In heavy fighting in the Rose Wood and Plum Run Valley between the Devil's Den and the Wheatfield, the regiment lost about 50 percent of its strength as it fought to contain James Longstreet's breakthrough of the Union Third Army Corps at the Peach Orchard.

During the spring and summer of 1864, the regiment participated in General Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign and fought at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Jericho Mills, Cold Harbor, and finally in the Siege of Petersburg.

By the spring of 1865, only a few of those soldiers sworn in at Fort Independence in 1861 were still present to participate in the regiment's last wartime task—to help disarm General Robert E. Lee's weary Confederates at Appomattox that April.

[2] It fought 27 engagements with the greater part of its activities concentrated against the rebels in the Cagayan Valley, defending the Manila & Dagupan Railroad in a series of counterinsurgency actions.

There the soldiers built mud brick huts for quarters and returned to a garrison routine, except for occasional patrols into the nearby mountains and valleys to hunt for rumored Villistas.

As part of the new 1st Expeditionary Division, soon to become known as the "Big Red One," the 16th Infantry, commanded by William Herbert Allaire Jr.,[4] sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, and landed at St. Nazaire, France, near the end of June 1917.

Prior to being committed to battle, the 16th Infantry Regiment, began training in July 1917 in the Gondrecourt area with the French 47th Division, Chasseurs Alpins, nicknamed the "Blue Devils."

In addition to the 7 campaign streamers earned by the regiment and the 2 Croix de Guerre granted by the French government, its soldiers were awarded at least 97 Distinguished Service Crosses.

The 16th Infantry arrived at the port of New York on 3 September 1919 on the troopships Amphion, Freedom, Suwanee, and Marica, and was transferred to Camp Merritt, New Jersey, where emergency period personnel were discharged from the service.

After the passage of the National Defense Act of 1920 reorganized the Army, the 1st Division was allotted to the Second Corps Area and transferred on 16 September 1920 in a permanent change of station to Camp Dix, New Jersey.

Commanded by Henry B. Cheadle, the regiment departed for England in August 1942, where it joined a large contingent of US troops slated for participation in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa.

Despite numerous enemy tanks and reinforcements, the 16th Infantry desperately held on by receiving assistance from the heavy guns of the U.S. Navy and the timely arrival of the regiment's Cannon Company.

Fighting against snipers and well-fortified positions, the regiment moved forward by a series of flanking movements and by 29 July had taken the high ground west of the Cerami River.

Subsequently, the regiment sailed to Liverpool, England, and from there entrained on 16 October 1943 for Dorchester, to carry out seven months of grueling training in preparation for the Allied invasion of Europe.

Eventually, an assault section of E Company under First Lieutenant John M. Spalding and Staff Sergeant Philip Streczyk managed to cross a minefield, breach the enemy wire, and struggle their way to the bluff.

Colonel George A. Taylor, the regimental commander, noting the small breakthrough stood to his feet and yelled at his troops, "The only men who remain on this beach are the dead and those who are about to die!

The sites of these missions included many areas that were to become well known to many U.S. infantrymen during the Vietnam years: the impenetrable jungles of Tay Ninh near Cambodia; Ho Bo Woods; the "Iron Triangle"; the Michelin Rubber Plantation; the Trapezoid, and War Zones C and D. In all these places, the 2nd Rangers inflicted heavy losses on enemy manpower and supplies.

With over 100 killed in action and its base camp destroyed, the remnants of the enemy unit were forced to flee to avoid complete destruction as the rest of the battalion continued the search.

These were pacification operations designed to consolidate gains made during Tet as well as start moving U.S. Army efforts more toward working with ARVN units to provide local security for key hamlets in villages in the hinterlands.

In September while conducting pacification efforts near "Claymore Corners," the 2nd Battalion was suddenly redeployed by air to the vicinity of Loc Ninh to help hunt for the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) 7th Division's 141st Regiment.

After the operations around Loc Ninh, the battalion was assigned to the "Accelerated Pacification Campaign" in November and continued on this effort into the new year as part of the Lam Son mission in the Phu Loi area north of Di An.

The division wasted no time getting this newly arrived brigade into the fight in Operation Bushmaster I & II along Highway 13 between Lai Khê and Bến Cát District in Phouc Vinh Province and around the Michelin Rubber Plantation.

In January 1967, the 1st Battalion next joined in Operation Cedar Falls, a major effort conducted by the 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Military Region 4, known as the "Iron Triangle" and the Thanh Dien Forest.

During Kentucky Cougar in August, the Iron Rangers ran into a battalion of the 272nd Regiment near An Lộc in Bình Long Province and in an afternoon of hot fighting, accounted for 29 enemy KIA and an unknown number of wounded.

As it approached the highway moving north out of Kuwait City and into southern Iraq, the Big Red One destroyed scores of enemy vehicles and took thousands more prisoners as the division's units advanced.

In addition to combat operations, during this tour the Iron Rangers trained elements of the new Iraqi Army as well as assisted with the implementation of numerous civil support projects.

In 2006, as part of the 1st Brigade, the 1st Battalion was given a new mission to train Military Transition Teams ("MiTTs") which would deploy to Iraq to advise and assist the units of the fledgling Iraqi Army.

This program required that the battalion be broken down into squads and sometimes fire teams and distributed to selected villages throughout Regional Commands East, South, West, and North.

The new district brought new challenges, as the Rangers began patrolling the vital Highway 1 route between Kabul and Kandahar to ensure it remained open for commercial and military traffic.

ANA units readily assumed responsibility for their own districts, demonstrating the sound tactical knowledge and hard-fought experience they had gained through years of fighting and US Army mentorship.