George S. Patton, Jr., was America’s most colorful general of
World War II, and one of the most controversial. He was one of
the few Americans to have combat experience with tanks in World
War 1; in the years between the wars he became one of the U.S.
Army’s leading exponents of armored warfare. His first important
mission in World War II was as commander of the Western Task
Force in “Operation Torch,” in which he quickly and efiiciently
overwhelmed the Vichy-French defenders of Morocco. He next
commanded the American Seventh Army in the invasion of Sicily,
an operation in which his theatrical flamboyance and his hard-
driving military skill received equal press attention. Particularly
spectacular was his armored drive which captured Palermo. An
emotion-charged incident in which Patton slapped a hospitalized
soldier whom he suspected of trying to avoid combat received
even greater attention, however. Because of the fuss caused by
this incident, Eisenhower relieved him of his command, and Patton
went into temporary eclipse.
Patton’s sun rose again, however, with greater brilliance, when
his newly established American Third Army broke through the
German lines around the Normandy beachhead in late July, 1944.
This was the beginning of one of the most thrilling pursuits in the
history of war, and “Old Blood and Guts” drove himself and his
men in a ruthless chase after the defeated Germans across north-
central France. The pursuit ended in mid-September, when Pat-
ton’s army, approaching the German frontier near Metz, ran out
of gasoline.
Forced by lack of supplies to remain relatively quiet until mid-
December, Patton had just begun a new offensive when the Ger-
man breakthrough in the Ardennes caused Bradley to order the
Third Army to strike north against the southern side of the “Bulge.”
In an amazing display of operational and logistical skill, Patton
changed the direction of his attack by 90 degrees in less than
twenty-four hours, and in a blinding blizzard drove north to relieve
Bastogne on Christmas Day.
His next exploit was another example of operational and admin-
istrative skill in an armored and infantry drive through the Rhine-
land in close coordination with the Seventh Army. Following this,
his army was supposed to halt, while the main Allied effort was to
be made by Montgomery’s British-American 21st Army Group.
But, without the knowledge or permission of his superiors, Patton
secretly crossed the Rhine a hundred miles to the south, one day
before i\1ontgomery’s long-planned and carefully rehearsed cross-
ing. Patton then began another vigorous armored drive to the east
and northeast, first linking up with Simpson’s Ninth Army to sur-
round more than 500,000 Germans in the Ruhr, and then driving
eastward. His army’s spearheads halted in Czechoslovakia and
Austria shortly before the German surrender.
Patton was one of the great field commanders of American his-
tory, taking a place alongside such flamboyant and competent
soldiers as “Stonewall” Jackson, Nathan B. Forrest, and Philip
Sheridan.
Shortly after World War II Winston Churchill stated that it was
“a wonder of military history? how America's small prewar army
was expanded in a short time to a “mighty force of millions of
soldiers . . . victorious in every theater. . . He added that it was
“a mystery as yet unexplained” that this expanded army could find
leaders “capable of handling enormous masses and moving them
faster and farther than masses have ever been moved in war
before. . .
