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Lot 210
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General Ridgway Congratulates Groves on Passage of Senate Bill
General Ridgway Congratulates Groves on Passage of Senate Bill
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Description:

Ridgway Matthew



General Ridgway Congratulates Groves on Passage of Senate Bill for Promotion

 

MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY, Typed Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., May 17, 1948, New York, NY. 1 p., 7" x 8". Includes copy of Groves’s Typed Letter in reply, May 28, 1948. Very good.

 

Excerpts

Ridgway to Groves:

“I was delighted today to read S-2223. I hope at long last the log jam is blasted and the beginning of recognition so richly earned flows to you in increasing measure.”

 

Groves to Ridgway:

“I hope that having gotten through the Senate, the Bill will get through the House without being caught in the usual legislative jam.”

 

“Despite the fact that I have officially severed all of my connections with the international problems of today, I find I am still unofficially connected with them in a number of ways. I should enjoy very much the opportunity of sitting down and talking with you on matters in general as we used to do some months ago.”

 

Historical Background

On February 25, 1948, Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper of Iowa introduced Senate Bill 2223 to promote Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves to the permanent grade of major general in the United States Army. Although he had a temporary wartime rank of lieutenant general, his permanent rank was that of brigadier general. The bill allowed him to retire at his wartime rank of lieutenant general, with the promotion backdated to July 16, 1945, the date of the Trinity nuclear test. On June 15, the House of Representatives passed the bill without amendment, and President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law on June 26, 1948.

 

 

Matthew B. Ridgway (1895-1993) was born in Virginia and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1917. He served on the Mexican border during World War I, then returned to West Point as an instructor in Spanish. During the 1920s, he served in China, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Ridgway graduated from the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935, and from the Army War College in Pennsylvania in 1937. At the beginning of World War II, he was in the War Plans Division and gained promotion to brigadier general in early 1942. In August 1942, Ridgway took command of the 82nd Infantry Division, which was converted to the 82nd Airborne Division. He led the division in the invasion of Italy and Normandy and also led troops in the invasion of Germany in 1945. In June 1945, Ridgway received promotion to lieutenant general. From 1946 to 1948, Ridgway served as the U.S. Army representative on the military staff committee of the United Nations. In 1950, he took command of the battered Eighth Army in Korea, slowed and halted the Chinese offensive, and led a counter-offensive in 1951. When President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of command, Ridgway took command of all United Nations forces in Korea. In 1952 and 1953, Ridgway replaced General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. From 1953 to his retirement in June 1955, Ridgway served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. In 1966, he published his memoirs, and a year later, a history of the Korean War.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962.

 



 

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