PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY

by Alan Axelrod

  Patton was well aware that there was only one way out of the dreary purgatory of military routine in places like Fort Sheridan: promotion to high rank. But he also knew that promotion in the peacetime army customarily proceeded at a glacial pace. The only hope was, from the very beginning, to draw to himself the positive attention of superiors. He did all he could to curry favor with his commanding officer, Captain Francis C. Marshall, who (as Patton saw things) was at least a gentleman, in contrast to the other officers at Fort Sheridan, many of whom were former militiamen who had gained entry into the regular army by virtue of service in the Spanish-American War of 1898. To impress Marshall, Patton made liberal use of his family connections and military heritage, but he also performed his duties impeccably and enthusiastically, so much so that Marshall rated him an officer “of especial promise” and “the most enthusiastic soldier of my acquaintance,” who “misses no chance to improve.” 14

  As was the case at West Point, Patton soon earned a reputation for driving his men as hard as he drove himself—which, as the majority of enlisted men saw it, was much harder than necessary. While on stable duty one afternoon, he noticed that a horse had been left untied in its stall. Patton stalked off to find the man responsible for this breach. Locating him at the far end of the stable building, he chewed him out, then, as punishment, ordered him to run to the horse’s stall, tie the animal down properly, then run back to him. The soldier obediently turned, then walked—albeit rapidly—toward the stall.

  “Run, damn you, run!” Patton bawled after him.

  The soldier broke into a run, but the incident preyed on the young second lieutenant’s conscience. “Damn it” would have been fine, but “damn you,” he decided, was just plain wrong. When the soldier ran back after tying the horse, Patton summoned all bystanders together and apologized to the soldier, not for having cursed, but for having cursed him.15

  Had Patton done nothing more than chew out the soldier, his men would have pegged him as just another second lieutenant throwing around what little weight he had. However, by chewing him out and then apologizing, in public, for having crossed the line, Patton initiated his steady rise into the realm of army legend and lore.

  It was, of course, a minor incident. But Patton quickly discovered that he had a natural talent for converting minor incidents into the stuff of minor myth. As he was drilling his troops one day, Patton was suddenly bucked off his horse. He instantly remounted, only to have his horse rear back. But this time Patton held on as the horse fell. Patton extricated his leg from under the animal and sprang to his feet just as the horse also rose and, throwing back its head, caught Patton just above the eyebrow, opening an ugly gash. With blood running down his face and onto his sleeve, Patton spent another twenty minutes completing the drill. He did not even pause to wipe his face. On schedule, he dismissed the men, retired to wash himself, then, as scheduled, taught a class at the school for noncoms, after which, as scheduled, he attended a class for junior officers. Only after having completed these duties did he visit the fort surgeon, who, with considerable admiration for the young man, stitched up the wound.

  It is embarrassing for an officer to be thrown by his horse, and Patton had lost control of the animal not once but twice. Yet by refusing even to acknowledge his wound, he transformed potential humiliation into a tale told for quite some time in the Sheridan barracks.

  Other than the accident itself, there was nothing accidental about Patton’s actions. He was deliberately modeling himself as an exceptional officer. On another occasion, he expressed his annoyance that “for so fierce a warrior, I have a damned mild expression,”16 and he began practicing before a mirror to cultivate what he would later call his “war face”: the hard, glowering image that looks out from so many wartime photographs of the general. Patton was known to practice this war face his whole life, putting it on prior to appearances before the troops, much as actors put on their makeup before setting foot on stage.

  Patton spent Christmas leave in 1909 visiting the Ayer family and discussing marriage with Beatrice’s father. But he did not yet propose. On February 28, 1910, back at Fort Sheridan, Patton finally sent Beatrice a letter in which he managed to do no better than stammer, “If you marry [me] in June—please do.” Beatrice understood, replying by Western Union telegram: “Pa and Ma willing for June if you are rejoice.” 17

  The couple was wed at St. John’s Episcopal Church at Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, on May 26, 1910, and a lavish reception followed at the Ayer home in Pride’s Crossing. The Pattons spent their wedding night in Boston, then traveled to New York, where they boarded the liner Deutschland, which took them to a month long honeymoon in Europe. Patton recorded little of the sojourn in his diary, though he did note the singularly unromantic purchase of a copy of Karl von Clausewitz’s On War in London. Patton also got his first extended look at the French countryside, including some of the region that would become the trench-scarred Western Front of World War I.

