“General Patton, as usual, was eager to be moving forward. For months he had eyed the concentration of two German armies in the Palatinate (between the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Sauer). He felt that this campaign would have to be in three phases: (1) drive the small concentration of troops out of the triangle between the Moselle and the Sauer; (2) push forward to the Rhine and to Koblenz; and (3) the final and main objective, the destruction of the German armies in the Palatinate. General Bradley was most reluctant to approve this campaign. He, after consulting with General Eisenhower, as late as 8 March stated that it was foolish to think that an attack with armor could be made across the Moselle and through the Idarwald Mountains.
“On 9 March, the Army Commander, after leaving careful plans with his Chief of Staff and having made a code to be used between himself and his Chief of Staff, left for a visit to General Eisenhower’s headquarters. That evening, at about 8 P.M., the Commanding General of the XII Corps, General Eddy, called the Chief of Staff on the phone and stated that he had secured a bridge intact across the Moselle. The Chief of Staff called General Patton and told him this and asked for authority to launch the preplanned Palatinate campaign. After consulting with General Eisenhower, General Patton said, ‘Go ahead.’ At midnight that night, General Eddy again called the Chief of Staff on the phone and stated that his first report was in error; that they did not have a bridge over the Moselle. The Chief of Staff said that he must be mistaken; that he must have a bridge over it by morning; that the campaign would go ahead; and then he added, ‘Matt, if you don’t do it, I shall be a private!’
“The general plan of this campaign, which was most successfully launched by the Third Army, was:
“VIII Corps—General Middleton—continue harassing in the area of Koblenz
“XII Corps—General Eddy—with five divisions, cross the Moselle; move rapidly in rear of the German troops occupying the Siegfried Line
“XX Corps—General Walker—with six divisions, attack from a position twenty to thirty miles south and west of Trier.”
“This attack of the XX Corps was to give the Germans the opinion that it was the main effort. Thus, the movement of divisions to this corps. In fact, however, the main effort was by the XII Corps.”
February 20, 1945. The day before leaving for Paris the General took quite a spectacular trip. In the teeth of terrific opposition and fearful weather the 5th Infantry Division had just crossed the Sauer into Germany, a feat comparable to the amazing river crossings of the peerless 90th. Dashing in a peep across a narrow smoke-screened pontoon bridge, under and over which the current is running fast, can be a little nerve-racking, especially under fire. However, it passed off without mishap. Our boys on the other side were quite surprised to see the General, and he in turn, in spite of graphic reports, was astounded by the elaborateness and ingenuity of the German pillboxes. Here an old farmhouse with a false front concealing heavy armor plate and half a dozen machine-gun emplacements. There an innocent-looking barn whose door at a touch swung open to reveal the muzzle of an 88 peering through six feet of reinforced concrete. Both were successfully taken from the rear.
“Now I know the Germans are crazy,” the General said. “No more crazy, however, than our own directive from on high to maintain an M ‘active defense,’” he added bitterly. “There are times when I’m sorry the word ‘defense’ was ever invented. From the Great Wall of China to the Maginot Line, nothing, anywhere, ever, has been successfully defended.”
I know of no one who would get more of a kick than yourself out of crossing the German border and seeing the bombs and shells falling, for a change, on German houses, German towns, and the German countryside. A satisfactory day.
P.S. I have a feeling that as time goes on, the General’s interpretation of the term “active defense” will become more and more personalized.
February 22, 1945. Celebrated Washington’s and my birthday by carrying a suitcaseful of Bronze Stars up and down two lines of twenty Army nurses whom the General proceeded to decorate. Thence to 4th Armored for more decorating. Finally, XX Corps, where the General learned to his intense disgust that one of the division commanders had succeeded in losing a bridge train. He was very angry. General Walker even angrier, which is perhaps why General Patton, who has a very high opinion of General Walker, contented himself with saying, “You should have seen that it was in place. So should I. We have all three fallen down on the job.”
In parting he added, “General X will lead his division across the river in the first boat, or, if necessary, swim.”
