George S. Patton

American military leader

• Born: November 11, 1885
• Birthplace: San Gabriel, California
• Died: December 21, 1945
• Place of death: Heidelberg, Germany

Though never a theoretician, Patton was a masterful military tactician who demonstrated the advantages of mobility and aggressive offensive action as essential elements of modern warfare.

Early Life

George S. Patton was born to George Smith Patton, the descendant of a well-established Virginia family rooted in the culture of genteel southern aristocracy and steeped in the military tradition one commonly associates with that class, and Ruth Wilson, the daughter of B. D. Wilson, a California businessman who made a sizable fortune in the winery business. Owing to the affluence of his family, Patton’s childhood was happy and largely carefree. He did suffer from dyslexia, and as a result his parents decided to enroll him in a private school just prior to his twelfth birthday. His classmates represented some of the wealthiest families in Southern California, but it was with the tradition of his paternal forebears that Patton’s affinities lay.

The year 1902 proved to be critically important in Patton’s early life. He had decided to pursue a career in the military and thus sought appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He also met Beatrice Banning Ayer, the daughter of Frederick Ayer, a wealthy industrialist from Massachusetts. She would later become his wife and her marriage to him would on more than one occasion prove beneficial to Patton’s career. There were no senatorial or congressional vacancies available at West Point in 1902, so Patton enrolled for one year at Virginia Military Institute, his father’s alma mater. During that year, Patton’s father worked untiringly to ensure his son’s appointment to West Point, and his efforts were rewarded the following year.

At nineteen, Patton was tall slightly over six feet very athletic, and quite handsome. An arm injury prevented his playing varsity football, but he took up the broadsword, excelled in the high hurdles, and became a skilled horseman. In fact, three years after graduating from West Point, he competed in the Modern Pentathlon event in the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympics and finished fifth. Patton had two physical traits, however, which were of great concern to him a high-pitched, almost squeaky voice, and a very fair and placid facial expression. To correct the latter he practiced in front of a mirror to develop what he called “my war face.” There was little that could be done about his voice, but his frequent use of profanity may well have been designed to compensate for what he considered to be a flaw.

Life’s Work

Patton was graduated from West Point in June, 1909. He married Beatrice in May of the following year, and in March, 1911, their first daughter, Beatrice, was born. Following his initial assignment at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Patton utilized family influence to secure a tour of duty at Fort Myer in Washington, D.C. Knowing that advancement in the peacetime army would be painfully slow, Patton actively sought to make contact with the “right people.” His personal wealth and family connections certainly facilitated his efforts a fact well illustrated in 1915, when he secured an assignment to a cavalry regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas, while the rest of his outfit went to the Philippines. It proved to be a particularly fortuitous assignment for Patton, who met and served as aide to General John J. Pershing when the latter was ordered into Mexico in 1916. Patton, who served with distinction in Mexico, regarded Pershing as a model soldier and continued to serve as his aide when the latter was chosen to head the American Expeditionary Force to France in 1917.

Once in France, Patton relinquished his staff position for a combat command. He was particularly interested in the tank, which promised to be the cavalry arm of the modern army. His dream of leading a tank unit in combat became a reality during the St. Mihiel campaign. During one engagement he was wounded, but he continued to direct his tanks to their targets by runners. When the newspapers ran the story of the “Hero of the Tanks” who directed his men while lying wounded in a shellhole, Patton became an instant hero. His actions won for him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal. Later, he would admit to his father that he had always feared that he was a coward but had now begun to doubt it.

The peacetime army was a difficult place for Patton. He tried desperately to gain appointment as commandant to West Point and even sent a personal letter to Pershing in which he poignantly argued that he could transmit his ideal of “blood and gutts [sic]” to the cadets under his command. The argument failed, but the sobriquet remained for all time.

Denied West Point, Patton pursued the course one might expect of an ambitious young officer on the rise. In 1923, he attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and in 1931, he entered the Army War College. During the intervening years, he served tours of duty in Hawaii and in Washington, D.C. His commanding officer in Hawaii described him as “invaluable in war . . . but a disturbing element in time of peace,” a prescient evaluation, indeed. Patton lost his father in 1927 and his mother the following year. He consoled himself with the knowledge that he had not been a failure in their eyes and had achieved more, perhaps, than they had dreamed for him. Now he was free to fulfill his own destiny.

In 1938, Patton was ordered back to Fort Myer to replace General Jonathan Wainwright. He was fifty-three years old at the time, and although the war clouds were gathering in Europe and Asia, it seemed likely that age alone might preclude his being considered for a possible combat command. Following the outbreak of war in Europe, however, two decisions by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall changed all that. The German Blitzkrieg convinced Marshall that the U.S. Army needed an armored force. He ordered the creation of two armored divisions and chose Patton to command the Second Armored Division destined to win fame as “Hell on Wheels.” Patton, obviously elated, wrote to his friend and army colleague, Terry Allen, “Now all we need is a juicy war.”

