RIDGWAY, MATTHEW B.

born March 3, 1895, Fort Monroe, Va., U.S. died July 26, 1993, Fox Chapel, near Pittsburgh, Pa. in full Matthew Bunker Ridgway U.S. Army officer who planned and executed the first major airborne assault in U.S. military history with the attack on Sicily (July 1943). A 1917 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Ridgway served in various staff positions before World War II. In 1942 he took command of the 82nd Infantry Division and oversaw its conversion to the 82nd Airborne Division, which he then commanded in the Sicily campaign. Ridgway parachuted with his troops into Normandy in June 1944 during the Normandy Invasion, and he subsequently led the 18th Airborne Corps in action in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Assuming command of the U.S. 8th Army in Korea during the Chinese communist offensive in late 1950, Ridgway rallied the United Nations forces and initiated a counteroffensive that drove the Chinese out of South Korea. Promoted in 1951 to the rank of general, he succeeded General Douglas MacArthur as Allied commander in the Far East, and continued the successful defense of South Korea. He subsequently oversaw the end of the U.S. occupation of Japan in 1952. In 1952 Ridgway succeeded General Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, and the following year he was appointed chief of staff of the U.S. Army. He retired in 1955 as a general. Ridgway's war memoirs, entitled Soldier, were published in 1956.