Am writing this while waiting at the airstrip for General Bradley, who is coming up to visit the General, presumably for the purpose, as Paul Harkins says, of “getting his batteries charged.” As a matter of fact, General Bradley and our General have seen eye to eye on practically every matter of importance. Throughout the entire Ardennes campaign, General Bradley never once interfered and since then has been doing everything in his power to persuade SHAEF to let Third Army carry the ball. I believe that each has deep respect and considerable affection for the other, and that furthermore, the tactful and understanding manner in which the relative reversal of their command roles has been handled reflects great credit on them both.
And so endeth my fifty-second year, most of which, it seems to me, has been spent in the back seat of a peep.
March 1, 1945. General Walker called after lunch to say that Trier had fallen to the 10th Armored. The inside story of this bootleg operation will, I think, shed interesting light on the General’s implementation of “active defense.”
March 10, 1945. Yesterday, we flew to Namur for a big get-together at General Bradley’s headquarters in the Château de Namur overlooking the Sambre and Meuse. General Juin conferred the Legion of Honor, Grand Officier, on the General, also on Generals Doolittle, Bradley, and Hodges. Other ranks, Commandeur, I think, were awarded to Generals Vandenberg, Simpson, Brereton, and Gerow. A large dinner and a good time were had by all. Between the fish and the roast the General was handed a wire stating that a bridge over the Moselle had been taken intact. On the strength of this message General Bradley then and there O.K.’d Third Army’s plan, and General Patton at once left the table to put in a telephone call. On his return, he stopped for a moment to speak to Juin, who had been needling him a bit for allowing Hodges to steal a march via the Remagen Bridge.
“When you get back to Paris,” the General said, “don’t fail to read your favorite newspaper. Within a day or two you will see who is stealing a march on whom.”
The telephone call had been to General Gay giving him the order for the attack on Koblenz.{54}
March 13, 1945. Last week the General, Colonel Campanole, and I went to a dinner party at the Wendels’. They have a vast château some distance south of here, and I remember Bunny said he used to go there for the shooting. The Ironmaster himself was away, so the honors were done by Madame de Wendel, a wonderful old dragon, d’origine grecque, with a rich bass voice. The big sitting room with its heavy furniture is reminiscent of Louis Bromfield’s House of Women stage set. So are those present: le Comte et la Comtesse de Mitry, he, one of the Wendel managers, she née Wendel; their two daughters, Hélène et Marie-Thérèse, aged sixteen and eleven respectively; the mayor of Metz; a sénateur whose name escapes me; and Mademoiselle Ségolène de Wendel, dark and decorative, though scarcely in the first bloom of youth.
The General was in a genial mood and throughout the evening obliged the gathering with picturesque and gory incidents of the recent campaign. Campy was on Madame’s left but devoted most of his time to the somewhat puzzled sixteen-year-old on his left.
The dinner, “un petit dîner de guerre,” according to our hostess, was superlative and beautifully served by two ancient white-gloved retainers. A really good bouillon with custard cubes, trout from the nearby Wendel stream—arrosée de Bollinger ‘37—a salubrious volaille au riz accompanied by the best Burgundy I have had in a long time.
“What is it?” I asked the Comtesse.
“Oh, vous savez, moi, les vins—” She shrugged. “Sans doute un Bordeaux quelconque.”
“You find it good?” Mademoiselle de Wendel asked.
“Better than good. What is it?”
“Guess.” A dirty trick.
“A Corton—1923 perhaps?”
“Not too far off,” she said. “Hospice de Beaune, Cuvée Charlotte Dumay, 1915.”
Despite her oenological shortcomings, the Comtesse is quite nice, and almost pretty in a blond bien-élevée kind of way. “It is not possible that those young ladies are your daughters,” I said, meaning it for once.
“Not only are they my daughters,” she said, “but from where they came from—at home, I mean—there are seven more, nine in all.”
“Incredible.” Then, by way of making conversation, “Do you happen to know Madame Paul-Cavallier of Nancy, mother of six?”
“Madeleine and Michel? Naturally, Ils sont de la maison.”
The French iron and steel business evidently believes in self-perpetuation. An exception may be Mademoiselle Ségolène de Wendel, who at any rate does not lend herself to ready classification. Not really good-looking, yet not without charm. Prisoner in Germany for almost a year. Questioned by the Gestapo for twelve hours a day for a solid week. Rather vague as to how she got out. Wish there were more time to look into this.
