There was a 25th Infantry Regiment, raised in 1812, that served on the Lake Champlain front and the Niagara Frontier in the War of 1812.

[1] Beginning in January 1864, the 25th United States Colored Infantry Regiment was recruited and trained at Camp William Penn near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The act of Congress that authorized this included the creation of four regiments of "Colored Troops", racially segregated units with white officers and African American enlisted men.

The army had raised a number of volunteer United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments during the war.

After a short period there, its companies were distributed across a number of small west Texas posts, including Forts Bliss, Clark, Davis, and Stockton.

[6] More technical issues were found during the trip back to Fort Missoula from Yellowstone, with the mud making the terrain very difficult to traverse.

20 men who met the Army's physical specifications were joined by fort physician Dr. James M. Kennedy and journalist Edward Boos of The Daily Missoulian for the trip.

[7] The group suffered from thirst, hunger, and the ill effects of alkali water, cold, heat, and loss of sleep.

Shifting from the snow and sleet of the Rocky Mountains to the warm temperatures of the lower elevations proved to be a challenge for the corps.

The contaminated water made several members ill, including Lt. Moss, who had to catch up to the group by train once they recovered.

Mud and poor road conditions slowed the group down as well, causing their rations to run out ahead of schedule.

[3][14] In 1906 a company of 167 soldiers of the 25th Infantry was dishonorably discharged without a trial on grounds of having shot at whites in Brownsville, Texas.

In the summer of 1910, the newly created United States Forest Service was fighting hundreds of fires across northern Idaho, Western Montana and eastern Washington.

Dispatched by the Army to assist in the firefighting efforts, members of Company G, 25th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort George Wright in Spokane, Washington were sent to Avery, Idaho.

In April 1933, the regiment assumed command and control of the Arizona Civilian Conservation Corps District.

First Sergeant William McCauley, the last active duty member of the regiment who participated in the charge at El Caney, Cuba, on 1 July 1898, retired at Fort Huachuca in April 1934.

The regiment departed San Francisco on 24 January 1944 and arrived on Guadalcanal in echelons between 7 February and 5 March 1944.

From there the regiment was transferred to Bougainville and attached to the Americal Division to take part in offensive operations against Japanese forces on that island in April and May of the same year.

From 26 May to 21 June the regiment was stationed on the Green Islands where it received further training and was employed for the construction of defensive fortifications and installations.

For World War II the 25th Infantry Regiment (Colored) received campaign credit for the Northern Solomons, Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea.

Within a few years, the entire U.S. military was ordered desegregated by President Harry Truman, ending all segregation in the American armed forces.

On 6 April, the regiment was selected to march in the Army Day parade down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. representing all veterans from WWI and WWII.

As part of their training, the program was designed to raise to an 8th grade level those students that fell into the educational sub-par brackets of IV and V on the Army General Classification Test.

Now that the 25th RCT had been brought up to full personnel strength, it would soon be supporting its old friend the 24th Infantry Regiment (Colored).

In a ceremony at the Sand Hill parade grounds early in March 1947, the 25th Infantry Regiment received its three WWII Asiatic-Pacific campaign streamers for New Guinea, Northern Solomons, and Bismarck Archipelago.

The 25th Infantry Regiment organization would remain along with the same supporting units with the addition of the 999th Field Artillery Battalion.

The First Battalion was designated to furnish personnel for the Air Indoctrination Course that was to be conducted at Lawson Field, Fort Moore.