RIDGWAY'S PARATROOPERS: The American Airborne in World War II

by Clay Blair ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1985

The first of two volumes of close battlefield biography of General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, this is not an authorized biography, though it was written with Ridgway's full cooperation and access to his private and official papers. Volume one covers the enormous canvas of Ridgway's activities with the 82nd Airborne, its offspring the 101st Airborne Division, and his work as Commanding General, XVIII Airborne Corps, in leading all American paratroopers in the war against Germany. Volume two will cover Ridgway in Korea--where his became a household name when he replaced MacArthur as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers in the Far East, after Truman axed MacArthur. Ridgway spent his childhood on army posts, went immediately to West Point after prep school. Physically, he was the picture of a soldier, ramrod straight, tautly muscled and radiating an awesome presence that reminded some of Superman: ""You had the impression he could knock over a building with a single blow, or stare a hole through a wall."" His great sorrow was that he failed to get overseas during the Great War but was instead stuck as an instructor in Romance languages at the Point. Even so he was a dedicated outdoorsman and professional field soldier whose true element was dawn-to-dusk personal exhortation of his troops. But some fellow officers thought him a terrific stuffed shirt and humorless drudge fond of flowery language. Given charge of the newly reactivated 82nd Division and the mission of training it as an airborne parachute-attack force, Ridgway knew that his troops had to be an elite brand of soldier in superb physical condition. His division fought in the front lines in Sicily, the Italian mainland, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhine crossing, the Ruhr encirclement and, his leadership ever inspiring and decisive, in the war's final days the Elbe crossing and the linkup with the Russians. Perhaps the most moving part of this chronicle is of the disastrous attack on Arnheim and its costly setback. As ever, Blair is a superhuman fact-packager on a monumental scale, and his Ridgway epic is aimed at the military buff rather than the general reader. Nonetheless, this book--with its focus on a single human being--is a better read than many of his earlier excessively researched overviews of military action.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: publisher

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION