Taylor was born in Keytesville, Missouri, on August 26, 1901. In 1922 he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He went on to study at the Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and at the Army War College in Washington, D.C.
Taylor assisted in the organization of the U.S. Army’s first airborne division, the 82nd, early in World War II and was its artillery commander during the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy. In March 1944, just prior to the Normandy Invasion, he took command of the 101st Airborne Division. He joined its parachute assault before dawn on D-Day (June 6, 1944) and led the division in the disastrous Arnhem operation in the Netherlands (September 1944). Taylor’s division gained wide fame for its defense of Bastogne (Belgium) during the Battle of the Bulge, late in 1944.
After the war, from 1945 to 1949, Taylor was superintendent of West Point. As commanding general of the 8th Army in 1953, Taylor directed United Nations (UN) forces in Korea during the closing phases of the Korean War. He then served as army chief of staff (1955–59). In 1962 he was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President John F. Kennedy, to whom he was a trusted adviser. In 1964 Taylor became U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, which at that time was being given increasing military support by the United States. He resigned that post in 1965 but still served as a special consultant to President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. Taylor died in Washington, D.C., on April 19, 1987.