During the drive home the General turned to Colonel Campanole.
“What do you think of our magnate friends?” he asked.
“Fine, substantial people,” Campy said earnestly. “Nothing cheap about them.”
The General loved it.
Back in my room to find the best of nightcaps—a letter from you. How strange that you should have received a letter from Marin la Meslée{55} the same day his death was announced. I know how you feel about it, and am terribly sorry. Have written to Louis de Fouquières for further particulars but so far have received no answer. All I know is that on a dive-bombing mission he was shot down by flak.
March 21, 1945. What a month this turned out to be! The start of the attack had something of the feel of our breakout from the Cotentin, though, of course, the terrain could hardly be more dissimilar. By March 12, Third Army had closed in on the Moselle from Trier to its confluence with the Rhine just south of Koblenz. Within twenty-four hours the attack, which may prove to be one of the most spectacular of the entire war, was on. By March 21, two German armies had been annihilated, the entire Palatinate had fallen, and we were on the Rhine.
The General, as you can imagine, has been busy. On the fourteenth we took a fast run up to Trier to visit 10th Armored. The city is badly beaten up. From there we headed for General Maloney’s 94th Division, which is now doing a good job, and from there to 80th and 26th Divisions. The following day, visit to General Middleton, who outlined his plan for taking Koblenz.
On the morning of the sixteenth, telephone call from General Bradley to say that General Eisenhower and Beetle had been prevented by weather from landing at his headquarters and were probably hovering over ours. We rushed out to the airstrip to find that they had, in fact, just landed. General Eisenhower spent the night, and as usual, when he and General Patton actually get together, everything was hunky-dory. At our briefing the next morning, the Supreme Commander astounded us all by rising to his feet and making a speech. “The trouble with you people in Third Army,” he said, “is that you do not appreciate your own greatness; you are not cocky enough. Let the world know what you are doing, otherwise the American soldier will not be appreciated at his full value.”
After the briefing we proceeded to the airstrip, where the General’s C-47 had been set up to fly the party to Seventh Army Headquarters at Lunéville for a conference with Generals Devers and Patch. Five minutes out, we were met by our Air cover. It gave one an unusual feeling of security to watch our nimble P-51’s weaving and swooping by the windows on either side.
General Eisenhower, who had just approved assignment to Third Army of another Armored division, the 12th, continued in expansive vein. “George,” he said, “you are not only a good General, you are a lucky General, and, as you will remember, in a General, Napoleon prized luck above skill.”
“Well,” the General laughed, “that is the first compliment you have paid me since we served together.”
General Devers and General Patch were at their airstrip to meet us. The conference, whose purpose was to correlate the attack, fix boundaries, etc., had for once all the earmarks of love-fest. Everyone most cooperative. Well pleased with his visit, General Eisenhower left in his own plane for Rheims. As the doors were closing he called out to General Patton, “Tell Morris,” he said, “that if Tenth Armored takes Saint-Wendel before nightfall, I will give him a medal.”
After some further discussion of details with General Patch, we took off for our own headquarters.
Cutting across the eastern suburbs of Nancy, we passed directly over the French airdrome atop the Plateau de Malzéville. Many of the installations were new to me, but the woodland about the plateau’s edge quite recognizable. The co-pilot came back to say he had radioed our E.T.A. to the airstrip at Luxembourg.
Above and ahead, the wings of our P-51’s glinted in the afternoon sun. I could not help thinking that aviation had come a long way since that other afternoon almost exactly thirty years ago when from the field below us a French pilot in an open Voisin bomber treated me to my first tide in an airplane.
At dinner the General was relaxed, gay. “I think Ike had a good time,” he said. “They ought to let him out oftener.”
“What I can’t get over,” General Gay said, “was his statement to the effect that Third Army isn’t cocky enough. How do you explain it?” “That’s easy,” the General said, stirring his soup. “Before long Ike will be running for President. Third Army represents a lot of votes.” Sensing the half-incredulous smiles, he looked up sharply. “You think I’m joking? I’m not. Just wait and see.”
It looks as though the Palatinate campaign, which the General considers unique, is pretty nearly all over but the shouting—and the exchange of the kind of telegrams Generals love to send one another, e.g. Gerow to Patton: “Congratulations on your brilliant surrounding and capture of three Armies, one of them American.”