Patton got his war and saw his first action in North Africa when, as part of Operation “Torch,” his forces landed on the beaches of Morocco. Following the debacle at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, he was ordered to assume command of the United States Second Corps. He chose Omar Nelson Bradley as his deputy and initiated a program of rigid training and discipline designed to redeem the valor of American arms. His subsequent victory over the Germans at Al-Guettar was therefore a source of great satisfaction to him. As initially planned, Patton gave up the Second Corps to Bradley to assume command of the Seventh Army that was to participate in the invasion of Sicily.

The Sicilian campaign was one of triumph and tragedy for Patton. Convinced that American forces had been assigned a subordinate role in the operation, he nevertheless managed to turn adversity into advantage by taking the historic town of Palermo and then beating General Bernard Law Montgomery and the vaunted British Eighth Army to Messina. Unfortunately, his shining victories were soon tarnished by the revelation of the famous slapping incident actually two of them wherein he struck two enlisted men who had been hospitalized for “battle fatigue.” Patton’s violent temper and his susceptibility to radical shifts in mood were well-known. Some of his biographers have suggested that he may have suffered from what is known as subdural hematoma, the result of head injuries sustained in falls from and kicks by some of his horses. Whatever the cause, the results were devastating.

Bradley was chosen to command American ground forces preparing for the Normandy invasion, and it was not until the summer of 1944 that Patton was given command of the newly activated Third Army. Determined to redeem himself, Patton’s accomplishments as commander of the Third Army were truly remarkable. His forces liberated almost all of France north of the Loire River and were responsible for relieving the besieged 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne during the Ardennes Offensive. Patton considered the latter to be the Third Army’s most brilliant operation and “the most outstanding achievement of this war.”

As the war began to wind down, Patton expressed his fear of the “horrors of peace.” His intemperate remarks expressing hatred of the Russians and contempt for the Jews were most embarrassing to the American High Command. Consequently, when the press subsequently reported that he had compared the Nazi Party to the Democratic and Republican parties, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, had little choice but to relieve him of command. On December 9, 1945, the day before he was to leave to return to the United States, the car in which he was riding slammed into a truck. Patton suffered severe lacerations, a broken nose, and two fractured vertebrae. At best it was feared that he would be a semi-invalid, but that was not to be. He died on December 21, 1945, and was buried in Hamm, Luxembourg.

Significance

The name Patton is and perhaps always will be synonymous with war particularly World War II. No doubt Patton would have relished that association. He regarded war as the greatest of human endeavors and the battlefield as a place of honor. Patton idolized the great military leaders of the past Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon and spent much of his life preparing himself to be a worthy follower of the tradition they represented. Like them he would one day lead great numbers of men into battle. It was his destiny.

Patton achieved his destiny, though he did so late in life. World War II was his stage, and though he occupied it for only a brief period of time and never in more than a supporting role, he created a legend. He played to an appreciative audience as a tenacious, innovative, and daring battlefield commander. Had he lived, years of peace might have dimmed the luster of his star. Death intervened to prevent that, and before the applause faded, Patton was born into immortality.

His death prompted a flood of praise, most of which paid tribute to his skills as a great fighting general. Perhaps the accolade he would have appreciated most, however, came from a former adversary, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who, in a postwar interview with American military personnel, said simply, “Patton was your best.”

Bibliography

Axelrod, Alan. Patton: A Biography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Brief but solid biography focusing on the contradictions in Patton’s personality.

Blumenson, Martin. Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885-1945. New York: William Morrow, 1985. Blumenson’s skills as a writer and military historian are evident in this biography. The author reminds his readers that the Patton legend was molded from human clay.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Patton Papers: 1885-1940. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Blumenson’s judicious selection from the voluminous Patton Papers allows the reader to see Patton as he saw himself and to know his fears, failures, strengths, and weaknesses.

Farago, Ladislas. The Last Days of Patton. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. Focusing on the events surrounding Patton’s tragic death in December, 1945, Farago attempts a more detailed investigation of the incident than was conducted at the time.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Patton: Ordeal and Triumph. New York: I. Obolensky, 1963. Considered by many to be the definitive biography of George Patton, this impressive work was the basis for the critically acclaimed film Patton, released in 1970.

Hirshson, Stanley P. General Patton: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Exceptionally good biography based on extensive research and offering a balanced account of Patton’s life, career, and personality from every conceivable angle.

Patton, George S. War as I Knew It. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. This work is best when viewed as a critique of the role of the battlefield general and the problems associated with high command. As military history it suffers from too much detail.

Reynolds, Michael. Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory. Staplehurst, England: Spellmount, 2005. Compares and contrasts the personalities, lives, and military careers of Patton and British general Bernard Law Montgomery.

Royle, Trevor. Patton: Old Blood and Guts. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2005. Biography tracing Patton’s life and military career.

Showalter, Dennis. Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century. New York: Berkley Caliber, 2005. Showalter, a distinguished historian of World War II, provides a thoroughly researched and well-written dual biography of Patton and Erwin Rommel.