Airborne Super

Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, a 62-year-old flyer, had just taken command of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Now the Army countered with a new West Point superintendent: Major General Maxwell D. Taylor, 44, commander of the loist Airborne Division. Handsome Missouri-born General Taylor, who speaks fluent French, Spanish and Japanese, will be the youngest Military Acaeemy head since young (39) Douglas Mac Arthur took over the Point in 1919. Taylor graduated fourth in his class the last year MacArthur was there.

General Taylor was in the thick of World War II, as artillery officer of the 82nd Airborne Division in the African, Sicilian and Italian landings, as negotiator with Marshal Badoglio behind the German lines. He got the loist command in England, jumped with the division in Normandy, led it through 73 days of combat to Nijmegen, where he was slightly wounded. In December, 1944, he was at his home in Arlington, Va., when word came of the German breakthrough in the Ardennes. He flew to France, led his division through the Battle of the Bulge.

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