The 1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, commonly known as the RLI, was a regiment formed in 1961 in Southern Rhodesia as a light infantry unit within the army of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. 
After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence on 11 November 1965, the RLI became one of the country's main counter-insurgency units during the Rhodesian Bush War. 
Towards the end of 1976 the Unit began training for an airborne role carrying out more operational parachute descents than any other unit in the world. It was the Battalion's success in operations which led the then Prime Minister, The Hon. I. D. Smith M.P., at the Annual Regimental Sundowner in 1968 to propose a toast to "The Incredible RLI".