page_title: Maxwell D. Taylor
section_title: 101st Airborne Division
hierarchical_section_title: Maxwell D. Taylor / World War II / 101st Airborne Division
caption_attribution_description: English: Operation 'market Garden' (the Battle For Arnhem)- 17 - 25 September 1944 Personalities: Major-General Maxwell Taylor, Commander of the 101st (US) Airborne Division which mounted the assault on Eindhoven; pictured here receiving the DSO from General Sir Bernard Montgomery for gallantry in action at Carentan on 12 June 1944.
context_page_description: Maxwell Davenport Taylor was a senior United States Army officer and diplomat of the mid-20th century. He served with distinction in World War II, most notably as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed "The Screaming Eagles."
  After the war, he served as the fifth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having been appointed by President John F. Kennedy. He is the father of biographer and historian John Maxwell Taylor and of military historian and author Thomas Happer Taylor.
context_section_description: After the campaigns in the Mediterranean, Taylor was assigned to become the Commanding General (CG) of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed "The Screaming Eagles", which was then training in England in preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy, after the division's first commander, Major General William Lee, suffered a heart attack. Taylor received temporary promotion to major general in May 1944.
  Taylor took part in the division's parachute jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the first Allied general officer to land in France on D-Day. He subsequently commanded the 101st in the Battle of Normandy, including in the capture of Carentan on June 13, and the division continued to fight in the campaign as regular infantry. The 101st Airborne Division was pulled out of the line in late June, having been in almost continuous action for nearly a month, and in early July, he returned to England to rest and refit and absorb replacements, after having suffered over 4,600 casualties.
  Having been brought up to strength, Taylor led the 101st in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944. He was not present for the division's action during the Siege of Bastogne as part of the Battle of the Bulge since he was attending a staff conference in the United States. The Divisional Artillery commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, exercised command in his absence. Taylor called the defense of Bastogne the 101st Airborne Division's "finest hour" of the war and stated that his absence was one of his greatest disappointments of the war. After Bastogne, Taylor's 101st saw little further service in the war and was sent to the United States in late 1945, where it was deactivated in November.
caption: Taylor, pictured here on the left, receiving the Distinguished Service Order from General Sir Bernard Montgomery for gallantry in action at Carentan, France, June 12, 1944.
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