PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY

by Alan Axelrod

  During his temporary duty assignment in Washington in the spring of 1919, Patton was named to a board tasked with writing a comprehensive manual for tank operations, and he served on a committee charged with making recommendations for improving the tanks themselves. In the course of his committee work, Patton met J. Walter Christie, a former technician with the U.S. Army Ordnance Department and now a race-car builder, driver, and all-round inventor. Patton and his former subordinate, Sereno Brett, were among a group that traveled to Hoboken, New Jersey, to look at Christie’s M1919, a tank that could reach 60 miles per hour, climb a two-and-a-half-foot wall, and leap a seven-foot-wide ditch. Patton and the others were impressed, and Patton personally championed the Christie design at the War Department. By 1924, however, interwar funding cutbacks ended the department’s involvement in developing the M1919 into a viable weapon. Nevertheless, it is likely (though no documentary evidence exists) that Patton continued personally to help finance Christie’s ongoing work with his own money. Whether this is true or not, Patton was instrumental in developing mechanical concepts that would figure prominently in the American army’s tracked armored vehicles of World War II, including the amphibious tanks that played vital roles in operations from the beaches of Normandy to the islands of the Pacific.

  Yet even working with Christie, whose company Patton enjoyed and whom he greatly admired, could not take the place of fighting in war— war, “the only place where a man really lives.”1 Patton worried that he was growing fat and lazy. He complained of having difficulty waking up in the morning. His malaise may have been aggravated somewhat by news about Pershing and Nita. The couple had been separated during the war, then were briefly reunited in London after the armistice. Now Patton learned that the relationship had been broken off. Whether the decision to end the affair was mutual is not known, but the facts are that Pershing never saw Nita again, he remained a single widower, and she lived the rest of her life as an unmarried woman.

  Patton threw himself passionately into polo, the closest thing he could find to combat, and, like many another man prematurely entering a midlife crisis, he bought himself a powerful car. It was a Pierce Arrow, as costly as it was beautiful (I “believe in enjoying myself between wars,” Patton remarked2), and he set out in it to visit Joe Angelo, the faithful orderly who had saved his life at the Meuse-Argonne.

  In addition to the technical papers he wrote in the months after his return from France, Patton also delivered a lecture to junior officers titled “The Obligation of Being an Officer.” The man who was quite literally involved in the nuts and bolts of the latest, most advanced military weapon spoke of today’s army officers as “the modern representatives of the demigods and heroes of antiquity,” standing at the head of “a line of men whose acts of valor, self-sacrifice and of service have been the theme of song and story since long before recorded history began.” His speech rose to a pitch of romantic eloquence—“Our calling is most ancient and like all other old things it has amassed through the ages certain customs and traditions which decorate and ennoble it”—only to penetrate abruptly to the hard bedrock of starkest reality: these customs and traditions “render beautiful the otherwise prosaic occupation of being professional men-at-arms: killers.”3 The fiercest of American warriors who had fought before Patton—Grant, Sherman, and Nathan Bedford Forrest—were willing to face the reality, but Patton embraced both reality and, unapologetically, the romance of his calling.

  The National Defense Act of 1920 left little room for romantics in the military. The strength of the army was capped at 280,000, and tanks were permanently attached, by force of the new law, to the infantry, where their development was sure to remain stunted as an auxiliary to combat. At Camp Meade, Patton had met another new apostle of the tank, junior to himself, Major Dwight David Eisenhower, West Point Class of 1915. Although Eisenhower (to his consternation) had been assigned to stateside training duty during the war and had not served overseas, Patton recognized in him a superb and energetic officer, a kindred spirit, and the two established a warm friendship. In the months before the cost-cutting measures mandated by the National Defense Act were implemented, the pair avidly discussed the promising future of tanks. But after the budgetary axe fell, both Ike and Patton left the grossly underfunded Tank Corps, which now seemed a dead end for any U.S. Army career.

