Patton's Career A Brilliant One
OBITUARY
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gen. George Smith Patton Jr. was one of the most brilliant soldiers in
American history. Audacious, unorthodox and inspiring,
he led his troops to great victories in North Africa, Sicily and on the
Western Front. Nazi generals admitted that of all American field
commanders he was the one they most feared. To Americans he was a worthy
successor of such hardbitten cavalrymen as Philip Sheridan,
J. E. B. Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
His great soldierly qualities were matched by one of the most colorful
personalities of his period. About him countless legends
clustered--some true, some untrue, but all testifying to the firm hold
he had upon the imaginations of his men. He went into action
with two pearl- handled revolvers in holsters on his hips. He was the master
of an unprintable brand of eloquence, yet at times he
coined phrases that will live in the American Army's traditions.
"We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack
again," he told his troops before the initial landings in
North Africa, thereby summarizing the military creed that won victory after
victory along the long road that led from Casablanca to the heart
of Germany.
At El Guettar in March of 1943 he won the first major American victory
over Nazi arms. In July of that year he leaped from a landing barge
and waded ashore to the beachhead at Gela, Sicily, thus beginning a campaign
that, as he himself observed, out-blitzed the inventors of
Blitzkreig. In just thirty-eight days the American Seventh Army, under
his leadership, and the British Eighth Army, under Gen. Sir
Bernard Montgomery, conquered all of Sicily.
But it was as the leader of his beloved Third Army on the Western Front
that General Patton staked out his strongest claims to
military greatness. In ten months his armor and infantry roared through
six countries--France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany,
Czechoslovakia and Austria. It crossed the Seine, the Loire, the Moselle,
the Saar, the Rhine, the Danube and a score of lesser rivers;
captured more than 750,000 Nazis, and killed or disabled 500,000 others.
There were times, in those great days when the tank spearheads of the Third
were racing across France with almost unbelievable speed
and again when they were cutting the dying Nazi armies to pieces in the
final spring of the war, that not even Supreme Headquarters itself
knew where his vanguards were. Driven by his iron will, his advanced units
had to be supplied with gasoline and maps dropped by air.
About such a leader it was inevitable that heroic myths grew up. One eager
war correspondent wrote that he jumped onto the
Normandy beachhead waving a $1,000 bill and offering to bet it that he
would beat Marshal Montgomery to Berlin. When the tale
caught up with him, he pithily remarked that he had never seen a bill of
that denomination.
One of his men brought back the story that he swam the icy, 150-foot Sauer
River in January, 1945, under machine gun and artillery fire, to
inspire the men of the Third to follow him. That, too, General Patton
denied, but the extent to which the story was believed was
eloquent testimony to General Patton's habit of being where the fighting
was fiercest.
Called "Old Blood and Guts"
His best-known nickname--"Old Blood and Guts"--was one that he detested,
but his men loved. "His guts and my blood," his wounded
veterans used to say when they were flown back here for hospitalization.
His explosive wrath and lurid vocabulary became legendary
wherever American soldiers fought.
General Patton had a softer side to his nature, too. He composed two volumes
of poetry, which he stipulated were not to be published
until after his death. He was an intensely religious man, who liked to
sing in church and who knew the Episcopal Order of Morning
Prayer by heart.
He seemed fated to be the center of controversy. Again and again, when
his fame and popularity were at their height, some rash
statement or ill-considered deed precipitated a storm about his head. The
most celebrated of these incidents, of course, was the slapping of
a soldier whom he took to be a malingerer but who was actually suffering
from battle fatigue in a hospital during the Sicilian campaign.
This episode resulted in widespread demands for his removal from the command
of American soldiers, in Congress and in the press, and
caused the Senate to delay his confirmation to the permanent rank of major
general for almost a year. General Eisenhower sharply rebuked
him, but insisted that his military qualifications, loyalty and tenacity
made him invaluable in the field.
The turmoil over this incident had hardly died away when he caused another
stir by a speech at the opening of a club for American soldiers
in London. The original version of his remarks there quoted him as saying
that the British and American peoples were destined to rule the
world, but after this had evoked an outburst of criticism Army press relations
officers insisted that he had actually said, "we British, American
and, of course, the Russian people" were destined to rule.
He raised another brief teapot tempest when he came home in June, 1945,
and told a Sunday school class that its members would be
the officers and nurses of the next war. But this was nothing compared
to the furore he caused by an interview he granted American
correspondents after his return to Germany. Discussing conditions in Bavaria,
where the military government was under his command,
he asserted that too much fuss was being made over denazification and compared
the Nazi party to the losers in an election between
Democrats and Republicans back home.
General Eisenhower promptly called him on the carpet for these remarks.