Patch to Patton: “Congratulations on your being the last to reach the Rhine.”
Patton to Patch: “Thanks and congratulations to you for being the first to be kicked off the Rhine.”
Gerow’s message was, of course, a dig at Seventh Army. The Patton to Patch report referred to the withdrawal of a corps soon after Seventh Army’s early arrival on the Rhine.
This morning at breakfast, the General announced we would fly to General Eddy’s XII Corps Headquarters, now somewhere near Simmern.
“Have two Cubs set up,” he said. “We’ll leave at ten.”
Between here and there, a lot of fluid territory and a certain amount of reported German Air. Unfortunately, the General takes a dim view of Air cover. “It’s all right for Ike, if he wants it,” the General says, “but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to waste gas and fighter-pilot hours protecting a couple of Cubs.”
Nevertheless, at the briefing I tipped off General Weyland.
“Only please don’t quote me, sir,” I said.
“O.K.,” he laughed. “It will be just a coincidence.”
At ten o’clock, strapped in the oversnug confines of our diminutive crates, we took off over the hills. The sun was warm, and for the first quarter hour the heat columns tossed us about like corks. At three thousand feet, the air smoothed out and we settled down to a nice even gait over the slowly unrolling spring countryside under a blue empty sky. Correction: SWOOSH—a fighter plane diving out of the sun roared over us. SWOOSH—another one, across and under. The Cubs careened madly as the pilots, taken unaware, now watched the two wide semicircles described by the returning fighters. Close on our left, the first one eased up in a virtual stall. The cowling was slipped back. A wave. A grin. Colonel Brown, Chief of Staff of XIX TAC. Second fighter on the right. Same maneuver. Wings almost touching those of the General’s Cub. Open cowl. Wave. Grin, a wider grin. General Opie Weyland. Seconds later, each shirred off in skimming turns ending in two spectacular zooms. For the next half hour they cavorted all over the heavens. Quite a show. Then, with a final waggle of wings as our airstrip became discernible, they disappeared into the blue.
“You don’t fool me, Codman,” the General said, easing himself out of his greenhouse. “I saw you talking to Opie at the briefing. However”—he pursed his lips—“when the Air cover is that high class, I guess I can’t complain.”
Next day, a kind of return match. “Opie,” the General said at the briefing, “I’m going to run up and visit the Eightieth and the Tenth Armored and also take a look around in the direction of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. Want to come along and see how the other half lives?”
“Yes, sir,” General Weyland said with alacrity. At nine o’clock we pulled out of the headquarters yard in the General’s peep. General Weyland sat behind with me. Due east to Saarburg, then southeast to Saint-Wendel, which the 10th Armored had finally taken without benefit of a medal from General Eisenhower.
General Weyland really got an eyeful. The smashed-up towns and villages, from whose remaining window frames hung sheets, pillow-cases, anything white betokening surrender, à la Sicilian. The stunned, silent inhabitants going sullenly about their business amidst the rubble. Higher headquarters kept issuing warnings of Werewolves and last-ditch stands, but so far the German populace had given little trouble. Now and then a village completely intact, bypassed, presumably, by our headlong advance.
“Of course, we may have to come back here and create another Third Army memorial,” the General said, “but for the moment they seem to get the point.”
In Kaiserslautern, General Weyland had an opportunity to view with satisfaction and in detail the handiwork of his own outfit. They had done a nice job.
Most of the road signs had been removed or reversed by the departing Wehrmacht, and in the next town I distinguished myself by getting the party hopelessly lost. After finding ourselves for the third time in the same square, we stopped. A crowd of civilians with a sprinkling of tattered uniforms clustered slowly, deliberately around the peep. Even discounting the Werewolves, it was not entirely pleasant. My German, as you know, is negligible and I was getting nowhere fast when a tall gangling figure with a red beard and green corduroy pants pushed his way to the front.
“Puis-je vous être utile?” he said.
“Vous êtes français?” I was much relieved.
“Enfin”—he shrugged—“je parle français.”
It seems we were in Frankenstein, hardly reassuring under the circumstances, and that to gain Neustadt, our next objective, it would be necessary to turn back and take a detour. Having cleared matters up, he saluted, murmured Bon voyage, and melted backwards into the staring, impassive crowd.
