PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY (22 page)

Patton was often accused of being impulsive. In terms of his emotional makeup, the accusation was justified, but, where his profession was concerned, he was a careful planner who believed in advance preparation. Once an operation was under way, Patton focused on action, typically an unremitting combination of advance and attack. However, he always took care to distinguish between haste and speed. For him, haste characterized spontaneous or at least inadequately planned operations. Thorough preparation made haste unnecessary and enabled speed, an operation carried out swiftly as well as efficiently. A big part of conducting operations at high speed was preparing for them in advance. Patton was proactive rather than reactive and wanted, wherever possible, to choose the time and place for battle instead of letting the enemy dictate these terms. Good preparation helped to ensure that unfolding events would not steal the march on the commander’s will and initiative. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and the others responsible for the success of the first Gulf War put this Patton principle into action in 1990—1991. The lightning war that was Operation Desert Storm had been preceded by the meticulous preparation of Operation Desert Shield.

When Bradley returned from Versailles to his Luxembourg headquarters on the morning of December 18, he summoned Patton, together with his top staff. The men of Lucky Forward were on their way within 10 minutes of Bradley’s call. When they arrived, Bradley took them to a map and showed them the bulge. It was now clear to him that the Germans intended to break through to the Meuse River and, ultimately, to advance against Antwerp, the recently hard-won port through which much of the Allied supplies and troops were now flowing.

This was a major crisis, and it quickly cured every case of Allied victory fever. Bradley asked Patton what he could send and when. Without hesitation, Patton replied that he could send three divisions immediately, one starting off at midnight, the next at first light, and the third within 24 hours, all led by Millikin. Additionally, if Jacob Devers, who was south of Patton’s position, could cover XII Corps, Patton could send that entire corps, under Manton Eddy, as well. It was a remarkable promise to make. What it meant was that a very large portion of Third Army, which was heading steadily eastward, was to be turned on a dime, 90 degrees to the north, and marched at full speed into desperate battle. Executing such a complex turn, with about 250,000 men, their vehicles, and equipment, in winter, during ice and snow storms, and at very high speed, wagered the highest possible stakes. Any massive object, whether it is an 18-wheeler semi or a 250,000-man army, has momentum and inertia. It resists sudden stops, starts, and changes in direction. Bradley was skeptical, but he needed what Patton was offering, and he responded by asking Patton to meet him at Verdun on the nineteenth for an 11:00 A.M. conference with Eisenhower.

After preparing himself in conference with his key staff as well as the principal field commanders, Millikin and Eddy, at 7:00 A.M., Patton conferred with his full staff at 8:00 A.M., then set off for Verdun. Eisenhower, whom Patton had earlier accused of lacking “the stuff,” rose brilliantly to the occasion. After his intelligence officer opened the meeting by painting the Ardennes situation in the darkest possible terms, Ike rose and cleared the air. “The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity to us and not of disaster,” he declared. “There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.” This prompted Patton to break out with “Hell, let’s have the guts to let the___go all the way to Paris. Then we’ll really cut ‘em off and chew ‘em up.” In his account, Eisenhower chastely substituted one long, one short, and one long blank for Patton’s favorite expletive: sons of bitches. The remark broke the tension, and everyone present grinned, but, just so there would not be any misunderstanding, Eisenhower countered that the enemy “would never be allowed to cross the Meuse.”
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Ike turned to Patton and “said he wanted me to get to Luxembourg and take command of the battle and make a strong counterattack with at least six divisions. The fact that three of these divisions exist only on paper did not enter his head.” By this time, the three divisions in the Ardennes had been decimated by the German attack. Eisenhower continued, asking Devers how much of the defensive line he could take over while XII Corps was diverted to the north. “Devers made a long speech on strictly selfish grounds and said nothing,” Patton complained to his diary, adding that “Bradley said little.” Finally, Ike turned back to Patton: “When can you attack?” On December 22, he promised, with three divisions: the 4th Armored, the 26th, and the 80th.
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“Don’t be fatuous, George,” an irritated Eisenhower responded. “If you try to go that early, you won’t have all three divisions ready and you’ll go piecemeal. You will start on the twenty-second and I want your initial blow to be a strong one! I’d even settle for the twenty-third if it takes that long to get three full divisions.”
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But Patton insisted that he could make an effective attack on the twenty-second. Some of the British officers present at the conference laughed. Others nervously shuffled their feet and, realizing Patton was dead serious, straightened in their chairs.

