Word: ridgway
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...weeks after he took over, the Pentagon decided to convert the 82nd into one of the first two U.S. airborne divisions. To show his men what paratrooping might be like, Ridgway, who had no particular airborne qualifications, hied himself to Fort Benning to make a parachute jump. "It was the most glorious feeling in the world," he told the dubious infantrymen. "You feel like the lord of creation floating way up above the earth...
...next three years the 82nd's war diary read like a history of the development of airborne operations. Ridgway and his staff, with few precedents to go by, wrote their own field manuals as they went along. Ridgway jumped into battle with the division at Normandy, later led XVIII Corps at Nijmegen and the Ardennes. He had helped make airborne operations one of the Army's finest weapons...
...fellow officer says: "It makes him personally offended to be shot at." In Normandy, Ridgway and an aide were surprised by a German tank which rumbled up from the rear. The aide dived into a hole. Ridgway whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired. For some inexplicable reason, the tank turned and clanked away. "I got him," bellowed Ridgway...
There was none of this recklessness about Ridgway's planning. He has been known to discuss nine different ways in which the enemy might react to a given move. He ruthlessly drove his subordinates. Once, after decorating a division commander for bravery, he dressed him down for not advancing quickly enough. After one of his best staff officers had made a rough landing during the Normandy jump, Ridgway sent for him. Flattered, the colonel expected congratulations on his safe arrival. Instead, Ridgway, noticing that he had lost his helmet, snapped, "Where the hell's your equipment...
...Tense. After the war, Ridgway took off his jump boots to become again a military diplomat as U.S. representative on the U.N. Military Staff Committee and chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington. There, in 1946, he met a pretty, black-eyed widow of 30 named Mary ("Penny") Anthony, secretary to a Navy committeeman. After a year's courtship, they were married...