“Practically Old Home Week,” the General said, as Mims let in the clutch and the crowd parted. “Wonder what the hell that Frog is doing here.”
“I don’t think he wanted to be asked,” I said.
The road to Neustadt runs through dense woodland bordering a ravine. The day before, one of our tank companies, together with a company of armored infantry on the way north, had run head on into a German supply column coming south. Ten miles from Frankenstein we came upon what remained of it. It was all there, but no longer on the road. Cannoned, machine-gunned, or simply pushed over the edge, hundreds of splintered vehicles, dead horses, and Germans literally filled the deep gully below. For a time we viewed it in silence. Finally the General spoke up.
“That,” he said with awe, “is the greatest scene of carnage I have ever witnessed. Let’s go home.”
March 23, a red-letter day, or, more accurately, the dawn following a red-letter night, for just before midnight of the twenty-second, the advance elements of the 5th Infantry Division, following out the General’s careful and very secret plan, stole silently through the little vineyard town of Oppenheim, embarked upon waiting boats and rafts, and paddled across the River Rhine. For obvious reasons, I could not write you that Al Stiller had pleaded to be allowed to accompany the expedition and that the General had acquiesced. Accordingly, Al took part in the first assault landing across the Rhine. The Germans, who had been encouraged by us to expect a crossing attempt near Mainz, were so surprised that the early resistance was almost nil and our casualties hardly exceeded a total of thirty.
Bright and early in the morning the General was on the telephone to Twelfth Army Group in Namur. “Brad,” he shouted, “we’re across.”
A muffled exclamation. “Across what, George?”
“The Rhine. And you can tell the world Third Army made it before Monty.”
Next day we flew to Bad Kreuznach to meet General Eddy and Stiller, who had returned to corps headquarters over the newly in-stalled pontoon bridge. From there we proceeded to Oppenheim, through the town, down to the barge harbor, from which the Oppenheimer vineyards are plainly visible. The General’s manner was casual as he led the little procession across the low-lying bridge. Halfway across he stopped.
“Time out for a short halt,” he said. Walking to the bridge’s edge, he surveyed the slow-moving surface of the great river. Then without further comment, suited action to the words, or a paraphrase thereof, of the old Rip refrain from “Plus ça change”—Je fais pipi dans le Rhin pour embêter la flotte allemande.
“I have been looking forward to this for a long time,” the General said, buttoning his trousers.
Where the bridge met the further shore the grassy bank had been churned into sand and loam. As he stepped off the last pontoon the General stumbled, sank to one knee, steadied himself against the bank with both hands. Rising, he extended his fingers, allowing two handfuls of earth to sift groundward.
“Thus, William the Conqueror,” the General said.{56}
March 25, 1945. This morning, a letter from you. The right way to start a new day. No, the yarn about the General swimming the Moselle in full regalia to rush dripping into the fierce battle raging on the further shore is apocryphal. Unfortunately, the story has gained considerable currency and I only hope that it will not give the General ideas.
Actually, he spent most of the day packing, as tomorrow or the next day we shall move our C.P. into Germany. Prince Felix called to say good-by.
“My wife has a shooting lodge in Bavaria not far from Bad Tolz where we occasionally go in the autumn,” he said. “If you should hap-pen to pass near there we would both appreciate it if you could let us know whether the house and our old caretaker are still extant.”
Another caller was Margaret Bourke-White, who came to the house and took a lot of pictures of the General and also of General Weyland, who had her in tow.
Photos were also taken, but not by Bourke-White, of the three hundred thousandth German prisoner to be captured by Third Army. He was processed today and seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.
March 26, 1945. Accompanied the General on a flight across the Rhine, an impressive sight from the air. First stop, General Eddy’s headquarters, where the General ordered an expedition sent to Hammelburg to liberate nine hundred American prisoners reported to be in a P.O.W. camp there. Al Stiller, who now really has blood in his eye, is going with them.
