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1

May 31, 1944

Camp Bewdley

Stourport, England

Day

General George S. Patton is being introduced.

Blustery English weather. Forecast calls for rain. Officers and enlisted brace in formation before the reviewing stand. Patton stands at attention next to an American flag and unit standards. The general took command on January 26. He has already given this speech to other divisions of his Third Army several times. Its words will be unlike anything these men have heard before.

Patton, a general unlike any these men have seen before, is counting on that.

These soldiers watched him drive up in a chauffeured black Mercedes, noted the polished cavalry boots and Caesar-like entrance-motorcycle escort, brass band, honor guard. It's impossible to believe that four years ago this regal being was a washed-up colonel trying to decide whether his future lay in riding a cavalry horse into battle or embracing armored warfare.

Patton wisely chose armor. Animals have no place in modern tactics. The general's genius for tank warfare has been the making of him, fueling his rise to three-star general.

These assembled soldiers don't know that. They just know he's their commander, soon to lead them in battle. Curiosity courses through the audience as they wait to pass judgment.

"We are here to listen to the words of a great man," begins General William H. Simpson, today's bald and lean three-star master of ceremonies. The audience is so large that Simpson uses a microphone and loudspeaker.

"A man who will lead you into whatever you may face, with hero'sm, ability, and foresight. A man who has proved himself amid shot and shell. My greatest hope is that someday soon, I will have my own great army fighting with him, side by side:

"General George S. Patton, Jr."


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Patton steps to the microphone. "Be seated."

No jokes. No attempt at levity.

No chairs. Wet spring grass. No hesitation. Patton waits until they drop to the ground and sit cross-legged, arms hugging knees, cold water seeping against their backsides through cotton khaki pants. Left unsaid is that the mild discomfort is like nothing they will endure in combat.

Despite the spectacle, today's speech and every other talk the general has given to Third Army in the past month is top secret. Soldiers cannot write home about it, talk in the local pub about it, or in any way admit that they have seen and heard George Patton.

The general opens with a simple declarative statement: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

The audience laughs. Patton looks just the way these men imagined, a real fighting general, the very image of fitness and polish. Yet the high-pitched voice is quite a surprise.

"Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle."

Heads nodding. Jaws set. Thoughts of That's me-hopefully.

"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."

Patton talks without notes. Nobody notices the high voice anymore. What began as a speech is now a monologue spoken with conviction and comradery.

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent 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 honor, 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 it 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 through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call 'chicken shit drilling.' That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes."

Fuck.

The general just said fuck. Everyone smiles, even the officers: I really want to be like Patton. I really want Patton to like me. Come to think of it, I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes, either.

"You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sock full of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

"An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!"

Patton doesn't allow a beat for laughter, pushing the pace, driving his point.

"We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do. My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!"


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Patton looks out into the crowd. Sees that look, the one he sees every time he gives this speech: I'm a real man, those faces say. I can do that. I can kill Germans bare-handed with a bullet in my chest.

The general pauses, lets that soak in.

"All of the real hero's 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 soldier 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, goddamn it, 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. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on KP has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the GI Shits.

"Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious firefight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes sir, but the goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!'"

Again with laughter. But now with tension, imagining what it will be like to be in a "furious firefight." No one wants this soliloquy to end.

Everyone wants to follow General George S. Patton into battle.


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"Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts.

"Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.

"Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Someday, I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.' We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

"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 . . ."

Home.

One word. So many meanings. Everyone wants to go home: feather beds, corner bars, civilian clothes, sleeping late. Yankees, Dodgers; Cardinals, Cubs. Bottomless cup of coffee. Girlfriends.

If Berlin is the way home, then let's get the hell into Berlin.

Patton doesn't linger on home. No time to wallow. No time to let these soldiers think about the other things back home, things they can't control from 5,000 miles away. Like wondering if their special someone is dancing and drinking and fornicating with the draft-dodging 4-Fs. That's the worst thought of all. Let a man think about that too long and he won't think about anything else.

"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket."

Now the meat and potatoes of the speech. Despite his talk about the men being veterans, most are newly arrived from America. They didn't fight in Africa or Italy. Patton now reminds them who they are, what they're fighting for, and plants the seed that these regular young American men are capable of becoming legendary warriors.

And Patton adds an inside secret, as one who has been there before.