  After the honeymoon, the couple settled into their half of the two-family house Patton had rented just outside Fort Sheridan. Although accustomed to much grander surroundings, Beatrice easily adapted to life as an army wife. She saw her mission as smoothing her husband’s rough social edges and doing everything else in her power to advance his career. By autumn 1910, she was pregnant, and, fluent in French, she passed the time collaborating with her husband on an English translation of a French military article. It was the first of many articles Patton turned out for professional military journals. He wrote not so much out of a burning desire to express his ideas on doctrine and tactics, as to attract attention. Nevertheless, his message was compelling, and, throughout a long career, it varied in detail but never wavered in principle: almost everything he wrote was some variation on attack, advance, and attack again. In this way, from very early in his career, before there was even a war to fight, Patton’s name became associated throughout the small universe of the professional American army with the doctrine of offensive warfare.

  On March 11, 1911, a daughter was born to the Pattons. They named her Beatrice. Now Patton thought harder and harder about how to raise his career to the next level. He prevailed on his father to help clear the way for his advancement by exploiting his connections, which extended as far as the office of the adjutant general, Major General Fred C. Ainsworth, a family friend. Patton also exploited the Ayers’ links to President William Howard Taft and his circle. By the end of 1911, Patton had obtained a transfer at to Fort Myer, outside of Washington, D.C.

  In the army of this era, Fort Myer was both a showplace and a center of power. It was the home of the Army Chief of Staff, and it attracted the kind of officers Patton had found in such short supply at Fort Sheridan: gentlemen. These men devoted much time to perfecting their horsemanship, which they regularly exhibited in fiercely played polo matches. Fort Myer was the very heart of America’s professional army and the place from which some of the most promising careers were launched. The Pattons left their modest midwestern half a house and moved into splendid on-post accommodations at Myer. They were quickly ushered into Washington society, Patton lunched with the movers and shakers at the best Washington clubs. One day, as he was riding along one of the fort’s numerous bridle paths, he encountered the secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson. An avid rider himself, Stimson took to the Fort Myer equestrian trails whenever the weather permitted. The two men—one a junior lieutenant, the other chief of the War Department—struck up a friendship destined to last their entire lives. Soon Patton found himself serving as the secretary’s uniformed aide at important social functions and was assigned the position of quartermaster for his squadron. This duty freed Patton from mundane troop details and gave him ample time to hone his horsemanship to a degree that earned him a place on the Fort Myer polo team and enabled him to compete in steeplechase competitions, which he did with reckless abandon.

  Patton’s horsemanship and his skill in fencing led to his nomination as the U.S. Army’s entry i
n a brand-new Olympic sport, the modern pentathlon, scheduled for the Fifth Olympiad to be held in 1912 at Stockholm, Sweden. The modern pentathlon consisted of five events—riding a 5,000-meter steeplechase, shooting a pistol on a 25-meter range, fencing, swimming 300 meters, and running a 4,000-meter foot race—together intended to represent a distinctly military scenario in which an officer carries a message on horseback, encounters an enemy force and has to shoot, fence, and then escape by swimming a river and running cross country. Although Patton was in excellent physical shape, he went on a crash course of training, cutting out tobacco and alcohol and eating a diet of raw steak and salad, as well as running hard. Patton, Beatrice (with little Beatrice), and his father, mother, and sister Nita sailed for Belgium aboard the Finland on June 14, then traveled from Belgium to Sweden, arriving on the 29th. Papa accompanied George to every practice before the games. In the end, Patton excelled in the fencing competition, defeating 20 of 29 competitors (an astounding result for anyone, especially an American), and finished third in the steeplechase. His worst showing was, surprisingly enough, on the pistol range, in which he placed twenty-first of 42 competitors. By the time of the final event, the 4,000-meter run, only 15 of the original 42 competitors remained. Although he never claimed to be a runner, Patton came in third. Then he passed out cold.

