by Alan Axelrod
As for General Pershing, Patton had clearly and deeply impressed a very important man; however, he had done so in more ways than he intended. Pershing would demonstrate his high regard for Patton by bringing him into his circle almost immediately after the United States entered the Great War. Before this even, however, in an October 16, 1916, letter to the convalescing Patton, Pershing not only wished him a rapid recovery, but felt moved to issue a warning against the dangers of self-absorption: “[D]o not be too insistent upon your own personal views. You must remember that when we enter the army we do so with the full knowledge that our first duty is toward our government, entirely regardless of our own views under any given circumstances.”17As much as he learned and would yet learn from the example of General Pershing, Patton probably never took these words to heart. Certainly he never found himself capable of putting them into practice.
CHAPTER 4
The Great War and the New Weapon
GEORGE S. PATTON JR. HAD EARNED A MEASURE of fame in the vain pursuit of Pancho Villa, fame as seductive as it was short-lived, but he had also endured more than a measure of boredom. This was not the war Patton longed for, but there was the inestimable career benefit of entry into the orbit of John J. Pershing. Having earned in Mexico the second star of a major general, Pershing was on his way up. Patton continued to serve as his acting aide until Pershing succeeded Major General Frederick Funston as chief of the Southern Department and left for his new headquarters in San Antonio. Patton stayed in El Paso with his cavalry regiment and was given command of a cavalry troop. He also easily passed
his promotion examination, which put him in line for captain. Nor did it hurt Patton’s prospects that Pershing and Nita continued to grow closer. Marriage seemed likely, even imminent.
At the end of the Punitive Expedition, Patton’s prospects were bright. Then they became brighter still. On April 6, 1917, just two months after Patton returned from Mexico, President Wilson, reelected to a second term on the campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” decided that the United States could no longer endure Germany’s assaults on its rights as a neutral. U-boat attacks on British liners carrying American passengers (including the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915) and the revelation of the infamous Zimmermann Telegram, in which the German government proposed to Mexico an anti-American military alliance, as well as the growing perception that German imperial aggression represented an enduring threat to democracy itself, moved the president to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Germany and the other “Central Powers.”
Yet the first Patton to try to get into the war was not George, but Papa. Hoping to find a worthwhile government appointment, he boarded a train bound for Washington. With him were his wife and daughter Nita. Because of Nita, they stopped in San Antonio to call on Pershing, only to discover that the War Department had just summoned him to the capital. All four took the same train the rest of the way to Washington.
At the War Department, Pershing received orders to organize a division, assume command of it, then take it to France as America’s first contribution to the Allied war effort. Pershing quickly drew up a list of officers, including Patton, he wanted for his staff. But before orders could even be cut, the War Department greatly expanded Pershing’s assignment. He would not lead a mere division to France, he would lead the entire “American Expeditionary Force” and command every single soldier the nation sent to Europe. At the same time, Pershing learned that the War Department was about to detail Patton to Front Royal, Virginia, to purchase horses for the army. It is a measure of the general’s regard for Patton that he personally saw to it that the order was rescinded and then directed the adjutant general on May 18 to send Patton a telegram, ordering him to report to him, Pershing, in Washington. The responsibility that had suddenly fallen to Pershing was awesome indeed. The army of 1916, from which the Punitive Expedition had been drawn, consisted of about 133,000 officers and men, and its high command occupied itself not with plans for major warfare, but with such issues as Patton’s new saber design and the new manual that accompanied it. Now, through a combination of conscription and patriotic enlistment, the army would grow explosively to 4.5 million men by November 1918. Some 2 million of these soldiers would be sent to Europe under Pershing’s direct command.
Patton’s focus was how best to exploit his great good fortune to be a member of Pershing’s inner circle. It would take months to send the whole army to Europe, but he, George Patton, having been promoted to captain on May 15, would be going “over there” almost immediately as part of the very first wave of Yanks. Papa was not so lucky. No one had a job for him in Washington, so he, his wife, and Nita returned to California, where Nita divided her time between volunteer war work and writing long letters to Pershing. Patton was one of just 60 officers and a mix of 120 enlisted soldiers and a handful of civilian clerks who embarked with their general for Liverpool aboard the liner Baltic on May 28.
