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Signed book: Crusade in Europe. First edition, limited issue, numbered 1397/1426. NY: Doubleday, 1948. Hardcover, 7 x 10, 559 pages. Signed and inscribed on the colophon in fountain pen to noted senior United States Army officer Maxwell D. Taylor, “For Major General Max Taylor – Brilliant and gallant battle leader in World War II. With best wishes and lasting regard to him and Diddy from their devoted friend, Mamie and Ike Eisenhower,” who signed on behalf of his wife. Autographic condition: fine. Book condition: VG/None, with the special D-Day prefatory page excised from the volume, a small stain to the front board, and rubbing to the title on the spine.
A hugely desirable signed copy of Eisenhower’s wartime memoirs, which he has affectionately dedicated to a man for whom he held the utmost respect and admiration. Maxwell Taylor served with distinction throughout World War II. As commander of the 82nd Airborne Division Artillery, he took part in combat in Sicily and Italy, and in the late summer of 1943, during the planning for the Allied invasion of Italy, he was tasked with a secret mission to Rome to coordinate an 82nd airdrop with Italian forces. General Eisenhower, then the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, later said that ‘the risks he ran were greater than I asked any other agent or emissary to take during the war.’
In May 1944, Taylor received temporary promotion to major general and was assigned as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, nicknamed ‘The Screaming Eagles.’ Taylor took part in the division's parachute jump into Normandy on June 6, 1944, and consequently became the first Allied general officer to land in France on D-Day. Following the war, Maj. Gen. Taylor was hired as the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He left that post in 1949 and, in 1955, was made Chief of Staff of the Army by his good friend and comrade, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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