  On September 30, 1920, Patton officially relinquished command of the 304th Tank Brigade and, on October 3, returned to the cavalry as commanding officer, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Cavalry, Fort Myer, Virginia. It was not war, to be sure, but it was one of the best places for a career army officer to spend time between wars. Patton and Beatrice picked up the thread of Washington high society where they had dropped it back in 1913, when they left Fort Myer for Fort Riley, Kansas.

  In 1923, Patton attended the Field Officers Course at the Cavalry School at Fort Riley. Beatrice and her daughters stayed with her parents in Massachusetts, where, on Christmas Eve 1923, she gave birth to a son, whom she named George Smith Patton IV. Patton continued his professional education at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, graduating in the top quarter of the class of 1924. This earned him a temporary appointment to the General Staff Corps in Boston, where he could be with Beatrice and their children. More important, the assignment was a prestigious one reserved for the most promising soon-to-be-senior officers. In March 1925, Patton was reassigned to the army’s Hawaiian Division at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, as G—1 (officer in charge of personnel) and G—2 (officer in charge of intelligence). Beatrice, who was still recovering from the difficult birth of George, remained in Massachusetts with the children. For obvious reasons, assignment to a tropical paradise was a plum posting, and Patton made the most of it. The climate was such that he could ride and play polo virtually every day of the year, which not only satisfied Patton’s appetite for violent exercise and warlike sport, but brought him into contact with the moneyed American aristocracy of the islands. For Patton, a military commander was an officer and a gentleman, and that meant someone who was welcome at the highest and most exclusive levels of society.

  During this period, Patton conducted a lively correspondence with Eisenhower, to whom he generously sent his full set of “Leavenworth notes” when Ike enrolled after him at the Command and General Staff College. The two wrote back and forth on the nature of combat, command, and Patton’s favorite subject, courage. Patton wrote that courage was the product of leadership and that it was the commander’s job to transform mere soldiers into heroes. The soldiers would not become heroes on their own. Whatever Eisenhower thought about this theory, he avidly studied Patton’s notes and ended up graduating from the college number one in his class. Patton congratulated Ike, but was quick to credit his notes for his friend’s success.

  By the end of 1925, Beatrice and the children joined Patton in Hawaii, and the next year he added the responsibilities of G—3 to his Hawaiian Department portfolio. Director of plans and training, G—3 was the only General Staff post Patton truly relished, one from which he could make himself heard on doctrine, strategy, and tactics. Yet in this post, Patton, now 41 years old, behaved much as he had when he was a West Point second corporal. He became “too damned military,” riding subordinate and fellow officers mercilessly for every error or questionable judgment. Within months, G—3 was taken from him. To this demotion was added the blow of Papa’s death, in June 1927, from the combined ravages of tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver. Patton was “absolutely undone” by the telegram announcing his father’s death, and he displayed what even Beatrice called “almost unreasonable grief.”4 When his mother, Ruth Wilson, died the following year, Patton seems not to have been profoundly affected; however, he later expressed regret that neither she nor his Papa would live to see him truly prove himself as a soldier.

  Despite taking G—3 from him, Patton’s commanding officers consistently rated him an outstanding officer, although one noted that he was “invaluable in war . . . but a disturb
ing element in time of peace.”5 Patton took this as high praise, but doubtless it was not intended that way. In any case, it was an uncannily perceptive appraisal.

  In May, soon after he lost G—3, Patton was transferred to the Office of the Chief of Cavalry in Washington, D.C. It was yet another staff job, but it also put him front and center in the great debate of the interwar American cavalry: How far should mechanization go? In the war between the horse and the machine, which should win? It was a wrenching issue for Patton, who loved horses and honored the traditions of the cavalry. His heart was with the animals and the men who rode them into battle, but his head was increasingly with the machines. Moreover, he believed that an infantry monopoly on armor would squeeze the cavalry ultimately into irrelevance. By the beginning of the 1930s, Patton found himself cajoling his fellow cavalrymen into opening their minds to the new machines. He told them that only cavalrymen could use light tanks the way they should be used— as the mechanized equivalent of horses, for mobility over rough terrain. He argued that the tank was here to stay and that if cavalry did not get control of the new weapon, cavalry would be permanently sidelined. But just as he began to prevail on his colleagues, Congress, laboring in the throes of the Great Depression, pulled the purse strings tighter. A short-lived experiment called the “Mechanized Force,” combining personnel from the cavalry, infantry, and artillery branches to operate tanks, armored cars, and other vehicles, ended just months after it had begun. Salvaging what he could with the shoestring budget he had, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur ordered all three service arms to continue experimenting with mechanization as best they could. This meant that the infantry kept its handful of tanks active, and the cavalry did the same with its few armored scout cars. But equipment was so scarce that meaningful unit maneuvers could not be conducted.