  “Will the boy live?” Papa asked Patton’s trainer.

  It was a serious question, to which the trainer replied, “I think he will but cant tell.”18

  He did recover, of course, was placed fifth in the overall pentathlon standings, and received generous praise from the Swedish press, which called his energy incredible and remarked of his fencing that his “calm was unusual and calculated. He was skillful in exploiting his opponent’s every weakness.” 19

  Before leaving Europe, Patton and his wife traveled to Saumur, home of the French army’s cavalry school, where Patton took two weeks of private lessons from an officer known to history only as Adjutant Clery, the school’s instructor of fencing and the man generally conceded to be the greatest fencer in Europe. Not only did Patton work on his own technique with sword and saber, he learned the outlines of Clery’s method of instruction, which he wanted to bring back to the U.S. Army.

  On his return to Fort Myer, Patton was invited by Army Chief of Staff General Leonard Wood to dinner in company with Secretary Stimson. Patton also joined the Metropolitan Club, watering hole for Washington’s power elite, and built an increasingly formidable reputation as a racer, both in flat competition and in the steeplechase. Patton rode like the devil, pushing himself to the edge of danger and beyond and, most of all, ensuring that the right people saw him push himself. “Advertising,” he called it.

  Making maximum use of Beatrice’s fluency in French, Patton wrote a detailed report of his experience with Adjutant Clery and thereby began to revolutionize mounted saber technique as it had been traditionally taught in the American cavalry. American cavalrymen were trained to slash, whereas, Patton reported, the French use the point of the sword, thrusting with the tip. Patton believed this was more effective and efficient than slashing, because it was much more suited to the verb attack. It brought the horse soldier into quicker contact with the enemy. Because the standard American army curved saber was intended for slashing, not stabbing, Patton boldly suggested adopting a straight blade to facilitate attacking with the point.

  Patton’s paper was circulated to the army adjutant general, who passed it through channels. It was subsequently published in a military journal, which drew considerable attention, and Patton mounted a minor campaign to get the official army saber changed. Assigned to temporary duty in the Office of the Chief of Staff, Patton was in contact with the most senior officers in the army. Early in 1913, Secretary of War Stimson, through the Army Chief of Staff, directed the Army Chief of Ordnance to manufacture 20,000 new cavalry swords according to the design drawn up by Second Lieutenant George S. Patton Jr. The U.S. Army Saber, M—1913, was born. Still in use, it is familiarly called the “Patton sword.”

  Patton loved swordsmanship and, even as late as 1913, genuinely believed there was still an important role for the sword in modern combat. He published a widely read article on the history of the sword in warfare in the Cavalry Journal, carefully drawing from the past lessons for present application. Yet one cannot help feeling that, in his advocacy of the weapon,

  Patton was less interested in the sword itself than in exploiting his popular and professional identification with it. The sword was a unique means of gaining renown, and renown was a means of advancing himself. He secured permission from the army to travel at his own expense to France for six weeks of advanced work at Saumur, to perfect his swordsmanship at the hands of Clery and to carry back to the army’s Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas, the details of Clery’s instructional method.

  After returning to the United States, he and Beatrice quickly packed for their move to Fort Riley. In some ways, Kansas would be a sharp comedown after the heady elegance of the capital, but Patton, who was to be a student at the Mounted Service School as well as an instructor in fencing, was given a majestic title the army created especially for him: Master of the Sword. The title was unique in the U.S. Army, and it was certain to draw attention to the young officer who held it. That, of course, was most excellent, but even more appealing to Patton was its romantic ring, suggesting an anachronistic nobility that savored of the age of chivalry. It was a long glance backward from a world on the cusp of a war in which neither swords nor chivalry would find a place. But Patton most certainly would.

