An unexpected visitor made the evening of October 6 especially meaningful for author David Lyle Williams, President of Descendants of World War II Rangers, Inc.
Brigadier General (Ret.) William J. Leszczynski, Jr., the ninth Colonel of the 75th Ranger Regiment, traveled from Maine to Vermont to personally present Williams with the Colby Award for The Road to Cisterna. The book is the winner of the 2026 Colby Military Writers’ Award.
For Williams, receiving the award from a Ranger leader he holds in such high regard added a personal significance to the recognition. It also brought together two generations of the Ranger story: the World War II Rangers whose experiences fill his book and a leader who later carried the Regiment’s legacy forward.
Leszczyski says, “The Road to Cisterna is, hands down, categorically and unequivically, without question, the best book ever written about Rangers. it is the gold standard. Dr. William’s book will be to the Ranger community what Cornelius Rya’s best selling book, A Bridge Too Far, is to the Airborne community. If I sould have only one book on my bookshelf about Rangers, it would be he Road to Cisterna.”
Cisterna, Hour by Hour
At the heart of Williams’s work are the voices of the men who lived the history.
Drawing on accounts from 40 Darby Rangers, Williams devotes approximately 70 pages to reconstructing the Battle of Cisterna hour by hour. He describes this approach as something never before attempted. It is a detailed effort to help readers follow the battle as it unfolded through the experiences of the Rangers themselves.
That same approach shapes his 30- to 40-minute slide presentation, which includes an hour-by-hour account of Cisterna. The format gives audiences a way to move beyond a broad overview and consider the sequence of events through individual perspectives.
Such detail matters. Each firsthand account preserves something that a summary can overlook: what a Ranger witnessed, what he understood in that moment, and how he remembered the men beside him.
Carrying Their Stories Forward
For the Ranger Legacy Foundation, work like this reflects the importance of preserving Ranger history through the voices of those who lived it. Those accounts help future generations understand the people behind the battles and the experiences that continue to shape the Ranger community.
We congratulate David Lyle Williams on this recognition and thank him for his commitment to preserving the stories of Darby’s Rangers. We also recognize BG (Ret.) Leszczynski for making the journey to personally honor that work.
The Ranger Legacy Foundation now has a copy of The Road to Cisterna for its Ranger Legacy Center library, helping ensure these accounts remain available for future generations to discover and learn from.
Readers can purchase The Road to Cisterna directly at theroadtocisterna.com. Every book purchased through the author’s website is personally autographed.
Their voices endure because someone took the time to listen and preserve them.
