Top 15 Maxwell D. Taylor Quotes

So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arms race or save their resources for later, more renumerative uses? Will they increase their productivity while we succumb to inflation and its social and economic consequences? Will they live in harmony at home while we remain riven by factionalism and terrorized by crime? Most important of all, will they choose their goals wisely and pursue them relentlessly while we flounder in aimlessness or exhaust ourselves in internecine struggles? These matters are quite as important as the decline of absolute American power in determining the equilibrium of international relations in the 1970s. One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed at the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and for our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will.

We are carrying into the next decade many unresolved problems raised by Vietnam. How can a democracy such as ours defend its interests at acceptable cost and continue to enjoy the freedom of speech and behavior to which we are accustomed in time of peace? To a Communist enemy the Cold War is a total, unending conflict with the United States and its allies- without formal military hostilities, to be sure- but conducted with the same discipline and determination as a formal war. Unless we can learn to exercise some degree of self-discipline, to accept and enforce some reasonable standard of responsible civic conduct, and to remove the many self-created obstacles to the use of our power, we will be unable to meet the hard competition waiting for us in the decade of the 1970s.

Of course, the media did not have to manufacture dissent and antiwar feeling in the United States; there was enough of the real article to provide them with legitimate subject matter. Every war critic capable of producing a headline contributed, in proportion to his eminence, some comfort if not aid to the enemy. Unfortunately, from 1967 onward there was no shortage of eminent figures among the opponents of the war willing to make this contribution.

Elements of the information media contributed to prolonging the war by their manner of reporting the news. It required only selective reporting, not deliberate fabrication, to create the impression that we Americans were the prime aggressors bent on expanding the war to avoid impending defeat, and that our alleged successes were really defeats which officials were trying to hide from the American public. Biased reporters found no good to say about our Vietnamese allies, whom they held up to scorn in a way which led the American people to believe that our allies were not worth the sacrifices we were making in their behalf. Such selective and slanted reporting spread defeatism among the tender-minded at home and provided enormous encouragement for Hanoi to hold fast and concede nothing.

When President Kennedy sounded me out about becoming Chairman, I was of course pleased to be considered but, at the same time, felt a certain depression at the thought of returning to the bear pit of the Pentagon where I spent four less-than-happy years as Army Chief of Staff. However, I recognized that the atmosphere had changed and that the strategic heresy of Flexible Response which I had advocated to little avail had become the orthodoxy of the Kennedy Administration. Also, I had gotten to know Secretary McNamara and, in spite of the occasional differences of view, had a high regard for him as a man of decision who tackled fearlessly the tough problems of defense and refuse to yield to the temptation to sweep them under the rug.

With the opportunity to observe the problems of the President at closer range, I have come to understand the importance of an intimate, easy relationship, born of friendship and mutual regard, between the President and the Chiefs. It is particularly important in the case of the Chairman, who works more closely with the President and Secretary of Defense than do the service chiefs. The Chairman should be a true believer in the foreign policy and military strategy of the administration he serves, or, at least, feel that he and his colleagues are assured an attentive hearing those matters for which the Joint Chiefs have a responsibility. These considerations have led me to conclude that an incoming President is well advised to change the Chiefs, not with one sweep of the new broom, but progressively as he gets a chance to know the senior officers qualified for consideration and to evaluate their compatibility with his ways of thinking and acting.

Upon assuming command, I received no special instructions or guidance from my military superiors in Washington other than an expression of strong interest on the part of General Eisenhower in the maintenance of the Honor System and in the improvement of the teaching of military leadership. Throughout my tour, I was allowed to conduct the affairs of the Academy with minimum official interference so that, if things went wrong, I had only myself to blame.

My days in Europe with the 101st were nearly at an end. I suddenly received orders relieving me from the Division and assigning me as Superintendent of West Point. On August 22 I took an emotion-laden leave of my troops in a division review at Auxerre. For all their hard-boiled reputation, generals can be terribly sentimental about their units and their men. Standing bareheaded at the foot of the reviewing stand, I received the last salute of these gallant soldiers, their ribbons and streamers recalling our battles together. They had put stars on my shoulders and medals on my chest. I owed my future to them, and I was grateful.

