GEORGE S. PATTON, JR
Rallying speech to the US Third Army before D-Day, 5 June 1944
GEORGE S. PATTON, JR
Born 11 November 1885 in San Gabriel, California, into a family with a military tradition.
He graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1909. He received a commission in the cavalry, and led a small armoured attack into Mexico (1916) as part of the US response to the incursions of ‘Pancho’ Villa. He also saw tank service during World War I, when he was wounded (1918). In the 1920s and 1930s he was a vigorous advocate of tank warfare, eventually leading to the formation of US armoured divisions. After US entry into the Second World War, he commanded the Western Task Force in capturing Casablanca (1942), and in March 1943, now a lieutenant-general, he took control of II Corps in North Africa. For the Allied campaign to capture Sicily (Operation Husky) in July–August 1943, he led the US Seventh Army supporting Montgomery’s British Eighth Army. In 1944 he was given command of the US Third Army, which, after D-Day (6 June), thrust across France and into Germany. Postwar, after criticizing de-Nazification policies in Germany, he was removed from command of the Third Army.
Died 21 December 1945 in Germany, after his car struck a truck. He is buried in Luxembourg among the soldiers who died in the Battle of the Bulge.
There is a popular image of a type of American military commander that is beloved of Hollywood: aggressive, blunt, bursting with foul-mouthed machismo, but determined, loyal and effective. The archetype is George Smith Patton, Jr, who rose to the rank of general and played a key role commanding the US Seventh and Third armies in Europe in 1943–5, as the tide of fortune in the Second World War turned against Nazi Germany. Nicknamed ‘Old Blood and Guts’ by his men, Patton was colourful and controversial. He was quick-tempered, tough-minded and outspoken. He was also a disciplinarian, but his own example gained him loyalty from his men.
By June 1944, Patton’s reputation had been reinforced by his command of the US II Corps in North Africa and then, leading the Seventh Army, his contribution to the Anglo-American capture of Sicily in 1943. Now he was to lead the US Third Army as part of the D-Day (Deliverance Day) landings of 6 June 1944, the hazardous – but successful – attempt to gain an Allied footing in France. ‘Operation Overlord’, as the offensive was codenamed, was intended to open up a western front against the Germans, which Stalin – his Red Army bitterly fighting the Germans in the east – had long called for. On the evening before D-Day, Patton addressed his men at their camp ‘somewhere in England’, as the deliberately vague official description has it.
The speech is typical of Patton’s forthright and profane style, which nevertheless portrayed battle as a great drama, ‘the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge’. Never using notes, Patton always addressed his men in the most direct terms, focusing on practicalities such as the basics of survival. Patton himself said of his swearing, ‘You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity.’ He recognized the naturalness of fear in battle and the inevitability that not all men would survive. But for Patton, true soldiering was about overcoming fear through higher values, so that ‘a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honour, his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood’. The speech, in various reports and partial records, passed into military folklore, and in 1970 a version of these words opened the feature film Patton, starring George C. Scott as the eponymous general.
From D-Day, the Third Army was to be involved in 281 days of combat, during which it achieved a spectacular sweep through France and across the Rhine, then into Germany and Czechoslovakia. The servicemen encountered determined resistance, notably at the Battle of the Bulge in December and January 1944–5 as the Germans attempted a counter-offensive.
Patton had warned his men in his 5 June speech that ‘Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men.’ It came to the general, though, not in the heat of battle, but as a result of a road accident soon after war ended, in December 1945. Patton may have barely outlived the war, but his larger-than-life personality and genuine military achievements established an enduring legend.
. . . YOU ARE HERE TODAY FOR THREE REASONS. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two per cent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are.
The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honour, his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they are He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.
. . . All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, goddamnit, Americans don’t think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war.
. . . Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!
. . . There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that 20 years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won’t have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, ‘Well, your granddaddy shovelled shit in Louisiana.’ No, sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named Georgie Patton!’