The Borinqueneers go to war

The regiment that would become famous in Korea as "the Borinqueneers" saw real combat a decade earlier, in the Second World War, fighting through Italy, France, and Germany, long before the nickname most people know it by even existed.

The 65th Infantry Regiment traces its lineage to the Army Appropriations Act of 1899 that first authorized native Puerto Rican troops, becoming the Puerto Rico Regiment of Infantry of the Regular Army in 1908 and taking its familiar name, the 65th Infantry, in 1920. Its motto is "Honor et Fidelitas," Honor and Fidelity, a phrase the regiment carried through two world wars.

During the Second World War, the regiment saw action in Europe, notably in the Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, and Rhineland campaigns spanning Italy, France, and Germany, three distinct theaters that carried the regiment across much of western Europe over the course of the war.

That service came at a cost. Several members of the regiment posthumously received Purple Hearts for their sacrifice during the fighting, a recognition of casualties that rarely enters the regiment's later, more famous history and its Korean War legacy.

The nickname most people associate with the unit, "Borinqueneers," taken from Borinquén, the Taíno name for Puerto Rico, was not in fact given to the regiment until the Korean War in the early 1950s. During the Second World War they served under the plain designation "65th Infantry," without the nickname that would later define their public image and their place in popular memory, fighting a European war under a name that carried none of that later cultural weight.

That coincidence of dates matters. The regiment's Second World War record, real combat, real campaigns, real casualties, tends to be overshadowed by its later Korean fame, even though it came first and laid the foundation on which the "Borinqueneers" reputation was eventually built.

Sources: 65th Infantry Regiment (United States). Freeze 2026-08-22.