PATTON: A BIOGRAPHY

by Alan Axelrod

  The weeks and then the months passed. Suddenly, late in November 1943, during a Sunday-evening radio broadcast from Washington, the popular columnist Drew Pearson made the slapping incidents public. Earlier in the year, Patton had been a media hero. Then he faded from the headlines, only to reemerge, in the wake of the broadcast, demonized as the darkest of villains and nastiest of bullies, the very kind of tyrant the Allied armies were fighting against. All the worse for Patton, Pearson leveled his criticism against Eisenhower as well, for having failed to issue an official reprimand. Sensitive to public sentiment, senators and congressmen clamored for Patton’s dismissal, some freely comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Secretary of War Stimson asked Eisenhower for a full report. A man of lesser character than Eisenhower might have been tempted to seek relief by turning against Patton and yielding to the public and political demand for the general’s head on a platter. Instead, he defended Patton on the basis of his record and explained that the personal, nonofficial form of reprimand had been intended to preserve a highly effective fighting commander, a leader whose skill, courage, and efficiency were not only effective against the enemy, but certainly saved the lives of the soldiers under his command.

  Through much of November and into December, the public and political uproar continued, then began to subside. Letters continued to pour into the office of the president and of the secretary of war, but their tenor shifted by the middle of December. Increasingly, they voiced support for Patton and forgiveness for his outburst. Some even suggested a promotion was due. Clearly, given time for reflection, most of the American public realized it wanted one thing above all else—to win the war—and Patton, with all his flaws, was a commander capable of doing just that.

  In the wake of the slapping incidents, Ike stood by Patton, but he made it clear that, had General Marshall asked for Patton’s relief, he would not have offered an argument. As Patton saw it, the slapping incidents were the reason he was passed over as commander of the American forces in Operation Overlord, the Normandy “D-Day” invasion. The incidents must certainly have reaffirmed in Eisenhower’s mind that Bradley, not Patton, was the better choice for the job, but that decision had been made months before the incidents became public knowledge. Eisenhower judged that Patton was a great combat commander, who possessed the rare faculty of always thinking in terms of attack. Yet the very qualities that made him fast and aggressive also created a certain instability and volatility, which, Ike believed, were barely under control. For the overall job of Overlord, from planning, through landings, to initial deployment, the unassuming and even drab Omar Bradley was the safer choice. However, Eisenhower reasoned, once the landings had been accomplished and the beachheads established—once the likelihood of out-and-out disaster had been reduced—Patton was just the man to lead an army in the breakout from the beachhead and the advance into the enemy’s heart. Whatever his liabilities, Patton would bring to the invasion the one asset without which it could never in the long run succeed: unremitting drive.

  Thus it is a myth that slapping two G.I.’s. cost Patton leadership of Overlord. The truth is that Eisenhower would never have chosen him for the job. But it is also true that, after the Sicily operation, Patton—whom the enemy considered America’s most formidable general—was put on the shelf. For 11 months following the capture of Messina, he was not present on the field of battle. Patton’s superiors were never quite sure what to do with him in the absence of an ongoing campaign, but the slapping incidents led them to lengthen his hiatus during a critical period in the war. In a very real sense, Patton had become a casualty of war, just as if he had suffered a disabling physical wound. It was the price of carrying within him the emotional equipment that drove him swiftly, daringly, and hungrily in combat and that, at the same time, rendered him vulnerable to the stress of warfare fought with the ceaseless intensity he himself created. The cost to Patton is known: 11 months on the sidelines. The cost to the Allied war effort can only be guessed.

  CHAPTER 10

  In England

  MESSINA FELL TO THE SEVENTH ARMY on August 17, 1943. As of that day, strictly on the basis of his record, George S. Patton Jr. was widely regarded as America’s best combat general, the conqueror of Sicily. Even more important in the long run, he had created an effective and victorious army, a splendid example of American military prowess and valor. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine how he felt when most of the Seventh was turned over to Mark Clark and he himself was left as a garrison officer in what had become an obscure corner of the war, facing the all-too-real prospect of being relieved of command altogether.

  It was January 1944 before the suspense was at least partially eased. On the twenty-second, Patton was ordered from Sicily to London, where, on the twenty-sixth, he was told that he had been named to command a new force, the Third United States Army. Now the only question was what he would be assigned to do with this outfit. The biggest, greatest, most consequential operation of the war, the invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europe, was being planned—by Eisenhower, Bradley, and others, without Patton. Grateful to be out of Sicily at last, Patton was nevertheless anxious to know just how long he would be staying at his new headquarters in the sleepy little Cheshire town of Knutsford, five hours outside London, as the war continued to swirl about the rest of the world.

