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Matthew Ridgway

1895–1993 · 98 years Specialist

The West Point failure who saved a collapsing army in Korea

Portrait of Matthew Ridgway — United States Army Japan — circa 1951 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Matthew Ridgway was born March 3, 1895, at Fort Monroe, Virginia, son of an army artillery colonel, and never seriously considered another career. He failed the mathematics portion of the West Point entrance exam on his first try and spent a year cramming before he passed, graduating 56th in a class of 139 in April 1917, commissioned into the infantry just as the United States entered the World War he never got to fight in. He guarded the Mexican border and taught Spanish at the academy instead, then served in China, Nicaragua, and the Philippines through the 1920s. His first marriage, to Julia Blount, produced two daughters and ended in divorce in 1930, and his second, to Margaret Dabney, lasted seventeen years.

In August 1942 Ridgway took command of the 82nd Infantry Division and converted it into the Army's first airborne division. He jumped with his troops into Sicily and into Normandy on D-Day, then led the XVIII Airborne Corps through the Battle of the Bulge and across the Rhine, taking grenade wounds in March 1945. Five years later he inherited a demoralized Eighth Army in Korea after its commander's sudden death, fired underperforming officers, pushed commanders back to the front, and reversed a losing retreat within weeks. When Truman fired Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, Ridgway took over as United Nations commander in Korea and military governor of Japan. He led NATO forces in Europe through 1952 and 1953, then became Army chief of staff, arguing so hard against sending ground troops into Vietnam that Eisenhower dropped the idea.

Ridgway's final years in uniform cost him the promotion he wanted. His disputes with Eisenhower over army and navy budgets went public, cost him the White House's backing, and left him without support for a second term as chief of staff — he retired in 1955 at 60, sooner and less honored than his record justified. The personal cost came later. His only son, Matthew Jr., was killed in an accident in 1971, shortly after graduating from Bucknell. Ridgway was not free of contradiction: the general Americans credited with stopping Communist advances in Korea spent the 1980s advocating reconciliation with the country he had fought across Europe, and in May 1985 stood beside President Reagan at the Bitburg war cemetery in Germany and shook hands with a former Luftwaffe pilot — a gesture that drew sharp public criticism.

Ridgway died July 26, 1993, at his home in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, at 98, and was buried at Arlington. President Reagan had awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986, and General Colin Powell's eulogy called him a soldier who upheld his duty and his honor better than anyone else in uniform. Military historians still treat the Eighth Army turnaround of early 1951 as one of the clearest reversals any single American commander pulled off, and rank him with Marshall and Eisenhower among the Army's mid-century leadership. His 1954 warning against sending ground troops into Vietnam is now read as the argument the country should have heeded a decade before it fought the same war at far greater cost.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Matthew Ridgway's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

82nd Airborne Division conversion other
Converted from a standard infantry division into the Army's first airborne division 1942
Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway book 1956
The Korean War book 1967
Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies other
University of Pittsburgh research center named in his honor 1988

Life in brief

with age at each point

March 3, 1895 aged 0 Born at Fort Monroe, Virginia
April 20, 1917 aged 22 Graduates West Point and is commissioned in the infantry
August 1942 aged 47 Takes command of the 82nd Division and converts it to airborne
June 6, 1944 aged 49 Jumps into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne on D-Day
December 26, 1950 aged 55 Takes command of the collapsing Eighth Army in Korea
April 11, 1951 aged 56 Becomes UN commander in Korea after Truman fires MacArthur
May 30, 1952 aged 57 Becomes NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe
1955 aged ~60 Retires as Army Chief of Staff after opposing intervention in Vietnam
July 26, 1993 aged 98 Dies at Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, at 98