Talk:Robert Rogers' 28 "Rules of Ranging"

Military history: North America / United States

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	North American military history task force
	United States military history task force

Fictional rules?[edit]

In my Ranger Handbook it lists the fictional rules from the novel Northwest Passage. As far as I can tell, the fictional rules that are listed here are the only ones published and used by the modern day US Army Rangers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.226.95.18 (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that the "fictional rules" are the exact same as listed in decades of revisions of the official Ranger Handbook (SH 21-76) 24.209.108.157 (talk) 02:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to Major William H. Burgess III, “The orders attributed to Rogers are in fact a mid-20th century corruption of an earlier fiction. They were drawn, almost verbatim, from Kenneth Roberts' 1936 novel Northwest Passage (Ballentine Books, 1991), which was set among the French and Indian Wars. The orders are, specifically, a paraphrasing of a conversation between the fictitious characters Sergeant McNott and Langdon Towne, in which McNott, a bumpkin-like character, tells Towne what he needs to know about the Rangers (pages 87-88).” He goes on to say that "In about 1960, almost a quarter-century after Roberts penned this conversation, a captain assigned as a doctrine writer at the Infantry School lifted it out of context, paraphrased it, attributed it to Rogers, and included it in the early version of Field Manual 21-50, Ranger Training and Unit Operations. There, in an appendix on Ranger history, the purported orders embedded themselves in Army doctrine where they have remained substantially unchallenged until now." Infantry Magazine, July-August 1993 (https://drive.proton.me/urls/XGFC2VXNVM#vhFgKnqQKIIG) ExitOzone (talk) 10:45, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

I have proposed that some of the content in Rangers Standing Orders be merged here. My reasons:

Rangers Standing Orders contains the same 28 rules, but in an expanded form, apparently taken from Rogers's own journals (citations are inadequate)
I question the accuracy of the first list in that article it's from a novel published in 1937
That article already has cleanup issues, and it makes more sense to merge the valuable content here.

Alcarillo 19:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As part of cleanup I changed the order so the real version comes first and then the fictional (which makes more sense and eliminates some internal conflict). However, I am now merging and redirecting that here. RJFJR (talk) 16:37, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

29 rules???[edit]

Why are 29 listed here? Alcarillo 20:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]