The Baltic docked at Liverpool on June 8. From there, Pershing and his staff entrained for London and were welcomed at Euston Station by the American ambassador and others. Pershing was sumptuously accommodated in the luxury of the Savoy Hotel, while Patton and 67 men assigned to his command were sent to quarters in, of all places, the Tower of London. On June 13, Pershing and his staff left London for Paris. Patton took no pleasure in the celebrated City of Light, because there his war instantly bogged down, becoming a tedious matter of managing orderlies, looking after guards, and dispatching drivers.
It was July before Pershing even approached the actual front and took Captain Patton with him as his aide-de-camp. With Pershing, Patton inspected a contingent of newly arrived American troops training at St. Dizier. To Patton, the officers seemed lazy and the troops sloppy. The sight of these indifferent officers pretending to lead halfhearted half-soldiers must have seemed to Patton a vindication of his hard riding of West Point underclassmen during his brief stint as cadet second corporal. Here were the consequences of failing to be “too damn military.”
Another, equally significant epiphany was to come. By September, Pershing felt that he had trained a sufficient force at last to begin combat deployment. It was decided to put the first Americans in the relatively quiet Lorraine sector, and so, on September 1, Pershing moved his headquarters and staff from Paris to Chaumont. This small city quickly became a complex of training camps and military specialty schools, through which the growing stream of Americans soon passed. In addition to continuing his service as one of Pershing’s aides-de-camp, Patton was appointed post adjutant on September 13, charged with commanding the 250-man headquarters company and a motor pool of about 90 automobiles. It was not a satisfying assignment, and a cranky Patton rode his men hard, insisting on absolute efficiency and the flawless observance of discipline, soldierly appearance, and military courtesy. Whatever his men thought of this, Pershing was greatly impressed, and because it was certain that the Chaumont headquarters was going to grow both quickly and extensively, Patton was now in a perfect position for a larger command and a rapid promotion to major.
Proximity to the inner circle, rapid promotion—on the face of it, these were just what Patton had always hoped for. But, increasingly, he hated it all. Perhaps contemplating the antiaircraft guns over which he had command—but which never had to be fired—he confessed to Beatrice that he was “darned sick of my job” and that “I would trade jobs with almost any one for any thing.”1
So he started looking precisely for “any thing,” and what he soon found was a new, ugly, and utterly unproven weapon the British called the “tank.” When Colonel LeRoy Eltinge happened to ask him if he wanted to be a tank officer, Patton found himself answering yes. Then, after the fact, he talked the matter over with another officer, Colonel Frank McCoy, “who advised me to write a letter asking that in the event of Tanks being organized that my name be considered. I did so.” In this almost casual way, George S. Patton Jr. arrived at the service branch with which his name would be most intima
tely connected. He wrote to Pershing, presenting himself as qualified for tanks because their use was “analogous to the duty performed by cavalry in normal wars” and “I am a cavalryman.” Moreover, “I have always had a Troop which shot well so think that I am a good instructor in fire. It is stated that accurate fire is very necessary to good use of tanks.” Additionally, Patton cited his experience with gasoline engines and the use and repair of “Gas Automobiles,” his fluency in French (“so I could get information from the French Direct”), and his aggressive spirit and willingness to take chances. He closed by reminding Pershing of the shootout at San Miguelito: “I believe that I am the only American who has ever made an attack in a motor vehicle.”2
As an American tank service had yet to be inaugurated, Pershing held off responding directly to Patton’s letter, but instead asked him whether, after promotion to major (which would come on January 23, 1918), he wanted to continue on staff or command an infantry battalion. Patton responded instantly: he wanted to be with troops.
