PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY (19 page)

Patton explained to his officers that, in battle, it is “always easier for the senior to go up [to the front] than for the junior to come back [to headquarters].” Officers were to visit the wounded frequently and award decorations promptly. Although such instructions required that officers risk their lives and frequently exert themselves, Patton also emphasized the importance of adequate rest. Tired officers were not only inefficient, they tended to judge situations pessimistically and, therefore, failed to act aggressively. Fatigue makes “cowards of us all.” There are crises in which “everyone must work all the time, but these emergencies are not frequent.” In counseling vigorous effort, Patton did not want officers to exert themselves needlessly. That was another reason for putting command posts as far forward as possible. Such a location would reduce time wasted in driving to and from the front.
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As for maps, Patton wrote, they were certainly important, but mainly for the sake of telling a commander where his personal presence was required. Plans should be “simple and flexible,” and they should be “made by the people who are going to execute them.” Plans should be based on reconnaissance, providing fresh information—“like eggs: the fresher the better.” As with plans, so with orders. They should be simple and short. They should tell “what to do, not how.” Yet orders should be clear and complete and never keep anyone in the dark. “Warning orders”—advisories in advance of a move or action—were to be issued in good time and to everyone who needed them, including the support branches, such as the medical department, the quartermaster, and so on, as well as the combat branches. If the support units “do not function, you do not fight.” Responsibility for supply, Patton admonished, rests equally “on the giver and the taker.”
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The letter of instruction, which is still read by army officers today, closed with one final admonition: “Courage. DO NOT TAKE COUNSEL OF YOUR FEARS.”
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Printed aphorisms encapsulated something of the Patton spirit and style, but nothing could compare with the personal presence of this commander. As one young soldier wrote to his family after attending an address by Patton, “we stood transfixed upon his appearance. . . . Not one square inch of flesh [was] not covered with goose pimples. It was one of the greatest thrills I shall ever know. . . . That towering figure impeccably attired froze you in place and electrified the air.”
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“I can assure you,” Patton addressed his troops on this occasion, “that the Third United States Army will be the greatest army in American history. . . . We are going to kill German bastards—I would prefer to skin them alive—but, gentlemen, I fear some of our people at home would accuse me of being too rough.” The young soldier wrote that, at this point, the general “slyly smiled. Everyone chuckled enjoyably. He talked on to us for half an hour, literally hypnotizing us with his incomparable, if profane eloquence. When he had finished, you felt as if you had been given a supercharge from some divine source. Here was the man for whom you would go to hell and back.”
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Yet as the weeks rolled on, Third Army was not going to hell or anywhere else. Although Patton was commanding general of Third Army, he had virtually no role in the ongoing planning or overall direction of Operation Overlord, the upcoming Normandy invasion. Once again he was assigned duty as a decoy, part of an ambitious and comprehensive program of disinformation, which put Patton in charge of a fictitious army group preparing to invade France not by way of Normandy but at Pas de Calais. The most obvious place for an invasion, because it lay directly across Dover on the other side of the English Channel at its narrowest point, Pas de Calais was a gateway that opened onto the most direct route to Germany. Knowing that the German high command would assume that an invasion would arrive there, well up the coast from Normandy, the Allies built a vast decoy force at Dover, up the English coast from where the actual invasion force was being assembled. The decoys included plywood aircraft, inflatable rubber tanks, empty tents, and the shells of buildings, much of it ingeniously designed and fabricated by British and American movie studios, and all accompanied by the appearance of human activity, bogus radio traffic, and phony news stories. Using Patton, the general the Germans were known to most fear and respect, was perhaps the boldest stroke of the grand deception. As German high command saw it, where Patton was, that is where the invasion would come from.

As if decoy work were not disagreeable enough to a man of Patton’s temperament, he was also obliged to keep a low profile, so that the press would not pick up too many stories placing him anywhere other than in and about Dover. Toward the end of April, the ladies of Knutsford opened a Welcome Club for American G.I.’s, a place for doughnuts, coffee, and conversation, all in the interest of cementing fellow feeling among allies. Invited to participate in the opening ceremonies, Patton at first declined. It was clear that the Allied sleight-of-hand was working—the entire Fifteenth German Army had been moved to Pas de Calais—and Patton did not want to risk compromising the deception by revealing himself to be at Knutsford instead of Dover. However, sincerely wishing to maintain good relations with the Third Army’s hosts, he finally decided to appear at the ceremony, but not speak. He even purposely arrived 15 minutes late, hoping thereby to avoid most of the proceedings. But the polite ladies of Knutsford waited for him, and, when he arrived, he was welcomed, introduced, and asked to speak. He could not refuse without giving offense, so he took the floor. No one could have predicted what happened next.

Because Patton’s brief remarks were unscripted, his own recollection of the speech is the only substantial record that survives. He was mildly witty: “until today, my only experience in welcoming has been to welcome Germans and Italians to the ‘Infernal Regions.’” Then he went on to say that he felt “such clubs as this are a very real value, because I believe with Mr. Bernard Shaw, I think it was he, that the British and Americans are two people separated by a common language, and since it is the evident destiny of the British and Americans, and, of course, the Russians, to rule the world, the better we know each other, the better job we will do.”
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“Innocuous” best describes the occasion and the speech. Patton, therefore, was stunned when, on April 26, army public relations officers were in an uproar. Despite Patton’s request for a publicity blackout of the Knutsford event, several newspapers had selectively cited his remarks— quite out of context—some even reporting that he had said that the British and Americans would rule the postwar world, omitting entirely any mention of the Russians. No one much cared about this in Britain— Prime Minister Churchill dismissed it as a tempest in a teacup—but American newspapers printed headlines trumpeting Patton’s insult to our gallant Russian allies. Even newspapers that did not object to insulting the Russians complained that the very idea of “ruling the world” was better suited to Hitler and Tojo than to the leader of an army of a democracy. Soon senators and congressmen were once again calling for the general’s dismissal.

