Craft Masonry in Orange and Rockland Counties, New York

In 1930, he became an advisor to the Governor-General of the Philippines. He graduated from the Command and General Staff
School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1935 and from the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania in 1937. During the
1930s he served as Assistant Chief of Staff of VI Corps, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Second United States Army, and Assistant
Chief of Staff of the Fourth United States Army. General George Marshall assigned Ridgway to the War Plans Division shortly after
the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939. He served in the War Plans Division until January 1942, and was
promoted to brigadier general that month.
World War II
In August 1942, Ridgway was promoted to major general and was given command of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division upon Omar N.
Bradley's assignment to the 28th Infantry Division. The 82nd, having already established a combat record in World War I, had earlier
been chosen to become one of the army's five new airborne divisions. The conversion of an entire infantry division to airborne status
was an unprecedented step for the U.S. Army, and required much training, testing, and experimentation.
Unlike his men, Ridgway did not first go through airborne jump school before joining the division. Ridgway successfully converted
the 82nd into a combat-ready airborne division; he remained in command and eventually earned his Paratrooper wings.
Ridgway helped plan the airborne invasion of Sicily in July 1943, and commanded the 82nd in combat there. During the planning for
the invasion of the Italian mainland, the 82nd was tasked with taking Rome by coup de main in Operation Giant II. Ridgway strongly
objected to this unrealistic plan, which would have dropped the 82nd on the outskirts of Rome in the midst of two German heavy
divisions. The operation was cancelled only hours before launch. In 1944, Ridgway helped plan the airborne operations of Operation
Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe. In the Normandy operations, he jumped with his troops, who fought for 33 days in advancing
to Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte near Cherbourg (St Sauveur was liberated on June 14, 1944).
In September 1944, Ridgway was given the command of the XVIII Airborne Corps who helped push back German troops during the
Battle of the Bulge. In March 1945, he led his troops into Germany during Operation Varsity, and was wounded in the shoulder by
German grenade fragments on March 24, 1945. In June 1945 he was promoted to lieutenant general. At war's end, Ridgway was on
a plane headed for a new assignment in the Pacific theater, under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, with whom he had
served while a captain at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Post World War II
Ridgway was a commander at Luzon for some time in 1945 before being given command of the US forces in the Mediterranean
Theater, with the title Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean. From 1946 to 1948, he served as the U.S. Army
representative on the military staff committee of the United Nations. He was placed in charge of the Caribbean Command in 1948,
controlling U.S. forces in the Caribbean, and in 1949 was assigned to the position of Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration under
then Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins.
In December 1947 Ridgway married Mary Princess "Penny" Anthony Long, his third wife. They remained married until his
death 46 years later. In April 1949, their only child, Matthew Bunker Ridgway, Jr., was born.
Korean War
Ridgway's most important command assignment occurred in 1950, upon the death of Lieutenant General Walton Walker. He took
over the 8th US Army, which had been deployed in South Korea upon the invasion by North Korea in June of that year. At the time,
Ridgway was serving on the Army staff in the Pentagon as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Administration.
When Ridgway took command, the Army was still in a tactical retreat, after a strong foray into North Korea had been met with an
unexpected and overwhelming Communist Chinese advance. Ridgway was successful in turning around the morale of the Eighth
Army.
Ridgway was not fazed by the Olympian demeanor of General Douglas MacArthur, then overall commander of UN forces in Korea.
MacArthur gave Ridgway a latitude in operations he had not given his predecessor. After Ridgway landed in Tokyo on Christmas
Day 1950 to discuss the operational situation with MacArthur, the latter assured his new commander that the actions of Eighth Army
were his to conduct as he saw fit. Ridgway was encouraged to retire to successive defensive positions, as was currently under way,
and hold Seoul as long as he could, but not if doing so meant that Eighth Army would be isolated in an enclave around the capital
city. Ridgway asked specifically that if he found the combat situation "to my liking" whether MacArthur would have any objection to
"my attacking". MacArthur answered, "Eighth Army is yours, Matt. Do what you think best.
Upon taking control of the battered Eighth Army, one of Ridgway's first acts was to restore soldiers' confidence in themselves. To
accomplish this, he reorganized the command structure. During one of his first briefings in Korea at I Corps, Ridgway sat through an
extensive discussion of various defensive plans and contingencies. At the end, he asked the staff about the status of their attack
plans; the corps G–3 (operations officer) responded that he had no such plans. Within days, I Corps had a new G-3. He also
replaced officers who did not send out patrols to fix enemy locations, and removed "enemy positions" from commanders' planning
maps if local units had not been in recent contact to verify that the enemy was still there. Ridgway established a plan to rotate out
those division commanders who had been in action for six months and replace them with fresh leaders. He sent out guidance to
commanders at all levels that they were to spend more time at the front lines and less in their command posts in the rear. These
steps had an immediate impact on morale.
With the entry of China, the complexion of the Korean War had changed. Political leaders, in an attempt to prevent expansion of the
war, did not allow UN forces to bomb the supply bases in China, nor the bridges across the Yalu River on the border between China
and North Korea. The American Army moved from an aggressive stance to fighting protective, delaying actions. Ridgway's second
big tactical change was to make copious use of artillery.
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