PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY (2 page)

In the midst of the great Allied drive eastward, Field Marshal von Rundstedt launched the Ardennes offensive, hitting the American line at its weakest point and threatening to split the Allied forces in two with an all-out advance targeting the crucial Allied-held port of Antwerp. Patton performed a miracle of tactics, logistics, and human endurance when he turned the bulk of his army—troops exhausted by three months of continual battle and advance—90 degrees north to launch a bold counterattack into the southern flank of the German advance. The Battle of the Bulge, which began as a stunning catastrophe for the Allies, was converted into a U.S. victory that broke the back of the German army.

Despite such prodigies, Patton was almost continually on the verge of being removed from command. That fact is but the sum of the many contradictions that orbit this man. He was a cavalry officer steeped in romantic military tradition, holder of the grandly archaic U.S. Army title of “Master of the Sword,” which had been invented expressly for him. Yet it was he who was instrumental in pulling a hidebound and reluctant American military into the most advanced realms of mobile armored warfare. An autocratic snob, scion of old California and even older Virginia gentry, wedded to a New England heiress, Patton still managed to create unparalleled rapport with the lowliest private in his command. An outspoken racist, he nevertheless relied heavily on African American combat troops, whereas most of his contemporaries relegated them to menial service and support units. Exuberant in his profanity, he was a deeply religious man, who believed God had destined him to military greatness. He professed to have a personal relationship with God, and he was a believer in the efficacy of prayer. Patton was afflicted with dyslexia that exacerbated his childhood insecurities and, as an adult, he was tortured by self-born intimations of cowardice. Throughout his life, but especially in middle age, he suffered profound depression and episodes others described as hysteria (he called it “biliousness”); and yet he inspired the men of his Seventh and then his Third Army to a level of absolute self-confidence and consistent victory.

As theater commander in North Africa, and later as supreme Allied commander in Europe, Dwight David Eisenhower—whom Patton had befriended in 1919 when both were stationed at Camp Meade, Maryland— was Patton’s boss, although he was junior to Patton both in age and years in service. No one was more painfully aware of Patton’s failings than Eisenhower. To close colleagues, he expressed fears about what he called Patton’s “instability.” For the public, in the pages of his postwar memoir,
Crusade in Europe,
he wrote of Patton’s “emotional tenseness and impulsiveness,” traits that led Patton to make outrageous statements and to spout streams of profanity that delighted many enlisted men, but embarrassed some. Most notoriously, his “impulsiveness” caused him to assault two soldiers suffering from battle fatigue (see chapter 9), and those incidents, in turn, led politicians, the press, and the public to demand Patton’s immediate removal. Eisenhower was tempted to yield to the pressure of those demands and even appealed to
his
boss, George C. Marshall, army chief of staff, for instructions. Marshall turned the decision back to Eisenhower. After a period of soul-searching, Eisenhower wrote to Marshall: “I would want Patton as one of my Army commanders” for the upcoming invasion of Europe. “For certain types of action,” he wrote, George S. Patton “was the most outstanding soldier our country has produced.” Yet Eisenhower regarded Patton as something like a hero of Greek tragedy—the very elements of his greatness always threatened to destroy him. “His emotional tenseness and his impulsiveness were the very qualities that made him, in open situations, such a remarkable leader of an army. In pursuit and exploitation there is need for a commander who sees nothing but the necessity of getting ahead; the more he drives his men the more he will save their lives.”
⁶

On December 14, 1943, Eisenhower replied to a letter from June Jenkins Booth. Mrs. Booth, upon reading that Patton had slapped soldiers suffering from battle fatigue, wrote that she had one son in the service and another slated to go the following year, and that she hoped Patton would not remain in command, where he might “repeat his fits of temper on another unfortunate victim.” She appealed to the supreme commander, telling him that she would “die of worry” if her sons had to serve under “such a cruel, profane, impatient officer.”