  CHAPTER 3

  In Pursuit of Pancho Villa

  ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1913, PATTON REPORTED to the Mounted Service School, Fort Riley, Kansas, to enroll as a student and, simultaneously, as Master of the Sword, to teach his brother cavalrymen the art and science of the saber. Although Patton would emerge early in World War II as a great trainer of men, he did not enjoy teaching swordsmanship to officers who, for the most part, were senior to him and more or less obviously resented instruction from a brash second lieutenant in what they may well have deemed an outmoded skill. He also felt guilty for having torn Beatrice away from the glamour of Fort Myer in exchange for the dusty, dry, dull Midwest of Fort Riley. Although the quarters assigned to him and his family were hardly squalid, they were dreary enough. “You certainly have given up a lot on my account,” he admitted to Beatrice.1

  If Patton was discouraged, he never let his feelings interfere with his work. He studied hard, he taught diligently, and when the Cavalry Board asked him to compose a manual of regulations for the M—1913 sword he himself had designed, he plunged into the work. (Dyslexia notwithstanding, Patton proved to be a skilled writer.) Patton smelled gunpowder in the air in April 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered the occupation of the Mexican port city of Veracruz. To reestablish a friendly democracy in Mexico, Wilson wanted to force out of office General Victo-riano Huerta, who had assumed the presidency after the assassination of Francisco Madero the year before. Wilson was pondering military intervention when the detention of a small group of American sailors at Tampico forced his hand. On April 21, with the approval of Congress, Wilson sent a small amphibious party to seize control of the port of Veracruz in order to prevent the landing there of arms and other equipment being transported to Huerta aboard a German ship. After the landing party met stiff resistance, Wilson ordered a larger occupation of the city. Patton prayed for a full-scale war. To his father, on April 19, 1914, he wrote, “If the war is to be short there will be no chance for a man of my rank to make any reputation . . . But should the war last a long time ... a man with a reputation for personal ability ought to get a good volunteer or malatia [militia] command.”2

  Alas, General Huerta resigned the presidency on July 15, and although the Veracruz occupation continued until November 23, Patton’s hopes for a war, short or long, quickly faded. Yet no sooner had these prospects dimmed than all Europe obliged the young second lieutenant by be
ginning the slaughter of the Great War after Gavrilo Princeps, a consumptive Bosn-ian-Serb teenager, shot to death the archduke of Austria-Hungary and his wife as they drove through the streets of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Like most other Americans, Patton was not quite sure what this obscure European dispute had to do with the United States, but the war quickly exploded, engulfing the European continent. Surely, Patton thought, America would have to get into it sooner or later. And better sooner than later. On November 11, 1914, his twenty-ninth birthday, Patton wrote his papa: “I certainly am aging. ... I fixed twenty-seven as the age when I should be a brigadier and now I am twenty-nine and not a first Lieutenant.” His hair was even thinning. For Beatrice, however, he cast this fact in the rosiest light he could manage: “When I get less hair than I now have I will look like a German duelist.”3

  Master of the Sword or no, the twenty-nine-year-old second lieutenant was deeply frustrated by the dearth of opportunities for glory. For now, to anyone who would listen, he vented his rage against President Woodrow Wilson, who was determined to keep America out of war, even after American lives had been lost when a U-boat torpedoed the British liner Lusitania.

  Patton’s mood was brightened on February 28, 1915, when Beatrice gave birth to a second daughter, Ruth Ellen. But his graduation from the Mounted Service School in June meant that he would return to his regiment, which, he learned, was about to be deployed to the Philippines. Ever since 1898, when the United States acquired the Philippine Islands from Spain as part of the spoils of the Spanish-American War, a tour of duty here was virtually de rigueur for all young army officers. Patton was apprehensive because he knew that, more often than not, the Philippines failed to be a rite of passage and became, in fact, a dead end to an officer’s career. Always ready to pull whatever strings he could find, Patton secured 11 days of leave to travel to Washington, where he prevailed on influential friends to get him an alternative assignment. They managed to arrange a transfer to Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. To be sure, it was no garden spot and certainly less comfortable than a posting in Manila, but new troubles were brewing between Mexico and the United States, and Patton sensed the possibility of real action at this post.