PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY (26 page)

Under the best of circumstances, when he was able to choose the time and place of an attack, Patton was a peerless tactician. In the case of his breakout and advance during Operation Cobra, which expanded Bradley’s rather modest strategy into a juggernaut of unprecedented speed and extent, Patton’s tactics became strategy, transforming a vast portion of the European theater by suddenly reclaiming all of France north of the Loire. Beginning with the Louisiana and Texas maneuvers on the eve of America’s entry into World War II and culminating in Operation Cobra, Patton provided the model for mobile warfare on the grandest of scales and at speeds that made an ally rather than an adversary of time. The ambitious scope and drive of Patton’s Cobra breakout were reprised by a later generation of commanders in the first Gulf War, which was characterized by the rapid movement of massive ground forces spearheaded by tanks.

Patton’s tactics were always distinguished by boldness and daring. He planned carefully. He gathered intelligence meticulously and believed that the fresher the intelligence, the better. But he never adhered slavishly to any plan; once an attack was launched, he kept himself open to opportunity and was always prepared to improvise, if doing so would enlarge the victory. Plans enabled him; he never let them limit him.

Another hallmark of Patton’s tactics was speed and coordination of forces. His objective was to create the greatest effect in the least time, so that his forces were exposed to enemy fire as briefly as possible. He understood that advances in mobile warfare—modern tanks and other vehi-cles—and in air support as well as rapid communications enabled speed of execution. Since Patton’s time, much of the technology of warfare has been devoted to increasing the tempo of operations. This means that Patton’s attitude toward time in combat has become more important than ever. Whereas the first Gulf War was a dramatic example of the application of speed and coordination of forces, the second war in the Gulf, Operation Iraqi Freedom, has demonstrated the limitation of this tactical principle. Employing a Pattonesque ground advance, the invasion of Iraq was accomplished in a remarkably brief period during 2003. This phase of the war, however, was followed by an insurgency to which no one, as of 2005, can see a definitive end. Patton’s tactics were developed on and for vast battlefield spaces occupied by large conventional armies. They are not effective in asymmetrical warfare scenarios, in which time, which a determined insurgency can draw out almost infinitely, becomes for the much larger invading force an enemy rather than an ally.

Redefinition of Military Professionalism

Patton also bequeathed to the American military tradition a new definition of professionalism. Although he, more than most of his contemporaries, believed that the profession of arms partook of ancient and honorable traditions, he also insisted that the modern military commander place himself squarely in the real world by becoming thoroughly familiar with all the weapons systems at his disposal, including the newest and still-emerging ones. Patton was not only a master of tank doctrine and tactics, he thoroughly understood the mechanics of his tanks, their armor plating, endurance, fuel demands, speed, and capabilities over various terrain. The nuts and bolts of war were not to be left to noncommissioned technicians. Patton insisted that these details also be made the province of each and every commander.

Attaining the level of Patton’s technical proficiency has become increasingly difficult as the technology of warfare has become more complex. The consequences of failure to understand the capabilities and limitations of battlefield equipment was made embarrassingly evident during the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Commanders failed to adequately understand the communications infrastructure of the forces they led. The result was that much of the mission’s radio equipment was incompatible across services: The army’s radios could not talk with those of the marines, and the air force could not communicate adequately with the forces on the ground. At one point, officers in the field were compelled to communicate with higher headquarters via private or even pay telephones. In the first Gulf War, an inadequate understanding of weapons capability marred operations, when commanders relied on the Patriot missile system to defend against Iraqi Scud missile attacks. The Patriot had not been designed as an antimissile weapon and proved woefully inadequate in this role, a fact that was not understood until after the war had ended.