Eisenhower replied:

. . . You are quite right in deploring acts such as [Patton’s] and in being incensed that they could occur in an American army. But in Sicily General Patton saved thousands of American lives. By his boldness, his speed, his drive, he won his part of the campaign by marching, more than he did by fighting. He drove himself and his men almost beyond human endurance, but because of this he minimized tragedy in American homes.

... I decided [that Patton] should not be lost to us in the job of winning this war . . . even though the easy thing for me would have been to send General Patton home. I hope that, as the mother of two American soldiers, you will understand.
⁷

In essence, Eisenhower was asking this soldier’s mother to do as he did: to close her eyes to everything except the life-saving results this “cruel, profane, impatient officer” produced. It was a great deal to ask of a mother— or of a supreme Allied commander. It was, in fact, a great deal to ask of a democratic nation that was sending its sons to fight the most brutal and destructive tyranny the world had ever seen.

Much as Eisenhower forced himself to accept Patton with all of his formidable failings, today’s military leaders continue to value the legacy of this controversial commander. Both of Patton’s major wars, the two world wars, were predicated on a military strategy and political policy of maximum effort for total victory, whereas the wars that followed World War II were “limited” conflicts dominated by the principle of “containment,” a need to achieve victory without igniting a potentially civilization-destroying third world war. Nevertheless, within the context of limited warfare, maximum effort combined with great speed, intensive violence of attack, flexibility of response, and the highest possible degree of mobility were often required. Patton laid the groundwork for these, as was evident in General Douglas MacArthur’s masterpiece assault on Inchon during the Korean War, the use of “airmobile cavalry” in the Vietnam War, the sweeping armored assault that constituted the major action of the first Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) in 1991, and the race across Iraq and into Baghdad during the opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Such operations constitute the tactical legacy of George S. Patton Jr., but no modern commander would look at this list and say that it adequately summarizes Patton’s place in the living history of America’s military. Patton also imbued the American army with a commitment to victory through individual initiative and personal leadership. To be sure, this aspect of his legacy is less tangible than the tactical lessons, but, for the commanders of today and tomorrow, it is even more urgently indispensable.

No one questions the results Patton unfailingly produced, but in a democracy, which has never been congenial to a standing army and never wanted to raise a military caste, a born-and-bred warrior must always find himself the object of questions, doubts, disdain, fear, and even loathing. We admire Patton the captain, we relish Patton the legend, but we are, at the very least, uneasy with Patton the man. This brief biography seeks a balanced appreciation of a great and greatly flawed figure, whose contributions to modern military doctrine and modern world history are profound and whose greatness and failings alike reveal as much about America—who we were, who we are, and who we have imagined ourselves to be—as they do about George Smith Patton Jr.

GEORGE SMITH PATTON JR. WAS BORN TO THE ARMY, born on November 11, 1885, at Lake Vineyard, his family’s home outside of Los Angeles. He was named after both his father, George William Patton (who changed his middle name to Smith to honor both his father and his stepfather, George Hugh Smith), and after his grandfather, George Smith Patton. Grandfather graduated from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1852 (having been a student of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson) and rose to command the 22nd Virginia Infantry in the Civil War. Wounded, then captured during the Shenandoah campaign, he was exchanged, only to be killed on September 19, 1864, at the Third Battle of Winchester. Similarly, Grandfather’s brother, Waller Tazewell Patton, was wounded at Second Bull Run, and then fell in Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

George William—the Patton children called him Papa—was a Virginian who attended VMI, just as his father had. In his senior year, during the 1876 national centennial, George William led the cadets in a parade at Philadelphia as top-ranked first captain. It was the very first southern military formation to march in the North after the Civil War. Papa did not pursue a military career, but left Virginia and became a lawyer in California, where he became district attorney of Los Angeles County before giving it all up to manage the estate and vineyard of his wife’s family.