In mid-October, Patton began to feel ill. Examining himself in the mirror, he noticed that his complexion had turned to yellow, and he promptly reported to the base hospital, where he was diagnosed with “jaundice catarrhal.” He was put into the same room as Colonel Fox Conner, who was recovering from surgery for “stoppage of the bowel.” A fine officer who was an early influence on Pershing as well as George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Conner advised Patton to forget about tanks and try to become an infantry major. Patton agreed, but the very next night Colonel Eltinge came to visit, told him that an American tank school was going to be started at Langres on November 15, and asked Patton “would I take it. Inspite of my resolution to the contrary I said yes. But I kept discussing it pro and con with Col. F. Conner and again decided on Infantry.”3 Patton left the hospital on November 3 and when he was ordered on November 10 to take charge of the tank school, he worried that he had made the wrong decision. Almost immediately, however, he reconciled himself to what he now deemed his “destiny.” Besides, the really important thing was not whether he had a command in infantry or tanks, but that he was no longer tied to Pershing’s coattails. Association with the commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) had brought him a long way, but the time had come, Patton decided, for him to be seen making it on his own.
As if to lend a hand to destiny, Patton mentally tallied the advantages of getting into tanks. First was exclusivity. The infantry had lots of majors.
Patton would be the one and only major in tanks. Second was the civility of it all. Infantry in World War I was all about cold days and miserable nights in muddy trenches. Tankers fought only during attacks. In between these actions, they lived in the comfort of their warm, dry headquarters. (Patton loved to fight. He did not much care for getting dirty.) Finally: it was just possible that tanks might actually work. Few thought so at the time. They were loud, clumsy looking, and mechanically unreliable. In principle, however, they were able to traverse trenches, mow down barbed wire, and shuck off rifle and machine-gun fire while delivering artillery and machine-gun fire in return. These abilities gave them what the deadlocked trench fighters sorely lacked—mobility. The tank might just be the answer to a stalemate on the Western Front that had endured since 1914. At least, that is what it all meant in principle. “Of course,” Patton wrote to Papa on November 6, 1917, “there is about a fifty percent chance that [the tanks] wont work at all but if they do they will work like hell.” And he went on to outline what he called “the golden dream”:
1st. I will run the [tank] school. 2. Then they will organize a battalion. I will command it. 3. Then if I make good and the T[anks] do and the war lasts I will get the first [tank] regiment. 4. With the same “IF” as before they will make a brigade and I will get the star [of a brigadier general].
“Also,” Patton added, “the T. will be a great drawing card in the papers and illustrated magazines.” There was yet another advantage. Although the tanks themselves had a high casualty rate of 25 percent, the casualty rate among tank crews was about 7.5 percent “which is much lower than the Dough boys. Also in the tanks you are not apt to be wounded. You either get blown to bitts by a direct hit or you are not touched.” 4
Before he opened the American tank school, Patton spent two weeks at the French tank school near Compiegne to cram into his head everything he could about how tanks worked and what they could and could not do. Unlike the British heavy tanks, which were essentially slow selfpropelled guns, the light French tanks were rather like the mechanized equivalent of the mounted knight: mobile, armored, and deadly. He fell in love with the machines. At this time, from November 20 to December 5, 1917, while Patton was at Compiegne, the Battle of Cambrai was fought. It was the first time tanks had been used in battle in a major way. Nearly 500 British machines led infantry in an advance of more than seven miles over just four hours, a spectacular achievement in a trench war that typically measured progress in yards gained by spilling gallons of blood. However, before the battle was over, German counterattacks pushed the British back to their original lines. For Patton, the tanks had proved themselves. Now all that was needed was a commander capable of using them properly, of leading them with fearless aggression and ensuring that follow-up attacks would break through the holes the tanks had punched in the enemy’s defensive lines.
