Gen. Ridgway: Mission Impossible

From: The Washington Post | Date: July 31, 1993 | Copyright information

The Post's excellent obituary of Gen. Matthew Ridgway {July 27} omitted mention of a daring operation that was ordered during World War II but never carried out.

British Gen. Harold Alexander, commander of 15th Army Group, had secretly negotiated an armistice with Marshal Pietro Badoglio's government, after Mussolini's ouster, which called for the 82nd Airborne Division, under Gen. Ridgway's command, to seize the Rome airfields with Italian aid the night before the invasion of Italy on Sept. 9, 1943.

It is one of the most dramatic stories of the entire war, though it was aborted at the very ...

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