{"id":14966,"date":"2016-05-04T19:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=14966"},"modified":"2016-05-04T19:00:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T00:00:38","slug":"military-history-71st-anniversary-of-the-darby-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/04\/military-history-71st-anniversary-of-the-darby-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Military History: 71st Anniversary of The Darby Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Col. Darby, the original commander of the Army Rangers, will never be forgotten thanks to this bronze statue unveiled in his hometown.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
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This past weekend marked the 71st anniversary of the death of Col. William O. Darby<\/strong><\/em>, the original commander of the U.S. Army Rangers.<\/div>\n
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On Saturday, April 30, Darby\u2019s life was commemorated in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the town where he was born.<\/p>\n

The beloved hometown hero was honored with an unveiling of a memorial bronze statue of Darby on a 1942 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The sculpture was based on a photograph taken by fellow Ranger Phil Stern just after the invasion of North Africa on Nov. 8, 1942. The photograph was later published on the January 1943 cover of Newsweek magazine.<\/p>\n

Accompanied by a police escort and a motorcycle brigade of rangers, the Darby statue entered town with grand fanfare. In the crowd was veteran Kenneth Vaught who was overcome with emotion as he recalled escorting Darby\u2019s casket to Fort Smith cemetery 65 years ago from Cisterna.<\/p>\n

\u201c[He was] my idol,\u201d Vaught told Channel 5 KFSM-TV in Fort Smith<\/a>. \u201cI was in the military too, but nothing equal to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Col. Darby, the original commander of the Army Rangers, will never be forgotten thanks to this bronze statue unveiled in his hometown. This past weekend marked the 71st anniversary of the death of Col. William O. Darby, the original commander of the U.S. Army Rangers. On Saturday, April 30, Darby\u2019s life was commemorated in Fort…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[475,1899],"tags":[11483,1608,763,1582,1613,3122],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}