Patton was not the only officer who attended to the lessons of Cam-brai. Immediately after the battle, the new tank service was inundated with incoming applications for transfer. Patton, the first of what he now believed would be a new breed of soldier, congratulated himself on having made the right decision after all. Then, at the very height of his exhilaration, he suddenly confessed to Beatrice that he was “in quite a ‘Funk.’” On the verge of opening the tank school, he suffered a crisis of confidence that recalled his first year at West Point and anticipated the bouts of despair and depression he would suffer between the two world wars. The job, he wrote, “is huge for every thing must be created and there is nothing to start with nothing but me that is.”5
It was no exaggeration. Although a senior officer, Colonel Samuel D. Rockenbach, was named chief of the entire Tank Service (also called the Tank Corps) and had charge of American tankers training to operate the heavy British vehicles, Patton was expected, single-handedly, to create a force of Americans adept at operating the light French tanks. On December 15, 1917, he recorded in his diary: “This is [my] last day as staff officer. Now I rise or fall on my own.”6
The location chosen for the American tank school was perfectly suited to Patton’s profound sense of history. Langres had once been a Roman
Legion camp and, centuries later, a medieval fortress. Although Rocken-bach was his boss, Patton had superior technical and tactical knowledge and quickly persuaded the conservative colonel to do most things his way. He was also quick to impose his will on the 24 Coast Artillery Corps officers who were his first students. For them, lesson number one had nothing to do with tanks and everything to do with soldierly appearance and discipline. Patton was determined that those assigned to him would be good soldiers and good tankers—in precisely that order. Although this attitude harked back to his days as a cadet corporal, his concept of discipline had significantly matured. Discipline was not something to be achieved in and for itself, but was, Patton believed, essential to saving lives in combat because it was the means of ensuring “instant, cheerful, unhesitating obedience” to orders. Moreover, Patton never demanded top performance from his soldiers without giving them something commensurate in return. He ensured that comfortable quarters and hot meals were waiting for each of his new arrivals as they came, from the first two dozen to the increasing numbers that followed. From the beginning, Patton wanted his soldiers to be the best, and, as he saw it, that obligated him to ensure that they were treated as the best. This combination of demanding the utmost and giving the utmost in return created a special bond between Patton and the men he commanded.
Strong willed thou
gh he was, Patton also knew when to be politically savvy with his seniors. At Langres, he understood that most of the army was either contemptuous of the new weapon or felt threatened by it. In speaking to senior officers about tanks, he always defined and described their role as subordinate to infantry, a support and adjunct to the all-important business of the foot soldier. If he had a vision of eventually molding the Tank Corps into an autonomous service arm, he kept it to himself and instead concentrated on getting even the most tradition-bound of infantry officers to appreciate the potential of the new, loud, ungainly weapon.
Anxious as he was to get into the field, Patton took time out to attend the Army General Staff College in Langres. He longed for adventure and glory, but he considered himself, first and foremost, a professional soldier. The experience at the college put him into contact with the likes of George C. Marshall and Adna Romanza Chaffee Jr., both of whom would go on to top positions in the army’s high command, and Patton himself continued to advance, gaining rapid wartime promotion to lieutenant colonel on April 3, 1918, after having been a major for just three months.
On August 20, 1918, while he was attending a lecture at the Army General Staff College, Patton was handed a note summoning him to Colonel Rockenbach’s office. The American army was about to mount its first big independent offensive of the war, against the St. Mihiel salient. A great German pocket bulging into the Allied lines, the St. Mihiel salient had been, since 1914, the object of one unsuccessful and costly Allied attack after another. Now, at last, the Americans would be given a crack at it—and the tanks were to be a part of the assault.
On August 24, Patton officially organized the 304th Tank Brigade (also called the 1st Tank Brigade). The French delivered some 225 light tanks to equip two American battalions. Of this number, Patton’s brigade received 144 tanks. Before they arrived, Patton made meticulous preparations. Not only did he plot out every detail of the expected delivery and reception of the tanks, from their unloading at the rail head to their deployment to the front, but he set out on a hazardous reconnaissance patrol to assess the German lines and also to personally confirm that the ground on no-man’s land was firm enough to support the vehicles.