Patton was both devastated and bewildered. He understood why the slapping incidents had created a scandal, but this? The sin, he protested, was in the reporting, not his remarks.

Eisenhower, who had staunchly defended Patton after the slapping incidents, now wrote to General Marshall that he was “seriously contemplating the most drastic action,” sending Patton home. Marshall threw the matter back to Eisenhower, telling him that if he believed Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges (commander of First Army) could lead Third Army as effectively as Patton, he should not hesitate to sacrifice Patton. If, however, he was persuaded that Patton was the best commander for Third Army, Marshall advised bearing “between us . . . the burden of the present unfortunate reaction.”
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Eisenhower summoned Patton to his headquarters on May 1. As Patton recalled it, Ike began the conversation with “George, you have gotten yourself into a very serious fix.” Patton interrupted: “I want to say that your job is more important than mine, so if in trying to save me you are hurting yourself, throw me out.” Eisenhower did not respond reassuringly to this gallantry. He bluntly told Patton that he had indeed become a liability and that there was a very serious question about his continuing in command. Patton wrote in his diary that he replied by expressing his willingness to be reduced in rank to colonel, provided that he be allowed to command one of the assault regiments: “this was not a favor but a right.” In his recollection of the interview, Eisenhower did not mention this but recalled only that in a gesture of almost little-boy contriteness, [Patton] put his head on my shoulder. . . . This caused his helmet to fall off—a gleaming helmet I sometimes thought he wore in bed.

As it rolled across the room I had the rather odd feeling that I was in the middle of a ridiculous situation . . . his helmet bounced across the floor into a corner. I prayed that no one would come in and see the scene. . . . Without apology and without embarrassment, he walked over, picked up his helmet, adjusted it, and said:

“Sir, could I now go back to my headquarters?”
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Two days after this interview, Eisenhower sent Patton a cable: “I am once more taking the responsibility of retaining you in command in spite of damaging repercussions resulting from a personal indiscretion. I do this solely because of my faith in you as a battle leader and from no other motives.” Eisenhower followed up the cable by dispatching his public relations officer, Colonel Justus “Jock” Lawrence, with a message forbidding Patton or his staff from making any public statements until further notice from Eisenhower personally. “Come on, Jock, what did Ike
really
say?” Patton asked. Lawrence answered: “He said that you were not to open your goddamned mouth again publicly until he said you could!”
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Patton had been saved once more, this time by the thinnest of margins. Reprieved, he resumed training his army, and he passed the time as he had at most of his previous postings, enjoying the society of the most prominent local families. As D-Day approached and with his troops highly trained and finely tuned, Patton was concerned lest they lose their edge while waiting for action. He therefore toured each unit personally and made more of his famous fighting speeches. By far the most famous was delivered—more than once—during the month or so before the invasion. As usual, Patton did not resort to notes. Several variations of the speech have been handed down by a variety of witnesses who heard it at different times. “As in all my talks,” Patton noted in his diary, “I stressed fighting and killing”:

Men, this stuff some sources sling around about America wanting to stay out of the war and not wanting to fight is a lot of baloney! Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise a coward, Americans play to win. That’s why America has never lost and never will lose a war.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you, right here today, would be killed in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all of us. And every man is scared in his first action. If he says he’s not, he’s a Goddam liar. . . . The real hero is the man who fights even though he’s scared. . . .

All through your Army careers, you’ve been bitching about what you call “chicken-shit drill.” That, like everything else in the Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is Instant Obedience to Orders and to create and maintain Constant Alertness! This must be bred into every soldier. A man must be alert all the time if he expects to stay alive. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him with a sock full o’ shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because ONE man went to sleep on his job . . . but they are German graves, because WE caught the bastards asleep! An Army is a team, lives, sleeps, fights, and eats as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the
Saturday Evening Post
don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

Every single man in the Army plays a vital role . . . even the guy who boils the water to keep us from getting the G.I. shits!

Remember, men, you don’t know I’m here. . . . I’m not supposed to be commanding this Army. . . . Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddam Germans. I want them to look up and howl, “ACH, IT’S THE GODDAM THIRD ARMY AND THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH PATTON AGAIN!”

We want to get this thing over and get the hell out of here, and get at those purple-pissin’ Japs!!! The shortest road home is through Berlin and Tokyo! We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by showing the enemy we have more guts than they have or ever will have!

There’s one great thing you men can say when it’s all over and you’re home once more. You can thank God that twenty years from now, when you’re sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the war, you won’t have to shift him to the other knee, cough, and say, “I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”
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A minority of those who heard Patton speak were offended by his profanity, but most of his men relished it. Yet what he could not tell the troops whose fighting spirit he was trying to raise and maintain was perhaps the most important thing he knew: that the Third Army would not participate in the D-Day landings. The operation would begin with an airborne assault of paratroops and glider troops, who would disrupt the enemy defenses at key points, then Bradley’s First U.S. Army and Sir Miles Dempsey’s Second British Army would land on the Normandy beaches. Dempsey was assigned to capture Caen then advance inland and clear the Falaise plain to make way for the First Canadian Army under Henry Crerar. In the meantime, Bradley was to take Cherbourg, then drive south to Avranches. Once Avranches had been secured, Patton’s Third Army would land and begin the breakout through Brittany. To be sure, it was a major assignment, but Patton was deeply disappointed that he was not in on the start of it all, leading the initial amphibious assault.