(5 of 5)
After Arnhem the U.S. airborne outfits retired to rest areas in France. While "resting," they contributed notably to the blunting of the desperate German winter offensive in the Ardennes. There the 101st staged its epic defense of Bastogne, while the 82nd held like a rock on the northern side of the bulge. After setting up his corps headquarters for that battle, Ridgway made a mild contribution to military literature. Over a field telephone, to a bewildered general in another sector, he remarked conversationally: "There hasn't been a breakthrough here and there isn't going to be. We are going to attack."
Army Brat. At 50, Matt Ridgway looks like a Roman senator and lives like a Spartan hoplite. He is ruggedly built (5 ft. 10½; 175 Ibs.), has straight dark brown hair sprinkled with grey, dark brown eyes, expressive eyebrows. His face (variously described as "distinguished." "handsome" or "austere") is deeply tanned and crinkled with the lines natural to an outdoorsman. He has never known any life except that of the Army. An "army brat," he was born at Fort Monroe, Va.. son of Colonel Thomas Ridgway. In due time he went to West Point, was graduated in 1917, and like many another unhappy officer (Eisenhower, for one) fretted out World War I in a training job in the U.S. Afterward he served in China, Nicaragua, the Philippines.
In peacetime he played a fast game of tennis, liked hunting, riding and flying (he is not a pilot). In war, for an airborne general, exercise is not a problem; his chief recreations, fitted in at odd moments, are reading and cribbage. Kipling is his sure-fire reading, but a correspondent who visited his command post on a recent evening found him deep in Lord Moran's Anatomy of Courage. Like any G.I., he is avid for mail from his blond wife, who lives in Washington, and their daughter, wife of a lieutenant colonel now on duty in Europe.
After Europe, What? The war in Europe is still a bitter war, and there can be more airborne drops before it is over. But the time is at least dimly in sight when the men of the Airborne Army will be temporarily out of places to go when they feel like passing the word: "Here we go again!" When that time comes, there is no reason to doubt that Brereton. Ridgway and the rest of the gang will pack up and head for the other war. The nth Division, fourth announced U.S. airborne outfit, went direct to General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Theater, and fought well on Luzon, making a notable drop on Corregidor. In the big push against Japan, airborne men will have plenty to do.
Whatever tasks they do, the manner of their doing will bear a strong stamp of Matt Ridgway. All four announced commanders of U.S. airborne divisions served under him in the 82nd at one time or another. In the words of a colleague: "Each of them is a hunk of Ridgway."* For them and for all their men. Matt Ridgway once set down the definitive rule for airborne operations: "The horizon is unlimited."
* The four "hunks": Major General Maxwell D. Taylor (101st); Major General James M. Gavin (82nd); Major General William M. Miley (17th); Major General Joseph M. Swing (11th).