Updating the Cavalry Idea

In pioneering advanced war-fighting doctrine for modern armor, Patton never forgot the traditional lessons he had learned as a cavalryman. He transferred time-honored cavalry ideals of speed, highly flexible mobility, a hardhitting raider’s mentality, and a keen sense of the “ground” (the topography) of the battlefield to armor tactics and doctrine. In this sense, he brought cavalry into the twentieth century. As Patton redefined the tactics and doctrine of horse soldiery in terms of the light and medium tank, the mobile weapons par excellence of World War II, so Vietnam-era army tacticians redefined cavalry yet again in terms of the mobile weapon most closely identified with the Vietnam War, the helicopter. The “air cavalry” was developed as an assault force that functioned much like the traditional cavalry, penetrating enemy territory to conduct hit-and-run raids and reconnaissance in force. Patton loved horses and loved the idea of fighting from the saddle, but, in World War I, he immediately recognized the superiority of the light tank over the horse. Instead of clinging nostalgically to an outmoded weapons system, he salvaged what was best from that system and applied it to a new modality. Through Patton, the idea of the cavalry survived and was available to a later generation of warriors in Vietnam, who were fighting a very different kind of war with yet another means of armed mobility.

Combined Arms Approach

Although he loved the cavalry and was a passionate advocate of armor, Patton never limited himself to a single arm. He was an early advocate and practitioner of what is today called the “combined arms” approach to warfare. He integrated armor, infantry, artillery, and air in each of his major World War II operations. All played a role, and none was subordinated to any other. Thanks to commanders like Patton in Europe and MacArthur in the Pacific, World War II became a vast laboratory in which combined arms doctrine was developed. The doctrine emerged as so central to modern warfare that, in 1947, the War Department was replaced by the Department of Defense, a cabinet-level office charged with coordinating combined arms on the largest scale, bringing together the army, air force, navy, and marines. Within each of these services, combined arms has also steadily become more important, and all major military operations since World War II have been conceived and executed in terms of combined arms.

Patton used the combined arms approach to carry out his favorite tactic, which he frequently described as holding the enemy by the nose while kicking him in the pants. This involved locating and exploiting enemy weakness, attacking that weakness with great speed and maximum violence, pursuing the enemy to his destruction, then continuing the advance, also with great speed. Typically, Patton used infantry to hold the enemy by the nose, while the tanks swung round, usually covering great distances, to deliver the kick in the pants. This use of masses of tanks to make long, sweeping end runs around the enemy to hit his flank was spectacularly effective in World War II. Patton’s tactic was employed by H. Norman Schwarzkopf in the so-called Hail Mary end run into the vulnerable flank of the main Iraqi ground force, thereby bringing the Gulf War of 1991 to a speedy and devastating conclusion. In that brief conflict, it was marines who held the enemy’s nose with an amphibious assault while the main coalition army force, spearheaded by tanks, delivered the kick in the pants.

The Principle of Speed

Patton brought to a high state of perfection an exceptionally limber version of the blitzkrieg tactics the German army had used so devastatingly against Poland, France, and the Soviets. His ideal was to create warfare that combined speed and destructiveness so that a battle could be won with a minimum loss to one’s own personnel and equipment. Conservative war fighting, Patton preached, gave the illusion of safety but ultimately cost more lives. The only way to achieve victory and at the same time minimize casualties was to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible, exposing one’s forces to fire as briefly as possible.

The first Gulf War applied the Patton principle impressively. A large coalition force was built up over time, then used in a swift, relentless, and highly coordinated manner to minimize duration under fire. The result was massive destruction of the Iraqi army with very minimal coalition casualties. The use of a strong, coordinated force in a bold and violent offensive is most effective against a conventional enemy, as in the first Gulf War.

Reduction of Collateral Damage

Limiting the duration of time under fire not only saves the lives of the attacker’s troops, it has the added benefit of limiting what is today called collateral damage, the destruction visited on civilian populations, the innocent bystanders in all wars. “Old Blood and Guts” was deeply disturbed by the sight of wounded soldiers and also by the magnitude of civilian devastation he witnessed. His detractors might be loath to recognize it, but Patton brought a significant measure of humanity to warfare.