George Smith Patton Jr. learned well the names of his ancestors, together with those of many cousins who had held command rank in the army of the Confederacy, and, before them, Great-Great Grandfather Robert Patton, who settled in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1771. Robert Patton married Anne Gordon Mercer, daughter of Hugh Mercer who had fought at Culloden in his native Scotland. Mercer immigrated to America and fought in the French and Indian War and finally, as a close comrade of General George Washington, in the American Revolution, he fell at the Battle of Princeton.

Young George was selective in his ancestor worship. Enthralled by the martial glory of his father’s ancestors, he paid little attention to the family of his mother, Ruth Wilson Patton. Great-Grandfather David Wilson had been a major in the American Revolution, a Tennessee pioneer, and, later, speaker of the Tennessee territorial assembly; grandfather Benjamin Davis Wilson worked in Mississippi and New Mexico as a trapper, Indian trader, and storekeeper before moving to southern California, where he bought a ranch and made money in the hide and tallow trade. He married a Mexican woman of Spanish descent and became the
alcalde
(justice of the peace) for San Bernardino, called universally and with affectionate respect Don Benito. Later moving to Los Angeles, he lived on a small vineyard and, operating from what would one day be the site of Union Station, became a prosperous merchant, saloon keeper, hotelier, and minor real estate tycoon. Widowed in 1849, Don Benito married his housekeeper, Margaret Hereford (after her husband died); it was she who gave birth to George’s mother. Wilson ultimately achieved great local prominence, becoming the first mayor of Los Angeles and acquiring a ranch of 14,000 acres, encompassing what is now Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, Alhambra, and San Gabriel. He transformed his home, Lake Vineyard, into the biggest producer of wine and brandy in California.

A pioneer, politician, and magnate, Don Benito nevertheless failed to cast over his grandson the same spell as the military paternal forebears. Worse, when Don Benito died, his son-in-law and business partner, James de Barth Shorb, who lived in sumptuous style, mismanaged the winery through a period of drought and frosts, running the business into serious debt. Determined to come to the rescue of the enterprise, George’s Papa gave up his law practice and moved the family to Lake Vineyard. George idolized his father, and he resented how the winery and myriad other business affairs attendant on Shorb’s financial train wreck monopolized his time.

One of the activities Mr. Patton had less time for was reading to his son. Those who knew Patton as an adult could not help but observe that he was an avid reader. Yet, as a child, his difficulties in learning to read were such that his father continued reading aloud to him well beyond the age when most parents have stopped. (That he learned not only to read but to love reading is a testament to the strength of his will and determination.) Favorites of father and son were the novels of Sir Walter Scott, which nurtured the youngster’s growing sense of romance and chivalry, as well as an appreciation for his Scots heritage; the
Iliad
and
Odyssey,
classic evocations of heroic ideals; the tragedies of Shakespeare; the stories and verse of Rud-yard Kipling; and the Old Testament. Unbidden, George memorized long passages from the books his papa read to him.

Anyone who spent much time with “the Boy,” as his father fondly called him, realized he was highly intelligent. However, his family—and no one more than George himself—was baffled and frustrated by his struggle with reading and writing. Today his learning disability would be readily diagnosed as dyslexia, a common disorder characterized by a difficulty in recognizing and comprehending written words. In young Patton’s day, the problem would have branded the boy as “slow.” Determined to avoid that stigma, his parents hired tutors to school him at home until he was eleven years old. By that time, they decided he was ready for a good private school and enrolled him in Stephen Cutter Clark’s School for Boys in Pasadena. From the beginning, his favorite subject was history. He immersed himself in the stories of the leaders of ancient times, particularly the great captains, including Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, and Caesar. Moving into the more modern era, his favorites included Joan of Arc and Napoleon Bonaparte. To the schoolboy, figures such as these joined seamlessly with the heroes nearer to his own time, including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. John Singleton Mosby, the famed “Gray Ghost” of the Confederacy, had become a lawyer for the Southern Pacific Railroad and from time to time, during Patton’s boyhood, visited the family, regaling a rapt George with stories of his daring cavalry raids.