  Patton left the Office of the Chief of Cavalry during the summer of 1931, then took time off with his wife and children at Green Meadows, the grand home Beatrice had purchased for them on the banks of the Ipswich River in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. In September, he enrolled in the Army War College, at the time based in Washington. Only the most outstanding officers were selected for this, the army’s ultimate institution of higher learning. Patton emerged from the college a “Distinguished Graduate” in June 1932. His growing academic distinction, as well as his unflagging passion for books, demonstrates that the adult Patton had come to terms with his dyslexia. However, he was never entirely free of the disability. Throughout his career, Patton made it his practice either to speak spontaneously or to learn the text of his speeches by heart. Reading a full-length speech aloud in public still presented too many chances for embarrassing failure.

  In July, Patton was assigned as executive officer of 3rd Cavalry, at Fort Myer. Three weeks into his new job, he found himself embroiled in the first of several ugly episodes that would mar and even threaten his career. America’s veterans of the Great War were entitled by law to a cash payment—a so-called bonus—payable in 1945. The problem was that, by 1932, the Great Depression had put many veterans out of work. A grassroots veterans’ movement developed to demand from Congress immediate payment of the bonuses, and, in May, 15,000 to 20,000 “Bonus Marchers” descended on Washington in a demonstration designed to shame the legislators into releasing the bonus money. The members of the “Bonus Army,” which included Patton’s heroic orderly Joe Angelo, camped in the city and just outside of it, at Anacostia Flats, Maryland. Although the House of Representatives passed a bonus bill on June 15, the Senate voted it down. By then, the Anacostia Flats camp had grown into a sprawling array of tents, crates, and shacks, a squalid “Hooverville” (as similar Depression-era shanty towns were dubbed) skulking in the shadow of the Capitol dome.

  On July 28, after the Senate rejected the bonus bill, rioting broke out in the city. President Herbert Hoover ordered Douglas MacArthur to clear the marchers from Pennsylvania Avenue and the downtown area, but not to cross into the Anacostia camp. MacArthur ordered the 3rd Cavalry to ride into the city and await the 16th Infantry. As executive officer, Patton was not expected to lead men in riot duty, but the promise of action was too great a lure. He rode at the head of 217 men and 14 officers. While the regiment waited behind the White House, Patton rode out alone along Pennsylvania Avenue to assess the situation. He was cheered by some of the thousands of Bonus Marchers who lined the street. They recognized him from newspaper photographs that had appeared during World War I and even into the 1930s. Others jeered and hooted. Whether they recognized George S. Patton or not, they knew the uniform of a high-ranking officer when they saw one.

  At about 4:00 P.M. the 3rd Cavalry and 16th Infantry formed up, and the cavalry led the infantry down Pennsylvania Avenue. It was not a pretty picture: helmeted, armed with carbines and drawn sabers, a cavalry unit of the United States Army was acting against former soldiers of that same army on a principal street of the capital of the world’s oldest democracy. In response to agitation from the crowd, Patton and his men cleared the way by menacing rowdy Bonus Marchers with the very sabers their executive officer had designed. Those who refused to move were struck on the rump with the flat of the weapon. Patton personally administered several such blows. The avenue was quickly cleared.