General Patton promised that he would be loyal to General
Eisenhower's orders and to the Potsdam agreements prescribing the complete
and ruthless elimination of all elements of Nazism
from German life, but ten days later, on Oct. 2, 1945, he was removed from
the command of his beloved Third Army.
Although reports were current that he might retire, General Patton took
his transfer in soldierly silence. He assumed command of the
American Fifteenth Army, a paper organization devoted to a study of the
tactical lessons to be learned from the war just completed, and told
friends that this was in line with what had been his favorite mental occupation
since he was 7 years old: the study of war.
Although he customarily signed himself George Smith Patton Jr., General
Patton was actually the third in line of his family to bear that name.
The original George Smith Patton, his grandfather, was a graduate of Virginia
Military Institute, and became a colonel in the
Confederate Army. He was killed in action at the battle of Cedar Creek.
Expert Horseman From Childhood
General Patton's father went through V.M.I., then studied law, and moved
west. He married a daughter of Benjamin Wilson, who was the
first Mayor of Los Angeles, and for whom Mount Wilson was named. The future
general was born on the family ranch at San Gabriel,
Calif., on Nov. 11, 1885, and from childhood was an expert horseman.
At the age of 18 he came east and entered V.M.I., but after a year there
he entered West Point with the class of 1909. There is a legend
at the academy that he boasted at his entrance that he would be cadet captain,
the highest post in the cadet corps, and that he would also
be the first member of his class to become a general. Actually, he was
cadet adjutant, the second highest post, and was the second
member of the class to become a general.
He was a poor student--throughout his life he remained remarkably deficient
in spelling--but an outstanding athlete at the Point. He excelled
as a sprinter on the track team, and was also an expert fencer, swimmer,
rider and shot. He continued his interest in sports and athletics
after his graduation as a second lieutenant of cavalry.
In 1912 he represented the United States at the Olympic Games in Stockholm,
Sweden, competing in the modern pentathlon, a contest
which up to that time had been almost monopolized by Swedish Army officers.
He finished fifth among more than thirty contestant,
immediately after four Swedes. Of the five events, swimming, riding, fencing,
running and shooting, he made his poorest showing in the
pistol marksmanship competition, but he subsequently practiced until he
overcame this weakness.
Early in his Army career he established himself as a hell-for-leather cavalry
man. His first post was at Fort Sheridan, Ill., but in December,
1911, he was transferred to Fort Myer, Va., where he was detailed to design
a new cavalry saber. In 1913 he went to France to study
French saber methods, and on his return was made Master of the Sword at
the Mounted Service School, Fort Riley, Kan.
He accompanied Gen. John J. Pershing as his aide on the punitive expedition
into Mexico after the bandit, Pancho Villa, in 1916, and the
next year he went to France with the general as a member of his staff.
He attended the French Tank School and then saw action at the battle
of Cambrai, where the British first used tanks on a large scale.
The new weapon was one to gladden the heart of a cavalryman, and from that
time on his service was closely connected with tanks. He
was assigned to organize and direct the American Tank Center at Langres.
For his service in that capacity he was subsequently
awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. But he was not satisfied with
a training command, and sought action.
He took command of the 304th Brigade of the Tank Corps and distinguished
himself by his leadership of it in the St. Mihiel offensive in
September, 1918. Later that autumn, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive,
he was severely wounded in the left leg while charging a pillbox,
after 40 percent of the tanks in his command had been disabled.
His life was saved by Pvt. Joseph T. Angelo of Camden, N.J., who dragged him to safety in a shell hole.
After the first World War he served with tank units and then with the cavalry
at various posts in the United States. He was graduated from
the Cavalry School, the Command and General Staff School and the Army War
College. While on duty in the office of the
Chief of Cavalry in Washington, he was detailed as aide to the Prince of
Wales on one of his visits to this country. He told the Prince
that a game called "craps" was very popular in this country, and taught
him to play it.
A Colonel in 1940
When this country began to rearm in the summer of 1940 Patton was a colonel.
He was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., for duty as
commander of a brigade of the Second Armored Division, then being formed.
In April, 1941, he became its commanding officer and
made the division famous as a tough and rough-and-ready outfit. Promoted
to corps commander, he organized the Desert Training
Center in California.
When the North African invasion was planned, General Patton was placed
in command of the American forces scheduled to land on the
Atlantic coast of Morocco. One of the closest of the many narrow escapes
for which he was noted came when a landing boat into which he
was about to step was sunk. But he got ashore and after a brief but fierce
fight took his objectives.
During the Tunisian campaign that followed, General Patton became celebrated
for the strictness of his discipline. He punished men
who failed to wear their helmets, even in back areas.
