Matthew Ridgway
Matthew Ridgway took over a beaten army in Korea and had it advancing within weeks. Born in 1895 at a Virginia arsenal to an artillery officer, he graduated from West Point in 1917 and spent the First World War guarding the Mexican border, which he regarded as a permanent misfortune. He was a Spanish speaker and served in Latin America and China, and in 1942 was given the 82nd Division and converted it into one of the first American airborne divisions. He jumped into Normandy with it on D-Day and commanded XVIII Airborne Corps at Market Garden and in the Ardennes. In December 1950 the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea was killed in a road accident, and Ridgway was flown in. He found a force that had been driven some four hundred kilometres by the Chinese intervention, had abandoned equipment, and had, in his words, lost confidence in itself. He relieved a number of commanders, required officers to be forward, restored the flow of hot food and winter clothing, forbade further withdrawals without permission, and insisted that units maintain contact with each other rather than retreating along roads. He also changed the objective. Rather than seek to hold ground or reach the Yalu, he set out to kill Chinese soldiers by artillery and air while advancing methodically on a continuous front — Operations Thunderbolt, Killer and Ripper. Seoul was retaken in March 1951 and the line stabilised near the parallel. He succeeded MacArthur in April 1951, later commanded NATO, and as army chief of staff opposed intervention in Vietnam. He died in 1993.
- Lived: 1895 CE – 1993 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: general, military_leader
