The Cold War: Chief of Staff

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Rump Session. In Normandy, and later in Holland, Taylor proved himself to be a master tactician, maneuvered his division with consistent versatility to keep open roads and harass the enemy. He insisted on peak performance from his staff, unceremoniously sacked one senior colonel for failing to act boldly. A stickler for discipline, Taylor once gave a lieutenant a medal for a dangerous patrol and simultaneously fined him $50 for not being clean-shaven. Taylor was harder on himself than anyone, making personal reconnaissances by Jeep, risking injury unnecessarily by sitting stubbornly at a staff table while shells fell in the courtyard outside.

Taylor eventually was wounded in the rump by a mortar fragment while making a tour of a forward area against the angry advice of a sergeant, who warned of the alert enemy. When Taylor was hit, the sergeant stormed up to his rescue with an attitude that was anything but solicitous: "Goddammit. General, now do you believe me?" Taylor spent ten days in the hospital, but made his staff keep his name off the wounded list for fear he would lose his command.

Who's Worried? Ironically, Taylor was back in the U.S. for consultation when his 101st faced its darkest moments of the war. Attacking in the last-ditch Battle of the Bulge, the Germans surrounded the division at Bastogne. When a delegation arrived to negotiate for the surrender of the 101st, Tony McAuliffe, the acting commander, became one of the most famous soldiers of World War II by firing back a one-word answer: "Nuts." Meanwhile, Taylor was frantically trying to get a plane ride back to Europe. "I've got 10,000 sons," he kept telling his wife, "and they're my responsibility." On Christmas Eve, 1944, Taylor gave his two boys, Tom and Jack, their presents, and finally was able to hop a cargo flight across the Atlantic. Just three days later, Taylor jeeped into Bastogne with the first elements of the 4th Armored Division. Taylor found McAuliffe coolly getting ready for dinner. "No damned reason to be worried about us," said McAuliffe. "We're ready to attack."

Battle Fatigue. After the war, Maxwell Taylor got the coveted assignment of Superintendent of West Point.* promptly expanded the liberal arts courses and set the cadets to studying the dissenting opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the poems of T. S. Eliot. Taylor posted a sign in the West Point locker room reading, "No pot belly will ever lead the corps of cadets," and became renowned as a give-no-quarter handball player.