Family WboJcIy April 14, 1963
Last fall, Pentagon shops did a rush
business in two items : one, food for
dieting, and the other, food for thought.
The latter was a book, "The Uncertain Trum
pet," once a U.S. military dust collector; the
former, a liquid dietary supplement for portly
senior officers. The omens were unmistakable:
"Mr. Attack" was coming back. General Maxwell
Davenport Taylor, who likes his staff at "fighting
weight" and his cold-war defenses "flexible," had
quit the Pentagon as Army Chief of Staff in 1959
with some bitter words, but now he was return
ing and as head man, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
Why Taylor quit the U.S. military after 41
years of service, including thrilling cloak-and-dagger
assignments and parachuting into Nor
mandy on D-Day, makes quite a story. So does
his comeback, and the man himself.
It begins around 1910 on a farm near Keyes
ville, Mo., with a boy from Kansas City visiting
his grandfather, a Confederate veteran. "You're
too small for pitchin' hay" said Milton Daven
port, viewing the nine-year-old, "so I'd better
tell you some stories." He then began telling
about soldiering in the West during the Civil
War. The youngster was awed. When he returned
to school, he was asked to fill out an information
form, including his name and life's ambition.
"Maxwell D. Taylor," he wrote, "Major Gen
eral, United States Army."
That ambition never waned, though it en
countered some disapproval from the boy's
father, John Earle Taylor, an attorney. When the
U.S. entered World War I, 17-year-old Maxwell
decided it was time for action.
"I came home one evening," he recalled re
cently, "and announced: 'I've just registered for
the draft I lied about my age. I'm going to be a
soldier.' When my father came around to be
lieving it, he offered only one alternative.
" 'If you must go. into service,' he told me, 'at
least try for Annapolis or West Point.' That's
what I wanted in the first place, so I agreed."
Hew trie Navy Lost an Admiral
Annapolis tests came up shortly afterward.
Taylor had no chance to study, and he failed the
geography part of the exam. "I didn't know
where the Strait of Malacca was," he says. (It's
between Sumatra and Malaya, of course.) "Since
then, I have flown over it many times, and I
always look down and think: 'If I'd known you
were there, I might have been an admiral today.' "
Taylor took the West Point exams at the same
time, passed them readily, as they included no
geography, and was graduated fourth in the class
of 1922 and described as "most learned" in the
yearbook.
It was at West Point that he met Lydia Gard
ner Happer, daughter of an El Paso, Texan trans
planted to Virginia. Lydia Happer was soft
spoken, petite, and retiring, but at a West Point
dance she stood out glaringly an Annapolis
midshipman escorted her. Cadet Taylor resolved
4 riU WMkly. April 14. 1NJ
THE MEN WHO DECIDE OUR DESTINIES
Maxwell
Taylor
"Mr. Attack" Comes Back