After the American reverse at Kasserine Pass in February, General Patton
took command of the Second United States Corps, which forced
the Nazis back into a narrow corridor between the mountains and the sea,
up which the British Eighth Army under General Montgomery
pursued them. He won the battle of El Guettar in march, but not long thereafter
disappeared from the public eye. On April 16 Gen. Omar
Bradley succeeded him in command of the Second Corps.
The reason for the shift was not made known at the time and there were
rumors that General Patton had fallen into disfavor. Actually,
General Eisenhower had withdrawn him from action in order to prepare the
American Seventh Army for the invasion of Sicily in July.
The invasion was brilliantly successful, and General Patton's troops cut
clear across the island to Palermo; then fought their way along
the north coast to Messina.
This magnificent feat of arms was marred, however, by the slapping episode,
which did not become generally known to the public until
the following November. General Patton, who drove himself as hard as he
drove his men, visited a hospital not far from the front lines at a
time when he had been under prolonged strain and was in an overwrought
condition.
There he encountered two men who showed no signs of visible wounds, but
who had been diagnosed by medical authorities as suffering
from battle neurosis. Losing his temper, General Patton called them "yellow
bellies" and other unprintable epithets, and struck one of
them so that his helmet liner flew off and rolled on the ground.
General Eisenhower made an investigation and sharply castigated General
Patton, although he did not formally reprimand him. General Patton
made personal apologies to all those present at the time of the episode,
and later sent public apologies to each division of the Seventh Army.
General Patton did not appear during the campaign on the Italian mainland
that followed, and some observers thought he had been
relegated to a secondary role because of the storm of criticism that his
action had caused in this country. Actually, however, General
Eisenhower had picked him for a key role in the invasion of Western Europe,
and he was then in England preparing for it.
Whereabouts a Mystery
For almost two months after D-Day, June 6, 1944, General Patton's whereabouts
remained a mystery. The fact that he was in England, at
the head of an army, was well known, and the inability of the Nazi intelligence
to locate him forced their High Command to retain the
German Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais area, far from the Normandy
beachhead, lest he head a landing there.
Instead, the Third Army landed on the beachhead in great secrecy, and deployed
behind the First Army. When the First Army
broke the German lines between St. Lo and the sea on July 25, the Third
Army poured through the breach to exploit it. The
opportunity was ideal for a dashing, driving leader of General Patton's
talents. His spearheads roared clear across the base of the
Breton Peninsula, then turned east toward Parish.
While the Nineteenth Tactical Air Command of the Ninth Air Force protected
the right flank along the Loire Valley, General Patton's armor
and motorized infantry forced the line of the Seine and smashed clear across
France after the badly disorganized Nazis. The pursuit went
all the way to the Moselle, with planes dropping supplies to the leading
units, before lack of gasoline finally halted the chase and
gave the Nazis a chance to make a stand.
In the bitter autumn that followed, General Patton's men made slow but
steady headway against the entrenched Nazis. For almost two
months--from Oct. 3 to Nov. 22--they carried on a sanguinary attack against
Metz, which in 1,500 years of history had never before been
taken by assault. They had to fight their way in, fort by fort and street
by street, but they eventually took the city.
Early in December the Third Army began an attack on the Saar Basin, but
the unexpected success of von Rundstedt's offensive against
the First Army's lines to the north forced a swift change. General Patton
was ordered to go to the rescue of the crumbling American
positions on the south side of the "bulge." He broke off his attack and
redeployed his forces with astonishing speed.
Within three days the Third Army had begun to pound at the southern flank
of the Nazi wedge. Some of its divisions had traveled 150 miles in
open trucks in freezing weather, but they were still full of fight. By
Dec. 28 they had fought their way to the relief of Bastogne, and the
worst of the danger was over. For another month they hammered away at the
bulge, until it was no more.
In February the Third Army broke through the Siegfried Line between Pruem
and Echternach and then crossed the Moselle into the triangle
bounded by that river, the Rhine and the Saar. Working in perfect cooperation
with Lieut. Gen. Alexander M. Patch's American Seventh
Army, the Third cut to pieces the Nazi forces in the Saar-Palatinate region.
On March 17 it seized Coblenz.
The Third seemed headed for Leipzig when it was diverted to the south toward
the so-called Alpine redoubt, where, it had been rumored,
the Nazis planned their last stand. On April 18 the Third crossed the border
of Czechoslovakia and nine days later it passed
the Austrian frontier. Its advance units were in the vicinity of Linz when
the cease-firing order came.
On May 26, 1910, General Patton married Miss Beatrice Ayer of Boston. They had two daughters and a son.
In a characteristically brilliant operation, General Patton led the Third
Army across the Rhine north of Ludwigshafen on March 22.
Attacking without air or artillery preparation at10:30 P. M., the Third
took the Nazis completely by surprise and landed on the east
bank without the loss of a single man.