Maxwell D. Taylor

Maxwell Davenport Taylor (August 26, 1901 – April 19, 1987) was a senior United States Army officer and diplomat of the mid-20th century.

In 1918, he passed competitive examinations for Congressional appointment by William Patterson Borland to either the United States Military Academy or United States Naval Academy and then passed the Military Academy entrance examination.

Taylor attended West Point, graduated fourth in the Class of 1922, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He served in Hawaii with the 3rd Engineers from 1923 to 1926.

Taylor transferred to the Field Artillery and, from 1926 to 1927, served with the 10th Field Artillery, receiving promotion to first lieutenant.

Having demonstrated a facility for foreign languages, he studied French in Paris and was then assigned to West Point as an instructor in French and Spanish.

He graduated from the Field Artillery School in 1933, and he completed the course at the United States Army Command and General Staff College in 1935.

Taylor was promoted to captain in August 1935 and served at the American embassy in Tokyo from 1935 to 1939, including attaché duty in China in 1937.

He graduated from the United States Army War College in 1940 and was promoted to major in July 1940.

Taylor served on the War Plans Division staff in 1940 and took part in a defense cooperation mission to Latin American countries.

He commanded the 1st Battalion of the 12th Field Artillery Regiment from 1940 to 1941, and then served in the Office of the Secretary of the General Staff until 1942.

He received temporary promotions to lieutenant colonel in December 1941, colonel in February 1942, and brigadier general in December 1942.

In 1942, Taylor became chief of staff of the 82nd Airborne Division, followed by command of the 82nd Airborne Division Artillery, and took part in combat in Sicily and Italy.

In 1943, during the planning for the Allied invasion of Italy, Taylor's diplomatic and language skills resulted in his secret mission to Rome to co-ordinate an 82nd air drop with Italian forces.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower later said that "the risks he ran were greater than I asked any other agent or emissary to take during the war."

Hundreds of miles behind the front lines of battle, Taylor was forced by the rules of engagement to wear his American military uniform to prevent himself, if captured, from being shot as a spy.

He met with the new Italian prime minister, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, and General Carboni.

The air drop near Rome to capture the city was called off at the last minute since Taylor realized that German forces were already moving in to cover the intended drop zones.

Transport planes were already in the air when Taylor's message canceled the drop, preventing the mission.

His efforts behind enemy lines got Taylor noticed at the highest levels of the Allied command.

Taylor received temporary promotion to major general in May 1944.

Taylor took part in the division's parachute jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the first Allied general officer to land in France on D-Day.

Having been brought up to strength, Taylor led the 101st in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944.

He was not present for the division's action during the Siege of Bastogne as part of the Battle of the Bulge since he was attending a staff conference in the United States.

The Divisional Artillery commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, exercised command in his absence.

After Bastogne, Taylor's 101st saw little further service in the war and was sent to the United States in late 1945, where it was deactivated in November.

On September 4, 1945, Taylor became superintendent of the United States Military Academy.

In 1947, he drafted the first official Honor Code publication marking the beginning of the written "Cadet Honor Code" at West Point.

He was succeeded by Bryant Moore on January 28, 1949.

Afterwards he was the commander of allied troops in West Berlin from 1949 to 1951; when he left that post, he felt like a "Berliner," more than a decade before John F. Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in the city.

In July 1951 he was promoted to lieutenant general and assigned as the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Administration at the Pentagon.

He served with distinction in World War II, most notably as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed "The Screaming Eagles."

After the war, he served as the fifth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having been appointed by President John F. Kennedy.

He is the father of biographer and historian John Maxwell Taylor and of military historian and author Thomas Happer Taylor.

A controversial figure, Taylor was considered, along with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, to have played a major role during the early days of the Vietnam War in the decision to deploy US combat troops to Vietnam and to escalate the conflict more generally.

Born in Keytesville, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Taylor graduated from Northeast High School and attended Kansas City Polytechnic Institute.

After the campaigns in the Mediterranean, Taylor was assigned to become the Commanding General (CG) of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed "The Screaming Eagles", which was then training in England in preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy, after the division's first commander, Major General William Lee, suffered a heart attack.

He subsequently commanded the 101st in the Battle of Normandy, including in the capture of Carentan on June 13, and the division continued to fight in the campaign as regular infantry.

The 101st Airborne Division was pulled out of the line in late June, having been in almost continuous action for nearly a month, and in early July, he returned to England to rest and refit and absorb replacements, after having suffered over 4,600 casualties.

Taylor called the defense of Bastogne the 101st Airborne Division's "finest hour" of the war and stated that his absence was one of his greatest disappointments of the war.