Maxwell D. Taylor Quotes (1901-1987)

“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.”

“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.”

“I graduated on June 13, number 4 in a class of 102. General MacArthur gave me my diploma and his "Congratulations, Mr. Taylor" was the last time I heard his voice until, as the new Chief of Staff of the Army, I called on him in the Waldorf Towers in 1956. Although he had done much for the Corps of Cadets during his superintendency, oddly enough he had never made an effort to impress his personality on the cadets through direct communication with them. I do not ever recall his having made a speech to us and only a few cadets were ever asked to his house. Certainly no graduate has left greater evidence of deep affection for West Point and the Corps than MacArthur, but the cadets saw little of this during his superintendency.”

“On Christmas Day, the Germans attacked again, but fortunately for E Company on the other side of Bastogne. The following day, Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams of the 37th Tank Battalion, broke through the German lines. The 101st was no longer surrounded; it now had ground communications with the American supply dumps. Soon trucks were bringing in adequate supplies of food, medicine, and ammunition. The wounded were evacuated to the rear. General Taylor returned. He inspected the front lines, according to Winters, "very briskly. His instructions before leaving us were, 'Watch those woods in front of you!' What the hell did he think we had been doing while he was in Washington?" (Winters has a thing about Taylor. In one interview he remarked, "And now you have General Taylor coming back from his Christmas vacation in Washington..." I interrupted to say, "That's not quite fair." "Isn't it?" "Well, he was ordered back to testify..." Winters cut me off: "I don't want to be fair.")”

“Taylor exhibited his imperial drive toward the client in the South in an even more obvious way than he suggested toward the enemy in the North. In an extraordinary example of imperial language, Taylor, reprimanding the Young Turks in Saigon- Ky, Thieu, Thi, and Cang- for attempting a coup in December 1964, told them: "Do all of you understand English? (Vietnamese officials indicating they did, although the understanding of General Thi was known to be weak.) I told all of you clearly at General Westmoreland's dinner, we Americans are tired of coups. Apparently, I wasted my words. Maybe this is because something is wrong with my French because you evidently did not understand. I made it clear that all military plans which I know you would like to carry out are dependent on government stability. Now you have made a real mess. We cannot carry you forever if you do things like this. Who speaks for the group? Do you have a spokesman?"”

“After Christmas, General Taylor came back and took over as commander, but nobody wanted to see Taylor. Here, the guy's the commander of the 101st Airborne, and he took time off to go and have Christmas dinner in Virginia. When we found out he was in Virginia, we couldn't believe our general had left us in a spot like that, and we didn't want to hear no excuses. The guys resented it. Oh, they did, too! Nobody liked Taylor after that.”

“From late May to late June, when home on R and R, Taylor had learned that the 101st would be shifted to the war in the Pacific. On rejoining the division, he toured individual units to muster support for the move. He ended one speech with: "We've licked the best that Hitler had in France and Holland and Germany. Now where do we want to go?" It inspired the only mass incident of insubordination, although jocular, faced by Maxwell Taylor as commander. His beloved Screaming Eagles screamed, "Home!"- no doubt punctuated by a few catcalls and Bronx cheers.”

“On June 23, 1964, President Johnson announced the appointment of Gen. Maxwell Taylor as U.S. ambassador to Viet Nam. General Taylor was a former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and military advisor to President Kennedy. General Taylor's appointment underscored the importance of the U.S. government attached to the military situation in South Viet Nam. This also meant that the U.S. would apply a new strategy in the fight against the Viet Cong. General Taylor, in fact, wrote a book, The Uncertain Trumpet, in which he developed what was called the strategy of "Graduated Response." This strategy would allow the U.S. to respond in kind to Communist aggression without resorting to nuclear warfare. The flexibility of this strategy would provide the U.S. with the option at any time to "proceed or not, to escalate or not, and to quicken the pace or not." General Taylor also saw Viet Nam as a welcome opportunity to test his concept of limited war. This concept was adopted by President Kennedy. Based on this concept, President Kennedy created the famous Special Forces for the specific purpose of helping Third World countries fight against what was called brush fire or unconventional warfare against Communist insurgencies.”

“In the late 1950s, when Taylor was the Army chief under the Eisenhower administration, I served in his office as the deputy secretary of the General Staff and made several official trips overseas with him. (The secretary of the General Staff at the time, then Major General William Westmoreland, coordinated the activities of the Army staff and in effect was chief of staff to the Army Chief.) General Taylor was an impressive figure, known as an intellectual, a soldier statesman, and a talented linguist. But it was an unhappy period for Taylor, who did not see eye-to-eye with the commander-in-chief or the other military chiefs as to the proper role of the Army. After he left the Army, Taylor laid out his deep misgivings about the national military establishment in a highly critical book, The Uncertain Trumpet, which caught the attention of many prominent people, including John F. Kennedy. Particularly intense and somewhat aloof during this period, Taylor appeared to those who did not know him as cold, humorless, and unbending. But he had another side- he could be friendly, a genial host, and a witty conversationalist with a well developed sense of humor. For many people, however, these more endearing qualities were not revealed until after he had retired from public life at the end of Johnson's presidency.”

“A great transformation came over West Point. Many of the staff and faculty who had been there previously were non-combat experienced and had been called up from civilian life. Then in came the new superintendent, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who brought to the Department of Tactics a collection of the finest officers that I have ever known before, or since.”

“As so often happens in history, a major war affords opportunities for leadership and prominence that infrequently occur on a comparable scale in peacetime. If one thinks of Maxwell D. Taylor only as a soldier, he certainly ranks- at least in my view- among the top dozen American military leaders in World War II. There were seven "five star" officers: Marshall, Eisenhower, King, MacArthur, Arnold, Bradley, and Nimitz. These men, each of whom was ten years older or more than Taylor, are remembered as the "great captains" who led our country to victory. Of the seven, three also earned larger places in our history. In the long reach, Marshall may be remembered even more for the reconstruction plan that bears his name than as the senior Army officer of World War II. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in the war against Germany, served as President in what may be viewed as the "golden era" of the United States, when its leadership of the free world was not questioned. And MacArthur is remembered in part for his postwar role as the father of the Japanese constitution. Maxwell Taylor similarly occupies a larger place in our history. When his full career is viewed, it is clear that his service to our country, in war and peace, was the most diverse of World War II's famous generals.”

“Sword and Plowshares, written three years before Saigon fell, was almost prescient in anticipating Hanoi's ability to exploit political weakness in Washington to achieve its objective. In it, Taylor characterized his country as being in a period of "declining power", its armed forces of little use in the absence of the political will to employ them when needed. He continued to downplay the threat of a nuclear war- the one form of aggression to which the United States was still prepared to respond. But he foresaw a period of diminished U.S. credibility, in which its allies, uncertain of Washington's ability to deliver on its commitments, would be increasingly vulnerable to Communist pressure.”

“On December 22 the commander of German forces that had encircled Bastogne called upon Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe to surrender the 101st Airborne Division "to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation." McAuliffe, a superb combat commander from the old army, was temporarily in command of the Screaming Eagles while General Taylor was in Washington, D.C., on official business. McAuliffe issued a monosyllabic reply: "Nuts!" to the enemy's demand for unconditional and immediate surrender. For those of us along the main line of resistance, we took quiet pride in McAuliffe's tough stance. I, for one, was happy that McAuliffe and not Taylor commanded the defense of Bastogne. While Taylor was always immaculately attired and had a regular retinue of aides and reporters in his wake, McAuliffe was a soldier's soldier who understood ground combat at the grunt level. As such, McAuliffe commanded my utmost respect.”