Matthew Bunker Ridgway (3 March 1895 – 26 July 1993) was a senior officer in the United States Army, who served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (1952–1953) and the 19th Chief of Staff of the United States Army (1953–1955). Although he saw no combat service in World War I, he was intensively involved in World War II, where he was the first Commanding General (CG) of the 82nd Airborne Division, leading it in action in Sicily, Italy and Normandy, before taking command of the newly formed XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944. He held the latter post until the end of the war in mid-1945, commanding the corps in the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Varsity and the Western Allied invasion of Germany.
Ridgway held several major commands after World War II and is most well-known for resurrecting the United Nations (UN) war effort during the Korean War. Several historians have credited Ridgway for turning the war around in favor of the UN side. He also persuaded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to refrain from direct military intervention in the First Indochina War to support French colonial forces, thereby essentially delaying the United States' Vietnam War by over a decade. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 May 1986. Ridgway died in 1993 at the age of 98.
Ridgway was born 3 March 1895, in Fort Monroe, Virginia, to Colonel Thomas Ridgway, an artillery officer, and Ruth Starbuck (Bunker) Ridgway. He lived in various military bases all throughout his childhood. He later remarked that his "earliest memories are of guns and marching men, of rising to the sound of the reveille gun and lying down to sleep at night while the sweet, sad notes of 'Taps' brought the day officially to an end". He graduated in 1912 from English High School in Boston and applied to United States Military Academy at West Point because he thought that would please his father (who was a West Point graduate).
Ridgway failed the entrance exam the first time due to his inexperience with mathematics, but after intensive self-study he succeeded the second time. At West Point he served as a manager of the football team. He graduated from there, 56th in a class of 139, on 20 April 1917, two weeks after the
American entry into World War I, and received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Infantry Branch of the United States Army.
Beginning his career during World War I, Ridgway was assigned to duty on the border with Mexico as a member of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, and then to the West Point faculty as an instructor in Spanish. He was disappointed that he was not assigned to combat duty during the war, feeling that "the soldier who had had no share in this last great victory of good over evil would be ruined".
During 1924 and 1925 Ridgway attended the company officers' course at the United States Army Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia, after which he was a company commander in the 15th Infantry Regiment in Tianjin, China. This was followed by a posting to Nicaragua, where he helped supervise free elections in 1927.
In 1930, Ridgway became an advisor to the Governor-General of the Philippines. He graduated from the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935 and from the Army War College at Washington Barracks, District of Columbia, in 1937. During the 1930s he served as Assistant Chief of Staff of VI Corps, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Second Army, and Assistant Chief of Staff of the Fourth Army. General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, assigned Ridgway to the War Plans Division shortly after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939.
After being promoted to lieutenant colonel on 1 July 1940, he served in the War Plans Division until January 1942, and was promoted to the one-star general officer rank of brigadier general that month, after being promoted to temporary colonel on 11 December the month before. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the American entry into World War II, Ridgway was promoted rapidly from lieutenant colonel to major general in the space of only four months. In February 1942 he was assigned as Assistant Division Commander of the 82nd Infantry Division, which was then in the process of formation. The division was under the command of Major General Omar Bradley, a fellow infantryman whom Ridgway highly respected. The two men trained the thousands of men joining the division over the next few months. In August, two months after Bradley's reassignment to command of the 28th Infantry Division, Ridgway was promoted to the two-star rank of major general and was given command of the 82nd Division. The 82nd, having finished all of its basic training and already established an excellent combat record in World War I, had earlier been chosen to become one of the army's five new airborne divisions. The conversion of an entire infantry division to airborne status was an unprecedented step for the United States Army, and required much training, testing, and experimentation. Thus the division was, on 15 August 1942, redesignated as the 82nd Airborne Division.
Initially composed of the 325th, 326th and 327th Infantry Regiments, all of which were due to be converted into glider infantry, the 327th was soon transferred out of the 82nd to help form the 101st Airborne Division, commanded by Major General William C. Lee. Unlike his men, Ridgway did not first go through airborne jump school before joining the division. He successfully converted the 82nd into a combat-ready airborne division and remained in command and eventually earned his paratrooper wings. To replace the 327th, Ridgway received the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Theodore Dunn, later replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Reuben Tucker. In February 1943 the 326th was also transferred out and replaced by the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Colonel James M. Gavin. In April the 82nd, which in Ridgway's mind had received only a third the training time given to most divisions, was sent to North Africa to prepare for the invasion of Sicily.
Ridgway helped plan the airborne element of the invasion of Sicily. The invasion, which took place in July 1943, was spearheaded by Colonel Gavin's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (reinforced into the 505th Parachute Regimental Combat Team by the 3rd Battalion of Tucker's 504th). Despite some successes, Sicily nearly saw an end to the airborne division. Due mainly to circumstances beyond Ridgway's control the 82nd suffered heavy casualties in Sicily, including the division's Assistant Division Commander, Brigadier General Charles L. Keerans. During the 504th's drop on the morning of 9 July, which was widely scattered due to friendly fire, Ridgway had to report to Lieutenant General George S. Patton, commander of the Seventh United States Army (under whose command the 82nd fell), that, out of the more than 5,300 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division who had jumped into Sicily, he had fewer than 400 under his control.
During the planning for the invasion of the Italian mainland, the 82nd was tasked with taking Rome by coup de main in Operation Giant II. Ridgway strongly objected to this unrealistic plan, which would have dropped the 82nd on the outskirts of the Italian capital of Rome in the midst of two German heavy divisions. The operation was canceled only hours before launch. The 82nd did, however, play a significant role in the Allied invasion of Italy at Salerno in September which, but for a drop by Ridgway's two parachute regiments, may well have seen the Allies pushed back into the sea. The 82nd Airborne Division subsequently saw brief service in the early stages of the Italian Campaign, helping the Allies to break through the Volturno Line in October. The division then returned to occupation duties in the recently liberated Italian city of Naples and saw little further action thereafter and in November departed Italy for Northern Ireland. Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, commander of the Fifth United States Army, a fellow graduate of the West Point class of 1917, referring to Ridgway as an "outstanding battle soldier, brilliant, fearless and loyal", who had "trained and produced one of the finest Fifth Army outfits", was unwilling to give up either Ridgway or the 82nd. As a compromise, Colonel Tucker's 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, along with supporting units, was retained in Italy, to be sent to rejoin the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division as soon as possible.