Next we flew to Bad Kreuznach on what proved to be a very sad mission. Colonel John L. Hines, Jr., the son of General Patton’s old friend, General Hines, was terribly wounded leading a tank attack near Frankfurt. While standing in the open turret he received a direct hit from a German 88. In spite of the loss of his upper jaw, nose, and both eyes, as well as several fingers of his left hand, he managed to retain consciousness long enough to radio General Gerow and report the situation. When we arrived at the hospital, Colonel Hines was on the operating table. His chances of survival appeared slight.
“At least, I can tell his father that I saw him and that he was not in pain,” the General said.{57}
Thoughts jotted down during the flight back: It is strange how imperfectly and incompletely the hard, bright light of modern publicity reveals the character of those on whom it is directed. Take General Patton. What impression of him as a man has the public received from the press? Primarily, I should think, a kind of two-dimensional colored cartoon of a swashbuckling, sulfur-breathing, pearl-handled “super-man” packaged in tinsel and labeled Old Blood-and-Guts. It is fair to say the General has done little to discourage this type of portraiture, and on occasion has even played up to it. Skill in public relations as such has never been his forte. His whole being is concentrated on the job in hand; his standards, values, and preoccupations antedate the technique of present-day publicity. For what seems to have escaped most contemporary journalists is the fact that General Patton is not a contemporary figure.
To be sure, he has contributed to the science of warfare professional proficiency of the highest modern order. More significantly, however, and it is this that sets him apart, he brings to the art of command in this day and age the norms and antique virtues of the classic warrior. To him the concepts of duty, patriotism, fame, honor, glory are not mere abstractions, nor the shopworn ingredients of Memorial Day speeches. They are basic realities—self-evident, controlling. Bravery is the highest virtue, cowardice the deadliest sin. For him, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth holds no hint of irony, and death upon the battlefield is a consummation devoutly to be wished. In the time of Roger the Norman or in ancient Rome, General Patton would have felt completely at home—with one important qualification having to do with an overriding characteristic of the General himself.
I am sure you are aware of the quality I have in mind. To those close to him it is obvious. To his commands in the field it is a quality sensed rather than perceived. To the public at large it has been overshadowed by the publicized version. And yet the voltage of that quality was potent enough to galvanize hundreds of mothers, fathers, grandparents, wives, sisters into pouring their hearts out on paper. I refer, of course, to the voluminous mail which flooded our headquarters at Palermo after the two soldier-slapping incidents, and which it fell to me to classify. It was not a difficult job. There was no middle ground. Every letter was either for the General or against him. The letters of protest, in many cases both obscene and anonymous, confined themselves to ringing the changes on “You are a cowardly so-and-so for striking a defenseless enlisted man.” The pro-General letters, mostly from relatives of servicemen, also bore a close resemblance one to another. “I want you to know we are proud our son is serving in your Army,” a typical letter ran. “From the newspaper accounts we are not clear as to exactly what you did and why, but we want you to know we are for you. Keep going and God bless you.”
In the first tabulation, all communications from personal friends of the General were eliminated. The results: letters of protest, 11%; letters in support, 89%.
It seemed to me at the time—and still does—that even more striking than the decisive percentages was the fact that not one of those who expressed their good will had the opportunity or the possibility of knowing at first-hand that side of the General’s nature which remains thoroughly unpublicized: the side of his nature which on countless occasions in Africa, Sicily, France, Luxembourg, and now Germany impelled him to visit, unheralded and unsung, the wounded of our field and base hospitals. Not one of his correspondents had seen him standing, or sitting, or kneeling by a bedside or cot, the hand of a desperately wounded soldier in his—the murmured words of encouragement and the pain in his own eyes, the measure of this man’s innate humanity and kindliness. Yet, surely, if mysteriously, these correspondents must have sensed the quality which seemingly eluded the commentators and the politicians—the quality of compassion. The simple truth of the matter is that all his life General Patton has been obsessed with an almost neurotic aversion to suffering and cruelty in any and every form. It is this quality—so difficult, nay, impossible to square with the business of war making—which sheds light upon some of the contradictions and anomalies of the General’s character.
The tough vocabulary, the emphasis on frightfulness, the simulated rages, so many symptoms of the conflict between his inner nature and the demands of his chosen medium. The disparity sometimes, though not often, leads him astray. After bawling out a delinquent in his own inimitable manner it is not unusual for the General to remark, “A good cussing-out is the only way. I’ve got to make them more scared of me than they are of the Germans.”
