The Leavetaking

"I believe," said Montana's Mike Mansfield to the Senate shortly after noon one day last week, "that in this statesman-soldier we have a man of extraordinary ability and integrity who well understands the situation in that area, and who will represent us with great patriotism and great devotion. I believe this is a truly outstanding appointment for which this country can be proud."

Majority Leader Mansfield was speaking of General Maxwell Davenport Taylor, 62, whose nomination as U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam, succeeding Henry Cabot Lodge, had just been unanimously confirmed.

Next day, with a precision born of 40 years as a soldier, Taylor strode out of the Pentagon's river entrance exactly at 10 a.m., escorted by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Lined up before him was an honor guard of ceremonial units from each service and the U.S. Army band. Three 105-mm. howitzers roared a 19-gun salute over the muggy Potomac.

Max Taylor was retiring from the Army for the second time. The first time was in 1959. Taylor, then Army Chief of Staff and bitter over President Eisenhower's defense policies, quit three years before reaching the normal retirement age of 60. Two years later, John Kennedy brought him back to Washington as his military adviser, afterward named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As part of the full-honors retirement ceremony, Taylor reviewed the troops, stopping occasionally to talk with a soldier, inspected some howitzers and found them spotless. That done, he received from McNamara his third oakleaf cluster in lieu of a fourth Distinguished Service Medal. Said McNamara, borrowing the title of Taylor's The Uncertain Trumpet, his post-retirement analysis of U.S. defense ills: "Maxwell Taylor has never sounded an uncertain trumpet. He will always be one of the first to whom we turn with the hard tasks, the great challenges."

That afternoon President Johnson echoed that same sentiment at a Rose Garden swearing-in ceremony for the new ambassador. Said Johnson of Max Taylor's new job: "There are no illusions about the difficulty of the challenge. There are, likewise, no illusions about the responsibility or the importance of the assignment."

Taylor ordered his wife, mother, son and daughter-in-law "front and center" for pictures with the President, went back to the Pentagon to clean out his desk before flying to Saigon on July 5.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.