A recruit arriving in a new unit feels lonely, homesick, and insecure. Someone has to welcome him when he arrives and make him understand that he is truly wanted. That responsibility is shared by every officer in the channel of command, beginning with the division commander. I made it a point to try to meet every new soldier joining the Division, usually assembling them in small groups for a handshake and an informal talk. A standard question for a new man was why he had volunteered for parachuting and whether he enjoyed it. On one occasion, a bright-eyed recruit startled me by replying to the latter question with a resounding "No, sir." "Why, then, if you don't like jumping did you volunteer to be a parachutist?" I asked. "Sir, I like to be with people who do like to jump," was the reply. I shook his hand vigorously and assured him that there were at least two of us of the same mind in the Division.

When the sergeant had finally got his rounds on target and I had commended to him a thorough review of the mortar manual, I climbed down the ladder and into the courtyard just in time to rendezvous with a small German shell which exploded a few yards away, raising a cloud of dust and sending me rolling with a small fragment lodged in the sitzplatz. When I opened my eyes, there was my bug-eyed sergeant hanging out the window of the belfry calling to his radio operator, "Joe, I think the Krauts got the old man in the tail." That is how I got my Purple Heart.

Ridgway and I climbed a ladder inside the tower to the belfry, spoke to the sergeant observer there, and looked over the landscape on the German side of the river. Then Ridgway turned to the sergeant and at length asked him to put a mortar concentration on a point of woods a few hundred yards away on the German side. The sergeant, unperturbed, cranked his field telephone and spoke to someone at the mortar position in the fields behind the church. "Joe," he said, "remember the dead horse we used as an aiming point yesterday? This target is about fifty over and 100 left. Ten rounds when you're ready." The rounds were in the air almost at once, and their accuracy was impeccable; but I was far from happy about the way my sergeant had shortcut the standard methods of adjusting fire as prescribed in the mortar manual. Although an artilleryman and not the expert on infantry weapons which Ridgway was, I was sure the "dead horse" method of adjustment was not in the book.

As we jumped from our plane, as far as one could see were parachutes of many colors floating gently to earth in the warm afternoon sunshine. In contrast to the scattered drop in Normandy, there were no lonely officers roaming about looking for their units- the fields were alive with American soldiers assembling their equipment and hurrying to the rendezvous points of their companies.

Standing in the door ready to jump behind Cassidy, I saw the plane on our wing hit by ground fire and flames start licking back from the engine under the fuselage. Cassidy was so fascinated by the sight that I had to nudge him to remind him that the jump signal was on. Later I learned that the Air Force pilots of the burning plane never wavered in their steady course to the drop zone where the parachutists jumped to safety while the pilots crashed to their deaths.

Market-Garden was the biggest airborne operation of World War II, which is to say of all time. The D-day assault included 20,000 parachutists, some 1,500 transport planes, and about 500 gliders, and was protected by over 1,000 Allied fighters. In this D-day landing the 101st had over 400 C-47 transport aircraft and 70 gliders carrying nearly 7,000 officers and men. The remainder of the division arrived progressively by air and ship over the next six days. Our initial mission was to secure fifteen miles of highway extending from Eindhoven to Veghel and to seize and hold the bridges in the area for use of the spearhead units of the British Second Army advancing from the south. Although our objectives were scattered, I insisted on putting all the troops arriving the first day into a compact area between Zon and Veghel in order to have them within supporting distance of each other at the outset.

So I asked him why he had poled one of his fields and not the other of his small farm. His reply showed the folly of assuming rationality in human behavior. "The Germans told us farmers to pole all our fields by June 15. My cow never liked that west field so I poled it first." In this case, the whim of a French cow was the controlling factor, not the plans of the German General Staff. As I was about to go, the farmer asked me to wait a moment, went back into the house and returned with a clip of World War I rifle ammunition. He gave it to me with the injunction "Allez me tuer un Boche." ("Go kill me a German.")