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- <text id=93TT0166>
- <title>
- Aug. 09, 1993: Died:General Matthew B. Ridgway
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Aug. 09, 1993 Lost Secrets Of The Maya
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- MILESTONES, Page 20
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> DIED. GENERAL MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY, 98, former Army Chief of Staff;
- in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania. The son of an army colonel, Ridgway
- graduated from West Point in 1917. During the Second World War,
- he developed the paratrooper attack and converted the 82nd Infantry
- Division into an airborne unit that landed in Sicily in 1943
- and on the Normandy beaches on D-day. In that assault, Ridgway
- skydived into action with his troops. He reached the pinnacle
- of his career in the '50s: in 1951 he replaced the dismissed
- Douglas MacArthur in Korea. Then a four-star general, Ridgway
- kept a grenade taped to his uniform, a habit that became legendary
- among his men. He won that war, overseeing the counteroffensive
- that ultimately drove North Korean and Chinese troops out of
- the South. In 1953 he was named Army Chief of Staff by President
- Eisenhower. Ridgway's emphasis on ground troops was perceived
- as antiquated in the nuclear age, and he retired in frustration
- in 1955. He continued to criticize U.S. military policy from
- the sidelines--strongly condemning, for example, American
- escalation in Vietnam during the '60s, predicting it would lead
- "to an upward spiraling course that may approach annihilation."
- </p>
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- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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