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Ridgway a hero to Korean War GIs Military historian labels war commander finest soldier ever to call Pittsburgh home Sunday, May 28, 2000 By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Bureau
Correction/Clarification: (Published May 31, 2000) Gen. Omar Bradley was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Korean War. He was incorrectly identified as Army chief of staff in an article in Sunday’s editions about Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway.
Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway is a forgotten hero of a forgotten war.
He is also the finest soldier ever to call Pittsburgh home, according to Donald Goldstein, a renowned military historian and associate director of the Ridgway Center for International Strategic Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Ridgway was sort of the Stonewall Jackson of the 20th Century," Goldstein says. "Religious, eccentric, and the best tactical battlefield commander of his time."
Soldiers who served under Ridgway describe him as combining the best qualities of famous World War II commanders George S. Patton and Omar Bradley.
"He was as tough and aggressive as Patton, but without the bombast, and a soldier's soldier like Bradley, but with a harder edge," recalls Ed Stevens, president of the Korean War Veterans Association of Western Pennsylvania.
"In the early morning one could generally see him striding briskly up and down in front of his tent, or doing push-ups," Goldstein said. "He usually invited the MPs who guarded him to share his coffee and doughnuts."
"Anyone who knew General Ridgway loved, respected and admired him, not only because he was a great commanding officer, but also because he was a gentleman," Jack Foley of Penn Hills wrote in letter to the editor shortly after Ridgway's death in 1993. "When I wrote to him in 1987, he responded in three days."
"Ridgway was a deeply religous person," recalled George Mitchell of Upper St. Clair, a Ridgway friend for 20 years. "He often carried in his pocket a small military prayer book."
The prayer book may have been kept beneath the single hand grenade Ridgway kept taped to the right shoulder of his field jacket when he was in a combat zone. Less ostentatious than Patton's ivory-handled pistols, Ridgway's grenade was more practical. "I'd learned long ago that a man with a grenade in his hand can often blast his way out of a tight spot," Ridgway once told a reporter.
Matthew Bunker Ridgway, the son of an Army colonel, was born at Fort Monroe, Va., on March 3, 1895, and grew up on military posts across the country. He died at his home in Fox Chapel on July 26, 1993, at the age of 98.
Ridgway was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1917. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in WWII, making combat jumps in Sicily, Italy and France.
Ridgway's finest hour began on Dec. 26, 1950, when he assumed command of the Eighth Army in Korea, replacing Gen. Walton Walker, who had been killed in a jeep accident.
Things looked bleak for United Nations forces. China had entered the war a month before, pushing American and allied troops south of the 38th Parallel.
"By the end of December the poison of defeatism and despair deeply infected the U.N. command," according to Goldstein. "All traffic headed south."
Gen. Courtney Whitney, a senior aide to Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur, who was based in Tokyo, advised: "We should pull out, bring everybody and everything back to Japan, and make our stand from here."
Ridgway acted simultaneously to restore faltering morale and to blunt the Chinese offensive. He shuttled all over the front, sometimes on foot.
"To see General Ridgway up in the line was a real shot in the arm," said Sgt. Rembert Parker, a 24th Infantry Division soldier. "If he could stick it out, so could we."
Ridgway ordered his troops to stand fast, and maneuvered them to take maximum advantage of U.S. superiority in air power and artillery.
"There was no offensive in the military sense of the term, and the front faced north, south, east and west," Goldstein said. "GIs won battle citations as far back as 80 miles behind forward U.N. elements."
"I am not interested in real estate -- just killing the enemy," Ridgway said at the time. "The old business of fire and move -- you can't beat it."
After three months of hard fighting, Ridgway pushed the Communists north of the 38th Parallel, and recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul. The lines stabilized.
In April 1951, Ridgway replaced MacArthur as supreme commander of Allied forces in the Far East after President Truman sacked MacArthur for insubordination. He held that post until May 1952, when he was named supreme allied commander in Europe. This gave Ridgway the distinction of having succeeded in command both the legendary generals of WWII, MacArthur and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In August 1953, Ridgway was named chief of staff of the Army, a post in which he served until his retirement in June 1955. Ridgway then came to Pittsburgh to chair the board of trustees of the Mellon Institute for Industrial Research, from which he retired for good in 1960.
In 1986, Ridgway was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1991, Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented Ridgway with the Congressional Gold Medal and the Combat Infantryman's Badge, awarded to soldiers who have seen 90 days of combat, but customarily not to officers above the grade of lieutenant colonel. "This is the only decoration I have ever coveted," Ridgway said.
Ridgway's personal life was less successful than his military career. He was married three times. He had two daughters from his first marriage, and a son from his third. Matthew B. Ridgway Jr., newly commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army, was killed in a locomotive accident at age 22.
Few generals have been so admired by their contemporaries.
"His brilliant, driving leadership would turn the tide of battle like no other generals in our military history," said Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Korean War.
Military historians agree.
"It is not often in wartime that a single battlefield commander can make a decisive difference, but in Korea, Ridgway would be the difference," said Clay Blair, who wrote acclaimed histories of the Korean War and of the 82nd Airborne.
"No American military leader in the 20th Century has made a more valuable contribution to the safety and stability of the free world than General Ridgway's victory in Korea," said Temple University Prof. Russell Weigley, author of a highly praised history of the U.S. Army.
"It was a crushing blow to world communism," Goldstein said. "Had the Chinese and North Koreans driven the U.N. army out of Korea ... the prestige of the U.S. and the U.N. would have sunk to zero. A Communist victory in Korea could have been the signal for new attacks in Asia or perhaps even Europe."
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