  This accomplished, MacArthur personally ordered Patton to cross the Anacostia River and clear the Flats. It was a violation of the president’s direct instructions, but MacArthur, fearing that “Bolshevik” elements among the marchers would foment a full-scale insurrection, refused to accept the chief executive’s order. Accordingly, Patton and the Third Cavalry cleared the Hooverville on the Flats. In the process, some tents and shanties caught fire. The cause of the conflagration has never been determined, but the Bonus Marchers believed it had been set as part of the army’s deliberate assault.

  The government’s ugly response to the Bonus Marchers forever stained Herbert Hoover’s already troubled presidency. For his part, MacArthur was wholly unapologetic, claiming he had done what he did to protect the city and the government. Patton was not so sure. The idea of marching against former soldiers, including some he may have led in battle and one, Joe Angelo, who had saved his life, was “most distasteful.”6 Nevertheless, Patton believed with MacArthur that an insurrection was imminent, and he later defended his actions by claiming that they saved lives and property. As for the public, many Americans would long remember the image of a spit-and-polish United States military officer lashing out with his saber at unarmed men who had served their country and were now jobless, hungry, and unable to support their families.

  Except for the Bonus March incident, the Great Depression hardly touched the Pattons. Indeed, throughout his three-year tour of duty at Fort Myer, Patton led the life of a country squire, playing polo and riding to the hounds—and doing both with a reckless abandon that dared injury or death. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army on March 1, 1934, Patton was transferred to the Hawaiian Department once again, as G—2, in spring 1935. The same hunger for dangerous adventure that drove him to ride so hard and so recklessly prompted him to sail to his Hawaiian post from Los Angeles aboard his new yacht. Acting as skipper and navigator, commanding an amateur crew, and with Beatrice a passenger, Patton set out on May 7 and arrived in Honolulu on June 8. (The children would arrive later by regular passenger liner.)

  The sailing had been exhilarating, but, once he arrived at his new post, the exhilaration quickly faded. Patton was G—2, intelligence officer, a position he did not much care for. This time, even the tropical surroundings did little to make him feel good about turning 50 with no new war in sight. He began drinking to excess. His ardor for Beatrice cooled suddenly and deeply, and he earned a reputation as a local lady’s man. To his wife, he made little secret of his liaisons, and if she pressed the matter, he became by turns sullen and even verbally abusive. In truth, the affairs generally meant little to him—with the exception of a relationship that developed between him and his niece Jean Gordon, the beautiful dark-haired
daughter of Beatrice’s older half-sister and a close friend of the Pattons’ own daughter, Ruth Ellen. Jean was 21 years old when she apparently fell in love with Patton.

  One of Patton’s regular assignments during this period was to purchase horses for the army. He relished the duty, and he often took family members along on buying trips. Beatrice, Ruth Ellen, and Jean Gordon were to accompany him to the big island of Hawaii, where he was to purchase mounts from Alfred Carter, who ran the 500,000-acre Parker Ranch. Beatrice fell ill before the trip, and Ruth Ellen decided to stay home to look after her mother. Patton and Jean traveled alone together, and a passionate affair reportedly developed. Ruth Ellen and a few others who knew both Jean and Patton subsequently denied any romance. Jean, they said, loved Patton as an uncle, and he, in turn, loved her as a niece or even a daughter. But, in later years, Patton boasted of the affair, and it is certain that Beatrice believed the two were intimately involved.

  The grim fact was that life in the Patton household had become, more often than not, sordid, and on at least one occasion, Patton took the sordidness outside the family. During the Inter-Island Polo Championship in August 1935, Patton exploded at Walter Dillingham, a local manufacturing magnate and captain of the Oahu team, which was playing against the army team, captained by Patton. Dillingham collided with Patton, who cursed him as “an old son of a bitch,” then continued: “I’ll run you right down Front Street.” It was behavior not befitting what Patton deemed himself to be: an officer and a gentleman. As soon as the chukker ended, his commanding officer, Hugh Drum, relieved Patton of his captaincy and barred him from continuing to play. Only a protest to Drum by Dillingham and the captain of the Maui team restored Patton. They would not play, they said, if “George” did not return to the field.7