  Patton wanted nothing so much as an immediate assignment to command an army already in combat; however, there were advantages to building an army from scratch. Although it was true, as he wrote to his wife, that “this thing of imitating God and creating new worlds out of thin air is wearing,” Patton did have the opportunity to mold the Third in his image, from the very beginning, instead of merely “rehabilitating” a unit, as he had done in North Africa with II Corps. He immediately requested Jacob L. Devers, now the senior U.S. commander in the Mediterranean theater, to transfer his principal staff officers from the Seventh Army to the Third. Devers obliged, and thus Patton had a staff he knew, trusted, and thoroughly controlled. For their part, his top staff, Hugh Gaffey and Hobart “Hap” Gay (chief and assistant chief of staff, respectively), and his key personal aides, Charles Codman and Alexander Stiller, plus his African-American orderly, Sergeant George Meeks, and his chief medical officer, Charles B. Odom, were fiercely loyal and quite willing to subject themselves to the total control of their boss. Patton considered these men his military family, and since no family is complete without a pet, he also acquired an English bull terrier, which he christened William the Conqueror. To his master’s chagrin, however, the dog soon proved itself timid and was especially terrified of bombardment and shell fire. As soon as he discovered this, Patton renamed him Willie. A coward, the dog also behaved with singular rudeness in the presence of women, mounting their legs and pushing his wet nose up their skirts. It is not clear how Patton felt about this, but he doted on the dog because, as he wrote to Beatrice, he “took to me like a duck to water.”1

  With his “family” established at Peover Hall, “a huge house last repaired in 1627 or there abouts,”2 Patton chose a code name for Third Army headquarters: Lucky. That portion of headquarters consisting of himself and his key officers was Lucky Forward, while the administrative section was Lucky Rear. Patton’s personal code name was Lucky 6. Throughout the war, the size of Third Army would vary from about 100,000 to a peak strength of 437,860 as its final campaign ended on May 8, 1945.

  As he had done in his previous commands, Patton began shaping his army by creating “perfect discipline,” beginning with the details of spit and polish—impeccably maintained uniforms complete with leggings and neckties (both of which enlisted men detested), observance of every military courtesy, precision in every movement and item of drill—then proceeding to intensive combat training, which Patton personally supervised. As usual, he was rarely in his headquarters and could instead be found regularly out in the field, appearing everywhere officers and men were being trained to do anything at all. To create officers in his image, he lectured frequently and issue
d a series of letters of instruction, perhaps the most important of which was the first, dated March 6, 1944. In it, his cardinal instruction was to “lead in person” and to take full responsibility for obtaining assigned objectives. Failing this, an officer who is “not dead or severely wounded has not done his full duty.” More specifically, commanders as well as staff officers (accustomed to working in the relative safety of a more or less remote headquarters) were to “visit the front daily.” There they were to “observe, not to meddle.” The leader’s “primary mission ... is to see with your own eyes and be seen by your troops while engaged in personal reconnaissance.” At the front, “praise is more valuable than blame,” and a good officer provides plenty of positive reinforcement for specific achievements. In addition, a personal presence at the front, Patton wrote, is essential to ensuring the effective execution of orders. Merely issuing an order counted for about 10 percent of a commander’s job. “The remaining 90 percent consists in assuring . . . proper and vigorous execution.”3

  Patton explained to his officers that, in battle, it is “always easier for the senior to go up [to the front] than for the junior to come back [to headquarters].” Officers were to visit the wounded frequently and award decorations promptly. Although such instructions required that officers risk their lives and frequently exert themselves, Patton also emphasized the importance of adequate rest. Tired officers were not only inefficient, they tended to judge situations pessimistically and, therefore, failed to act aggressively. Fatigue makes “cowards of us all.” There are crises in which “everyone must work all the time, but these emergencies are not frequent.” In counseling vigorous effort, Patton did not want officers to exert themselves needlessly. That was another reason for putting command posts as far forward as possible. Such a location would reduce time wasted in driving to and from the front.4

  As for maps, Patton wrote, they were certainly important, but mainly for the sake of telling a commander where his personal presence was required. Plans should be “simple and flexible,” and they should be “made by the people who are going to execute them.” Plans should be based on reconnaissance, providing fresh information—“like eggs: the fresher the better.” As with plans, so with orders. They should be simple and short. They should tell “what to do, not how.” Yet orders should be clear and complete and never keep anyone in the dark. “Warning orders”—advisories in advance of a move or action—were to be issued in good time and to everyone who needed them, including the support branches, such as the medical department, the quartermaster, and so on, as well as the combat branches. If the support units “do not function, you do not fight.” Responsibility for supply, Patton admonished, rests equally “on the giver and the taker.”5

  The letter of instruction, which is still read by army officers today, closed with one final admonition: “Courage. DO NOT TAKE COUNSEL OF YOUR FEARS.”6

  Printed aphorisms encapsulated something of the Patton spirit and style, but nothing could compare with the personal presence of this commander. As one young soldier wrote to his family after attending an address by Patton, “we stood transfixed upon his appearance. . . . Not one square inch of flesh [was] not covered with goose pimples. It was one of the greatest thrills I shall ever know. . . . That towering figure impeccably attired froze you in place and electrified the air.”7

  “I can assure you,” Patton addressed his troops on this occasion, “that the Third United States Army will be the greatest army in American history. . . . We are going to kill German bastards—I would prefer to skin them alive—but, gentlemen, I fear some of our people at home would accuse me of being too rough.” The young soldier wrote that, at this point, the general “slyly smiled. Everyone chuckled enjoyably. He talked on to us for half an hour, literally hypnotizing us with his incomparable, if profane eloquence. When he had finished, you felt as if you had been given a supercharge from some divine source. Here was the man for whom you would go to hell and back.”8