Well, on such matters one doesn’t argue with the General, but when you come right down to it who, other than the enemy, is scared of him? Not his staff, nor his household, nor his drivers and orderlies. Not his dog, at whom in public he thunders and in private croons a kind of baby talk. Not the exhausted division commander whom the General has brought back to his own quarters, patted on the back, put to bed, and, a day or two later, sent off refreshed, rejuvenated, recharged—confident in the knowledge that whatever is in store, he will be backed to the hilt. Certainly not the tanker or the rifleman up front to whom the name of Patton means the captain of the winning team, a captain who demands much, but nothing that he himself has not done or is not prepared to do. No, other than the congenital shirker, the phony, and the misfit, I can think of no one under his command who has reason to be unduly scared of the General. His gift for leadership is based not on fear but rather upon a dynamism of total dedication and communicable humanity.
There are signs that already the old gory legend of the profane, hard-drinking, hard-living primitive is beginning to wear thin, and since, upon inspection, even its superficial aspects fail to pass muster, future biographers and historians should have little difficulty in piercing its speciousness. The General’s language—picturesque; when addressing troops, freely sprinkled—mostly for laughs—with goddams, S.O.B.’s, a few four-letter words, and those scatological rather than pornographic, as our old friend, le professeur Louis Allard, used to say of Rabelais. In more than two years under the same roof, tent, or sky, I have never heard the General tell a really sacrilegious or dirty story or encourage the telling of one. Alcoholic intake? Except on very rare occasions, an average of one whiskey-and-water before the evening meal, and possibly (when and if available) a glass of wine with it. The fair sex? Any serious interest on the General’s part in any women other than the members of his own family would be news to me. Tobacco? Here we are on thin ice, for, to the General, cigars could indeed be a dissipation. His nicotine tolerance is low and tobacco irritates his throat. However, a household conspiracy organized by Charley Odom in which humidors and cigar boxes are mysteriously emptied or just disappear has proved reasonably successful in holding him down to three or less stogies a day.
What does that leave? Gluttony perhaps? Well, the General’s breakfast consists of cereal, two eggs, tea, and toast. Lunch, one course usually, cold meat or hash, and a dessert. Dinner, soup, an entree or roast, vegetables when available, dessert, coffee. Since the beginning of the French campaign, he has on trips to the front eliminated lunch entirely, as a waste of time. This means that Al and I are reduced to concealing dry rations in our pockets with the hope of nibbling them unnoticed. To this end a division latrine often serves a useful and double purpose.
Only once since North Africa do I remember the General taking any particular interest in food, other than that it be simple, wholesome, and not too hot. It was upon our return to the royal palace at Palermo after that rugged alfresco session up in the mountains and olive groves of Sicily. It was our first sit-down dinner with knives and forks and a tablecloth in weeks. The meat was overcooked and one of the vegetables burned.
“What we need is a good caterer,” the General said. “I wish I could remember the name of the man who used to produce those chicken croquette lunches around Myopia before the war.”
“Creed?” I hazarded.
“That’s the man,” the General said. “Find out where he is and get him over here by air right away.”
It took thirteen months and as many top-priority cables for the General’s requisition to catch up with Captain Edward Creed on duty at the Quartermaster School, Fort Lee. Since joining us at Étain, he has reorganized not only the General’s mess but the entire system of food supply and service to all Third Army hospitals. In terms of morale dividends, the Captain has already proved a blue-chip investment.
And now I see the airstrip ahead so will close this rather rambling letter with an incident having perhaps a certain bearing on the foregoing. It was early morning in our first Normandy apple orchard and I had knocked on the door of the General’s trailer. He had finished shaving and was standing before the glass pensively stroking his jaw.
“Codman,” he said without turning round, “I wish to hell I had a real fighting face.”
“I should have thought it was a reasonable facsimile,” I began.
“No, no, no,” he said impatiently. “You are either born with a fighting face or you are not. There are a lot of them in Third Army, Paddy Flynn, Stiller, and many others. Having practiced for hours in front of the mirror, I can work up a fairly ferocious expression, but I have not got, and never will have, a natural-born fighting face.”
And there for the moment let us leave the General’s unresolved problem—the reconciliation of the fighting soldier and the gentle man.