The modern trend toward the deployment of “smart weapons” has not only made war more destructive against enemy military forces, but has enabled war fighters to minimize collateral damage. This was demonstrated in the air assault against Baghdad during the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, faulty intelligence can easily lead to the misapplication of “smart” technology, as when U.S. forces, relying on outdated intelligence, mistakenly directed a smart bomb attack against the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. During the first hours and days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, smart weapons were employed against sites mistakenly believed to harbor Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Intelligence, not the weapons, was at fault when these attacks resulted in high collateral damage and the loss of innocent lives. Patton abhorred the waste of war and, in principle, would have approved of smart weapons technology as a tool capable of reducing that waste; however, he would have condemned the kind of political and military thinking that relies exclusively on air strikes employing such high-tech weaponry. There is no substitute, he would doubtless point out, for the eyes, ears, brains, and valor of troops on the ground.

Training

Given Patton’s glorious and controversial record in combat, it is all too easy to forget that, at the outbreak of war, General Marshall and other members of high command saw Patton’s greatest value as a trainer of soldiers rather than as a combat leader. In creating and commanding the Desert Training Center at Indio, California, Patton trained America’s first generation of desert fighters. The tactical triumph of the first Gulf War and of the initial desert combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom were built on foundations Patton laid at Indio training an army to defeat Rommel in the desert of North Africa.

Beyond training troops for a particular environment, Patton elevated training in general to a new status, putting it at the heart of the army. Patton far preferred serving in the heat and danger of combat than he did training troops, but perhaps no commander in the American service since Friedrich von Steuben in the American Revolution accorded training as central a role as Patton did. Today the American military accepts as a given that high-quality training is the most valuable commodity the force possesses. Beyond the basic training every soldier receives, the modern United States Army maintains, through its Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), 33 major schools and centers at 16 army installations. As of 2005, the schools were staffed by 9,141 instructors and offered 1,753 courses, enrolling more than 300,000 soldiers. Patton’s central contributions to training the first generation of tank soldiers and commanders and the first generation of desert warriors are pioneering examples of the kind of special-applications training that has become commonplace in today’s American military.

Leadership

Patton stands high among all other commanders as an example of leadership. He was a master of motivation, and he could motivate the men he commanded to perform beyond what they themselves conceived as their utmost. He had the ability to create the image of victory as well as the capacity to impart to his men the will, the emotions, and the mind-set to realize that image. Military leaders as well as leaders in business and civil government study Patton’s speeches and other pronouncements on leadership to learn something of his motivational technique. To the extent that Patton put his technique into words, it can be studied. But, absent Patton himself, his style of leadership is at best semi-tangible, just as the work of a great actor, without that actor’s physical presence, can be only partially appreciated. Call it charisma or call it what Patton himself called it—
“it
”— this is the intangible part of leadership, which can be admired, marveled at, and even, to an extent, conveyed, but it cannot be taught.

Key to Patton’s effectiveness as a leader was his uncanny ability to “think like an army,” to use historian Eric Larrabee’s phrase. He instinctively knew what an army could achieve in a given situation and, just as important, what it could not achieve. As John Ingles, a Third Army lieutenant, put it, Patton had an unequaled “sense of what was possible on the battlefield.” Ingles said that “we knew what General Patton expected us to do, and we believed that if we did it we would win.” If Patton could not understand why other superb soldiers, such as Eisenhower or Bradley, did not always allow him to do with the Third Army everything he knew it could do, it was because he could not conceive what it was like to lack the intuition that was part of his very being.
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Professional historians, soldiers, and military buffs have long speculated on what would have happened had Patton been given a freer hand. What would have resulted had Patton been allowed to make a deeper penetration beyond the Falaise-Argentan pocket during the culminating phase of Operation Cobra? It is likely that far more of the German army would have been killed or captured much earlier in the European campaign. And what of the Ardennes counteroffensive? What if Patton had been permitted to direct more of his attack against the base of the German salient, the “bulge”? To have done so would surely have risked the fall of Bastogne and, ultimately, even Antwerp, but, had such an attack succeeded, the Battle of the Bulge would have been far less costly and even more effective than it was. For that matter, we can only imagine what was lost to the Allied war effort by keeping Patton inactive for some 11 months after the slapping incidents. Over the years since the end of World War II, many experts, amateurs, generals, and armchair generals have suggested that the war in Europe would have ended in 1944 if Patton had been given more of the authority—and the gasoline—he asked for.