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For the quality of the performance, major credit was due to two U.S. generals who went in with their men: Major General William M. ("Bud") Miley, commander of the 17th Airborne, taking his outfit into combat for the first time, and Major General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, veteran airborne fighter and commander of the Airborne Army's XVIII Corps. They had led their troops across the enemy barrier on bridges of silk.
The Bosses. Overall commander of the First Allied Airborne Army is a colorful, hell-for-leather airman, Annapolis-trained Lieut. General Lewis H. ("Louie") Brereton. In Brereton's command setup, the role of deputy is filled by tall, bluff, ruddy Major General Richard N. Gale, who also doubles as active head of the First British Airborne Command. But the Airborne Army's heavyweight punch, the potent XVIII Corps with three known U.S. divisions, is wielded by husky, aggressive, driving General Ridgway, rated by U.S. Army chiefs as the world's No. 1 active airborne commander.
Six years ago Ridgway was not even involved in U.S. airborne training. Neither was anyone else. U.S. airborne activities began in 1940, in a shy and tentative way, with an experimental platoon of 48 men and a couple of lieutenants. There was no ready-made body of doctrine or data: in the beginning some of the best information came from the Department of Agriculture's forestry experts, who knew something about parachuting men & materials to fight forest fires.
Like a sensitive plant growing in a bull pit, the U.S. paratroop platoon modestly expanded to a battalion, then to a provisional group.
Nazi airborne coups in Crete and the Low Countries opened many military eyes, and some of the U.S. Army's best brains, including Air Forces General Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold and the late, great Ground Forces chief, Lieut. General Lesley J. ("Whitey") McNair, lent support and advice to the U.S. paratroop and glider program. That program really got rolling in 1942, with the setting up of two full airborne divisions.
As commander of the newly activated 101st Airborne, the Army chose Major General William Carey Lee, unquestioned father of U.S. airborne doctrine. In the training program from the start, Lee had been the first general to jump with his troops, the first chief of the Airborne Command. General Lee trained the 101st, took it to England, whetted it to a razor edge for the Normandy invasion. Then, to the heartbreak of his officers and men, he was compelled to give up the command because of illness, and return to the U.S.
For its other airborne outfit, the Army decided to take a hot infantry division and convert it. The choice fell on the 82nd—once commanded by Lieut. General Omar N. Bradley, then by his friend and deputy, Matt Ridgway. As Ridgway recalls it, his introduction to the airborne merry-go-round was brisk and informal. The War Department simply called him up and said: "Would you like to become airborne?" Said Ridgway, no hater of change or challenge: "Yes."