Maxwell D. Taylor

“A soldier's soldier and a statesman's statesman.”

“A great transformation came over West Point. Many of the staff and faculty who had been there previously were non-combat experienced and had been called up from civilian life. Then in came the new superintendent, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who brought to the Department of Tactics a collection of the finest officers that I have ever known before, or since.”

“From late May to late June, when home on R and R, Taylor had learned that the 101st would be shifted to the war in the Pacific. On rejoining the division, he toured individual units to muster support for the move. He ended one speech with: "We've licked the best that Hitler had in France and Holland and Germany. Now where do we want to go?" It inspired the only mass incident of insubordination, although jocular, faced by Maxwell Taylor as commander. His beloved Screaming Eagles screamed, "Home!"- no doubt punctuated by a few catcalls and Bronx cheers.”

“After Christmas, General Taylor came back and took over as commander, but nobody wanted to see Taylor. Here, the guy's the commander of the 101st Airborne, and he took time off to go and have Christmas dinner in Virginia. When we found out he was in Virginia, we couldn't believe our general had left us in a spot like that, and we didn't want to hear no excuses. The guys resented it. Oh, they did, too! Nobody liked Taylor after that.”

“Of course, the media did not have to manufacture dissent and antiwar feeling in the United States; there was enough of the real article to provide them with legitimate subject matter. Every war critic capable of producing a headline contributed, in proportion to his eminence, some comfort if not aid to the enemy. Unfortunately, from 1967 onward there was no shortage of eminent figures among the opponents of the war willing to make this contribution.”

“Upon assuming command, I received no special instructions or guidance from my military superiors in Washington other than an expression of strong interest on the part of General Eisenhower in the maintenance of the Honor System and in the improvement of the teaching of military leadership. Throughout my tour, I was allowed to conduct the affairs of the Academy with minimum official interference so that, if things went wrong, I had only myself to blame.”

“When the sergeant had finally got his rounds on target and I had commended to him a thorough review of the mortar manual, I climbed down the ladder and into the courtyard just in time to rendezvous with a small German shell which exploded a few yards away, raising a cloud of dust and sending me rolling with a small fragment lodged in the sitzplatz. When I opened my eyes, there was my bug-eyed sergeant hanging out the window of the belfry calling to his radio operator, "Joe, I think the Krauts got the old man in the tail." That is how I got my Purple Heart.”

“As we jumped from our plane, as far as one could see were parachutes of many colors floating gently to earth in the warm afternoon sunshine. In contrast to the scattered drop in Normandy, there were no lonely officers roaming about looking for their units- the fields were alive with American soldiers assembling their equipment and hurrying to the rendezvous points of their companies.”

“Standing in the door ready to jump behind Cassidy, I saw the plane on our wing hit by ground fire and flames start licking back from the engine under the fuselage. Cassidy was so fascinated by the sight that I had to nudge him to remind him that the jump signal was on. Later I learned that the Air Force pilots of the burning plane never wavered in their steady course to the drop zone where the parachutists jumped to safety while the pilots crashed to their deaths.”

“During my cadet years, West Point was still a military cloister, linked tenuously to the outside world by the West Shore Railway, the excursion boats on the Hudson, and a winding road leading westward into New Jersey. A cadet normally entered the Academy in July and never left it on vacation until his second Christmas. In the meantime, he led a completely regimented life, arising at six, going to bed at ten and rarely having a moment without a duty to occupy it.”

“When the Armistice came back no one took time to tell us about it; November 11 was just another day of drilling on the Plain. I found out that the war was over only by courtesy of our "barrack policemen", the janitor who looked after the division of the old South Barracks where my "beast" company was quartered, who reported the war's end a couple of days after the fact.”

“It was one thing to decide to go to West Point, another to get there.”

“To Diddy, The Best Taylor Soldier”

“The ultimate guide to decision should be our estimate at the time of the nature and extent of the American interest. There may be good reasons to use our resources to resist a troublemaking power which commits aggression against a weak and friendly state if the subversion of that state would be a significant gain to the troublemaker or a significant loss to us. Even then, we should have a reasonably accurate and encouraging estimate of the chances of success before we act. We cannot afford to stake our world standing on a lost cause or on one with unduly high risks of failure.”

“It seems clear that if we are to avoid the pitfalls of overcommitment and the traps of those who would deplete our strength, we will need realistic, hard-boiled leaders in Washington, capable of discerning our vital interests and then of rallying our friends in their support.”

“As we learned on the American frontier, it is impossible to plant corn outside the stockade until the Indians are driven away.”

“Our adversaries have a determination which has existed since at least 1954 to absorb South Vietnam into a Communist state against the will of the vast majority of the people in the South and to rule that state from Hanoi. It is a simple, straightforward objective, no ifs or ands about it. They also have collateral objectives which in the long run may be equally as important to us, such as their desire to demonstrate the invincibility of the "War of Liberation" and in the end to evict the United States from Southeast Asia.”

“In such a postwar climate, it was probably natural for the U.S. to do most of its defense spending for air power and atomic weapon systems. It is true that current events, such as the Communist-led civil war in Greece, the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Russian blockade of Berlin, should have been reminders of the need to meet challenges to which the Atomic bomb would be no reply. However, the lesson, if perceived, was not effective and conventional forces were sacrificed to the needs of atomic power.”

“The atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided a new case for the decisive character of strategic bombing. The atomic bomb offered air power a new weapon with tremendously increased destructiveness and encouraged once more the belief that an ultimate weapon was in the hands of our Air Force which would allow the United States to impose a sort of Pax Americana on the world. The corollary to this belief was that conventional military forces would have little or no value in the new era.”

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”