More than any other single point in his career, this was Patton’s defining moment. He proposed to turn almost an entire army 90 degrees to the north, force-march it through ice and snow 40 miles or more, then, without rest, commit it to a counterattack against an enemy tasting victory for the first time in many months.

Patton appreciated Eisenhower’s fear that an attack by three divisions “was not strong enough,” but “I insisted that I could beat the Germans with three divisions, and if I waited [to get more divisions into the effort], I would lose surprise.”
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It was part and parcel of Patton’s firmest conviction that war was about opportunity, not perfection.

Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower approved Patton’s proposal, and the time of the attack, by III Corps, was fixed at 0400, December 22. “On the twenty-first, I received quite a few telephone calls from various higher echelons, expressing solicitude as to my ability to attack successfully with only three divisions. I maintained my contention that it is better to attack with a small force at once, and attain surprise, than it is to wait and lose it.”
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Patton strode to the map and fixed his eyes on Bradley. “Brad, the Kraut’s stuck his head in a meatgrinder.” Thrusting his fist into the map, he ground it into the bulge. “And this time I’ve got hold of the handle.”
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This was a metaphor for his proposed strategy. He wanted to allow the Germans to drive another 40 or 50 miles into the bulge, then he would aim his attack well to the northeast with the objective of pinching off the entrance to the bulge, which was also the avenue of retreat. He would then attack the trapped Germans mainly from the rear. Like Patton’s proposal during Operation Cobra to effect a deep envelopment in order to bag every German north of the Loire, he wanted now to trap and destroy as much of the German army as possible in the Ardennes. Like his earlier proposal, however, this one was rejected as well. Bradley was less concerned about killing large numbers of the enemy than he was about preventing those already in the bulge from overrunning Bastogne, which the 101st Airborne Division and other U.S. units were holding on to so desperately. Bradley understood that the town commanded a major road junction. Whoever held it had access to the points farther west. Therefore, Bradley directed Patton’s proposed counterattack squarely on Bastogne.

Even Patton seemed to appreciate that, under the circumstances, this more conservative approach made some sense. Instead of using all his resources against the base of the bulge, Patton ordered Millikin, with three divisions, to relieve the German siege. He would, however, reserve Eddy’s divisions, when they arrived, for use farther east, to seize the handle of the meatgrinder.

With the priority of the attacks having been settled, Patton threw himself into the complex task of managing the movement of more and more men into the Ardennes while Millikin, as Patton had promised, made his attack early on the morning of December 22. Patton choreographed the entire operation via telephone, the receiver to his ear all day.

Throughout the fall and winter of 1944, the weather in northern Europe was the worst in 20 years, and some of the most severe conditions prevailed during Millikin’s attack. He had a front 20 miles wide through which he advanced and fought in heavy snow and frigid temperatures. If the weather made going on the ground difficult, it rendered support from the air impossible, which seriously threatened the American counteroffensive. At Bastogne, the surrounded 101st Airborne continued grimly to hold out. On the morning of December 22, a party of two German officers and two noncommissioned officers, under a white flag, approached with a surrender ultimatum. The message was brought to the acting division commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe. Surrounded and pounded as the 101st was, McAuliffe nevertheless initially assumed that the Germans were coming to surrender to
him.
When he was told that, on the contrary, they were demanding that the 101st surrender, McAuliffe laughed and said: “Us surrender? Aw, nuts!” The singular American expletive
“Nuts!”
was conveyed to the Germans as McAulliffe’s reply to their surrender demand.