  Yet as the weeks rolled on, Third Army was not going to hell or anywhere else. Although Patton was commanding general of Third Army, he had virtually no role in the ongoing planning or overall direction of Operation Overlord, the upcoming Normandy invasion. Once again he was assigned duty as a decoy, part of an ambitious and comprehensive program of disinformation, which put Patton in charge of a fictitious army group preparing to invade France not by way of Normandy but at Pas de Calais. The most obvious place for an invasion, because it lay directly across Dover on the other side of the English Channel at its narrowest point, Pas de Calais was a gateway that opened onto the most direct route to Germany. Knowing that the German high command would assume that an invasion would arrive there, well up the coast from Normandy, the Allies built a vast decoy force at Dover, up the English coast from where the actual invasion force was being assembled. The decoys included plywood aircraft, inflatable rubber tanks, empty tents, and the shells of buildings, much of it ingeniously designed and fabricated by British and American movie studios, and all accompanied by the appearance of human activity, bogus radio traffic, and phony news stories. Using Patton, the general the Germans were known to most fear and respect, was perhaps the boldest stroke of the grand deception. As German high command saw it, where Patton was, that is where the invasion would come from.

  As if decoy work were not disagreeable enough to a man of Patton’s temperament, he was also obliged to keep a low profile, so that the press would not pick up too many stories placing him anywhere other than in and about Dover. Toward the end of April, the ladies of Knutsford opened a Welcome Club for American G.I.’s, a place for doughnuts, coffee, and conversation, all in the interest of cementing fellow feeling among allies. Invited to participate in the opening ceremonies, Patton at first declined. It was clear that the Allied sleight-of-hand was working—the entire Fifteenth German Army had been moved to Pas de Calais—and Patton did not want to risk compromising the deception by revealing himself to be at Knutsford instead of Dover. However, sincerely wishing to maintain good relations with the Third Army’s hosts, he finally decided to appear at the ceremony, but not speak. He even purposely arrived 15 minutes late, hoping thereby to avoid most of the proceedings. But the polite ladies of Knutsford waited for him, and, when he arrived, he was welcomed, introduced, and asked to speak. He could not refuse without giving offense, so he took the floor. No one could have predicted what happened next.

  Because Patton’s brief remarks were unscripted, his own recollection of the speech is the only substantial record that survives. He was mildly witty: “until today, my only experience in welcoming has been to welcome Germans and Italians to the ‘Infernal Regions.’” Then he went on to say that he felt “such clubs as this are a very real value, because I believe with Mr. Bernard Shaw, I think it was he, that the British and Americans are two people separated by a common language, and since it is the evident destiny of the British and Americans, and, of course, the Russians, to rule the world, the better we know each other, the better job we will do.”9

  “Innocuous” best describes the occasion and the speech. Patton, therefore, was stunned when, on April 26, army public relations officers were in an uproar. Despite Patton’s request for a publicity blackout of the Knutsford event, several newspapers had selectively cited his remarks— quite out of context—some even reporting that he had said that the British and Americans would rule the postwar world, omitting entirely any mention of the Russians. No one much cared about this in Britain— Prime Minister Churchill dismissed it as a tempest in a teacup—but American newspapers printed headlines trumpeting Patton’s insult to our gallant Russian allies. Even newspapers that did not object to insulting the Russians complained that the very idea of “ruling the world” was better suited to Hitler and Tojo than to the leader of an army of a democracy. Soon senators and congressmen were once again calling for the general’s dismissal.

  Patton was both devastated and bewildered. He understood why the slapping incidents had created a scandal, but this
? The sin, he protested, was in the reporting, not his remarks.

  Eisenhower, who had staunchly defended Patton after the slapping incidents, now wrote to General Marshall that he was “seriously contemplating the most drastic action,” sending Patton home. Marshall threw the matter back to Eisenhower, telling him that if he believed Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges (commander of First Army) could lead Third Army as effectively as Patton, he should not hesitate to sacrifice Patton. If, however, he was persuaded that Patton was the best commander for Third Army, Marshall advised bearing “between us . . . the burden of the present unfortunate reaction.”10

  Eisenhower summoned Patton to his headquarters on May 1. As Patton recalled it, Ike began the conversation with “George, you have gotten yourself into a very serious fix.” Patton interrupted: “I want to say that your job is more important than mine, so if in trying to save me you are hurting yourself, throw me out.” Eisenhower did not respond reassuringly to this gallantry. He bluntly told Patton that he had indeed become a liability and that there was a very serious question about his continuing in command. Patton wrote in his diary that he replied by expressing his willingness to be reduced in rank to colonel, provided that he be allowed to command one of the assault regiments: “this was not a favor but a right.” In his recollection of the interview, Eisenhower did not mention this but recalled only that in a gesture of almost little-boy contriteness, [Patton] put his head on my shoulder. . . . This caused his helmet to fall off—a gleaming helmet I sometimes thought he wore in bed.