The Cold War: Chief of Staff

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Brilliant Beginning. At West Point, Taylor played varsity tennis, met a girl named Lydia Happer, whom he married in 1925, and graduated fourth in the class of 1922. Like many top-ranking graduates, Taylor chose the engineers—as had his boyhood idol, Robert E. Lee—and began his brilliant career. For most Army officers, the '20s and '30s were drab years of no activity and few promotions. Taylor was a lieutenant for 13 years, but he led the lively life reserved for the outstanding young officer—language study in both France and Japan, a tour as an instructor at West Point, then assignment to the Command and Staff School and the Army War College.

In 1942 Brigadier General Taylor became artillery commander of the Army's first airborne division, the 82nd, commanded by General Matt Ridgway. He soon found that it was his kind of outfit. "I don't like to jump," Taylor once confessed frankly, "but I like to be with people who like to jump." Taylor went into action with the 82nd in Africa and Sicily, soon earned a reputation as a tough, resourceful officer and was singled out for one of the most dramatic cloak-and-dagger missions of the war.

Mission to Rome. In September 1943, with invasion imminent, Italy wanted desperately to surrender to the Allies. The Italians under Marshal Badoglio maintained that the 82nd could capture Rome by making a surprise landing. General Dwight Eisenhower assigned Taylor and Air Corps Colonel William T. Gardiner to check out the scheme by going to Rome.

Aware that they stood a good chance of being captured, Taylor and Gardiner wore their uniforms lest they be shot as spies. The two men transferred from a British PT boat to an Italian corvette and were put ashore in the port of Gaeta. They made the 75-mile trip to Rome in an Italian truck, stayed back of the enemy lines for two days, discovered that Badoglio could not give the necessary support to a landing, called off the attack by radio and were flown out to Tunis in an Italian plane. Eisenhower later wrote of Taylor: "The risks he ran were greater than I asked any other agent or emissary to undertake during the war."

Click-Click. On the night of June 6, 1944, Major General Taylor became the first American general to invade Europe when he led his joist Airborne Division on the jump into Normandy. Taylor struggled out of his chute harness and found himself surrounded by mildly curious cows. For 20 minutes, Taylor hunted frantically for his division. Finally he heard the click-click of the toy cricket that his paratroopers used to signal in the darkness. Taylor click-clicked back, jumped over a hedge and hugged a 101st G.I.—"the finest, most beautiful American soldier I've ever seen. A fine private with his bayonet fixed."

Taylor then collected Brigadier General Tony McAuliffe, a flock of colonels and staff officers, a correspondent from Reuters and a few score soldiers and led the attack that opened up a causeway from Utah Beach for the 4th Division. Says Taylor: "Never were so few led by so many." To his stunned surprise, Taylor got the Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the action after a staff officer sneaked his name onto the citation list. The embarrassed Taylor gave the officer a memorable chewing out.