The “Nuts!” story quickly spread throughout Third Army and into enduring legend, but Patton knew that it would take more than a gesture of defiance, no matter how magnificently laconic, to save Bastogne. He was becoming frustrated at having to fight the Germans and the weather too. Without air support, a breakthrough was nearly impossible. Back in November, during another siege of bad weather, a frustrated Patton phoned the Third Army chaplain, Monsignor (Colonel) James H. O’Neill, and asked him if he had “a good prayer for weather.” Patton was hardly a conventionally pious man, but he took religion seriously and believed he had a very personal relationship with God, to whom he often prayed. Patton believed God was on his side. A weather prayer would serve simply to remind Him of that fact. Discovering that no standard weather prayer existed, Chaplain O’Neill wrote one himself in the space of an hour:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.

Patton had liked it and saved it, and he now ordered it printed on 250,000 wallet-size cards, which were distributed to the soldiers of the Third Army. On the reverse side of each card was a Christmas greeting, which O’Neill had composed on Patton’s behalf:

To each officer and soldier in the Third United States Army, I wish a Merry Christmas. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We march in our might to complete victory. May God’s blessing rest upon each of you on this Christmas Day.

G. S. Patton, Jr. Lieutenant General Commanding, Third United States Army

As Patton explained to O’Neill, he was a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that’s working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown.

That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God.

God has His part, or margin in everything. That’s where prayer comes in.
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On December 23, the weather broke sufficiently to allow, at long last, massive Allied air strikes, as Millikin closed in around Bastogne. “A clear cold Christmas,” Patton wrote in his diary, “lovely weather for killing Germans, which seems a bit queer, seeing Whose birthday it is.” Then, on December 26, Patton received a call from Hugh Gaffey, commanding one of Millikin’s divisions. Gaffey reported that he could break through to Bas-togne and make contact with the 101st by a rapid advance. It was, of course, risky. “I told him to try it,” Patton recorded in his diary. “At 1845 they made contact, and Bastogne was liberated. It was a daring thing and well done. Of course they may be cut off, but I doubt it. . . . The speed of our movements is amazing, even to me, and must be a constant source of surprise to the Germans.”
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Patton was proud of Gaffey, proud of the Third Army, and proud, too, of Chaplain O’Neill. When the weather broke, Patton exclaimed, “Hot dog! I guess I’ll have another 100,000 of those prayers printed.” He then summoned O’Neill, told him he was “the most popular man in this headquarters. You sure stand in good with the Lord and soldiers.” As O’Neill recalled, Patton then “cracked me on the side of my steel helmet with his riding crop. That was his way of saying, ‘Well done.’”
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Patton also decorated O’Neill with the Bronze Star, making him the only U.S. Army chaplain to receive the honor for writing a prayer. It was a gesture that would not be out of place in today’s army, in which religious faith plays an increasingly visible role.

Meanwhile, the fighting continued, as the Germans simultaneously persisted in menacing Bastogne while fiercely resisting attempts at encirclement, but by December 29, Patton was confident enough to write to Beatrice: “The relief of Bastogne is the most brilliant operation we have thus far performed and is in my opinion the outstanding achievement of this war. Now the enemy must dance to our tune, not we to his.”
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As successful as the counteroffensive had been, Patton wanted more. He wanted to keep attacking to prevent the Germans from withdrawing from the bulge. Once again, he found himself up against what he deemed the excessive conservatism, even the timidity, of both Bradley and Eisenhower, who were allowing too many of the enemy to escape. They feared driving the troops beyond endurance, but Patton believed that, in the clutch, war was all about driving troops beyond endurance, forcing them to find the strength to achieve a rapid victory. Yet once the threat to Bas-togne had been vanquished, the other commanders, especially Eisenhower and Bradley, lost the momentum that had been created by the crisis.