically important even if it did not maintain a continuous high-profile combat identity.
The 42nd Infantry represents the institutional depth behind the more famous regiments of the Army: necessary, adaptable, and part of the service's large wartime expansion base.
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 42nd Infantry Regiment Battalions page.