72
AUGUST 21, 1944
WEST OF PARIS, FRANCE
1:30 A.M.
George S. Patton has no interest in taking Paris.
The general is exhausted. The last two weeks have seen his Third Army punish the enemy, racing across France so fast that he needs a personal airplane to direct the battles. Most recently, Patton’s army very nearly encircled the Germans in what will become known as the Falaise Pocket. He did not succeed but won the battle decisively before the enemy snuck away through a gap in the Allied lines. The fields of western France are piled with thousands of dead from both sides. An estimated 50,000 Germans have been taken prisoner but just as many have gotten away.
So Patton is relieved to finally get a moment’s rest. No sooner does he close his eyes than he is summoned on important business. The general is in disarray as he carefully picks his way through the grove of poplars encircling his temporary headquarters. A faint poacher’s moon is the only light. Patton’s hair is uncombed and uniform shirt untucked. Arriving at a large olive drab tent, he pulls back the heavy canvas flap and steps into the thin illumination of lantern light.
Three men wait inside. Everyone is speaking French. Two wear uniforms. The third is a thirty-nine-year-old Communist resistant with a receding hairline wearing a dirty rumpled suit. His name is Roger Cocteau, code name “Gallois.” The Parisian has traveled far and risked his life to be here.
“Excuse me,” Patton says in casual French—“Pardon.” He does not introduce himself. “I’ve been sleeping. OK. I’m listening. What’s your story?”
As intelligence officer Colonel Robert F. Powell, one of the men in uniform, already knows, Cocteau has quite a tale to tell. The resistant has made it his mission to convince General Eisenhower to liberate Paris. Cocteau has crossed through German lines and nearly gotten shot in his quest. Paris is rising up. Small-arms fire, bonfires, barricades. The people are starving, now more than ever. The Normandy landings and subsequent destruction of French rail lines have choked off all access to food. What little arrives in the capital is hoarded by the Germans. Now the people are rebelling and Resistants are coming out of hiding to wage gun battles in the streets with the occupiers. The bloodshed will be enormous if the Allies do not step in soon.
The words rush out of Cocteau, rehearsed since he fled Paris days ago. Patton does not interrupt.
“You’re a soldier and I’m a soldier,” Patton tells the Frenchman when the saga is complete. “I’m going to answer you as a soldier.”
Patton tells Gallois that his job is defeating Germans, “not capturing capitals.” Racing across France requires all the gasoline the Allies can muster. Taking Paris would mean allocating some of that precious fuel to the city. In addition, the U.S. Army would have to feed the 3.5 million citizens of Paris—an extraordinary task, considering that all those rations would have to be driven two hundred miles by truck from the Atlantic Coast. In Patton’s estimation, the Resistance should take full responsibility for starting the uprising—and finishing it—themselves.
Patton extends his hand and wishes Cocteau well.
But the general’s answer is no.
A stunned Roger Cocteau remains in the tent as Patton steps back into the night. Energy whooshes out of him as he is overcome by exhaustion and rejection.
George S. Patton stands alone in the dark, pausing on the way back to his cot. As a historian and believer in reincarnation, the general sees war from an unusual perspective, believing he been present at many battles in past lives. This campaign across France is new for him, despite forty years in the Army during this current lifetime and all those battles from ancient times. Instead of just being a commander, he is a conqueror, knowing full well that history will judge him by his battle strategy and the benevolence or ruthlessness shown to the vanquished.
The failure to close the Falaise Pocket and prevent the escape of those thousands of German soldiers was a crushing disappointment to Patton. But in that failure he now sees an opportunity that will transcend this day and this month and even this war. All those escaping Wehrmacht soldiers will be waiting when the U.S. Army gets around to chasing them. This opens the smallest of strategic windows, allowing the Allies to assist the insurrection in Paris before moving on.
As a man who speaks French, once lived in France, and proudly spouts a personal motto based on French audacity, Patton has a deep affinity for this country and its people. From the basement meeting in a Louisiana high school that pointed him toward armored combat and the command he now holds, the arc of the general’s life these past four years points firmly toward the opportunity now before him.
Long after historians stop writing about his march to the Rhine, General George S. Patton will be immortalized for taking Paris.
Roger Cocteau has nowhere to go. He still sits in the tent with Colonel Powell and his fellow officer, a resistant named André Babois. There is nothing to talk about.
Suddenly, General Patton steps back into the tent holding a bottle of champagne and glasses.
“Are you ready to take a long voyage?” Patton asks, pouring a toast for everyone in the tent.
Upon draining his glass, Cocteau is driven to meet General Omar Bradley, a man who might be able to change Eisenhower’s mind about Paris.
The time is 3:30 a.m. when Patton goes back to bed, taste of champagne still on his tongue, once again proving there’s no telling what George S. Patton will care about.