It is misguided to blindly worship or idolize anyone. Even our most revered heroes were human and flawed; but there are those we can look up to who excelled in their endeavors, who seemed to value and pursue a higher purpose no matter what it might have cost them. What would we have done without men like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, without military leaders like George Patton?
Patton was and remains the most effective battlefield general this country has produced in the last 100 years - maybe even ever. It is difficult to compare generalship when experience and events vary so widely. Some generals who may have been just as great maybe never had the opportunities to really shine. Others who were effective battlefield leaders perhaps just didn't get the press Patton did, because they weren't as "good" a story at the time (like Omar Bradley). But without doubt, Patton was, in terms of tactics, the very best of his generation. He found himself in the right war, in the right place, with the right army and equipment; the stars aligned just right for him, given his chosen profession. He himself recognized this and even publicly stated so -- in almost the same words I used.
Patton's was the consummate warrior spirit – and he knew not only how to inspire and lead soldiers, he also knew how to win a battle and a war. His biggest weakness was he was no politician; today, we seem to think that a man cannot have any flaws and still be any good. George Patton had his weaknesses and some of them were not insignificant. Absent war, he was a piece of work; he was at times a lost, depressed and wandering beast. He was often extremely arrogant; publicly, at least, he wasn’t known for any degree of humility. But in terms of generalship and his craft, that of prosecuting and winning war, I don't think he has an equal. Give the man his due... his results speak for themselves.
Of all our great WWII Generals, not one of them can stand next to Georgie in aggressiveness or willingness to engage, nor in battlefield effectiveness; not one. GSP had the will to fight and to win. More than once, Patton said that he loved battle. His tactics and learned-lessons still shape American armored doctrine today. If I had to go into battle, I'd want to serve under a general like Patton. Not that I'd want to... I'm not a fool. Unlike the General, I see no "glory" in the death and destruction of war; but I revere excellence.
If you have seen the film "Patton," you probably noticed that much of what he did was carefully planned for the greatest effect on his troops. He knew what made a good general – supreme confidence, competence born of thorough planning, swagger, drama and game. The film is very true to life by the way – the General said and did almost everything the movie script includes – often verbatim. Hollywood changed and misrepresented some of the settings and the chronology of the actual events, and some of the deeds or the relationships he had with others were mis-characterized.
If you listen carefully to the dialog in the film, for which Omar Bradley was an advisor, you can hear some of Bradley's disdain in their (movie) interactions. Reportedly, Bradley despised Patton. I am not so certain (and perhaps “despised” is too strong a word) – the two worked so closely together from 1942 on to the end of the war. Omar Bradley's memoirs relate some of the facts concerning Patton's stellar successes - and there were issues that Patton may or may not have been aware of. Some of these had the effect of making Patton look good, while making Montgomery appear less effective.
As I write this, I am reading Bradley's book and so far I have found it to be critically even-handed. Since GSP never got the chance to write his own unvarnished memoir, we don't know what he would have said about Bradley, once he was no longer restrained by the strictures of Army culture and politics. We have only his wartime diaries and notes, carefully shaped and redacted by his wife and advisors -- and much of the General's colorful (often crude) personality was skinned out. But in Patton's writings as they exist today, nothing I saw indicated anything but respect for his European-theater commander.
Montgomery and Patton quite often worked together in concert, not against each other. For example, in Sicily. Bradley portrayed their relationship as adversarial. Biographers have stated that Patton and Montgomery had a load of mutual respect and admiration for each other. They left that out of the film. In Sicily, the film shows Patton disobeying orders in order to beat Montgomery to Messina. It did not happen quite that way -- while there was most certainly rivalry between the two, Patton and Montgomery both knew what the other was doing and were working in concert, even if both generals wanted to beat the other to the objective.
The overall plan had been agreed upon and approved by the Allied commander in that theater. That bit of Hollywood falsification in the 1970 film (for the purposes of humor, perhaps) was a major disservice to two great generals. Patton was a loose cannon in many ways, but not in that way. Georgie was to Eisenhower, as Jackson or Longstreet was to Robert E. Lee; a trusted and effective executor of battle plans, no matter whose they were. Eisenhower knew and was appreciative of Patton's battlefield skills, even as he was stressed by his very public political liabilities. Field Marshal Montgomery was also a great commander, if a bit more cautious than was Patton.
Patton's Guns: The ivory-handled revolvers were the accouterments of Patton’s carefully cultivated image and the high drama he created around himself. This was showmanship and his keen sense of perfection in costuming; George Patton wore his uniforms much like a Latin-American dictator (or British royalty). He intended and planned to look like a general. His pistols were not always a matched set by the way. He originally had two matching Army Colts and their ivory grips were engraved (as was the bright-work on the guns themselves). If you can imagine what kind of pistol Buffalo Bill would have carried in his Wild West show -- you'll have a good mind-image of what Patton's Colts looked like. But he later gave one of those original Colts as a gift and afterwards wore a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver, usually on his left side. That one, at least, wasn’t just for show. While it also had an engraved ivory grip, it was the pistol he used if he found it necessary to fight. That happened more than once, as the General was prone to risk-taking and appearing (as well as working) near the front lines. He wanted his men to see that “generals could get shot at too.”
These mismatched sidearms were at least once accurately portrayed in the 1970 film – which surprised me. That level of accuracy to detail isn’t common in Hollywood. However, in most of the later scenes in the film, George Scott (as Patton) wore only one revolver. Patton also often carried a third weapon (tucked into his waistband, or under his field jacket in a shoulder-holster) – like the semi-automatic pistol he used in the film to shoot at the German bombers outside his headquarters in North Africa (that one was sometimes a .45, sometimes a .380). That was a true incident – including what he said about it in the film (that if he could find those two German pilots, he'd decorate them for showing up right when they did). George Patton was a master at training troops and building morale. Of course he knew he couldn't shoot down a German bomber with a sidearm -- but he wanted his men to see him standing alone and shooting at the enemy. That picture (and the mythic stories that arose from it) were worth six months of training when it came to morale and esprit de corps.
Why two and even three handguns? As a young officer, Patton served with General Pershing in the Mexican punitive campaign. Patton went off in search of Villistas one day, found some and started a gunfight with them. He killed some of them (including one of Villa’s top aides) and I believe he got his first decoration for his daring and bravery in that fight. In the event, he fired a revolver until it ran out of ammunition (five shots) and then had to stop and reload while others – several others – were all shooting at him. He never forgot how that felt – to be empty while other folks are shooting at you. After that he always carried more than one sidearm. The ivory grips? Well, he was a gentleman, after all, and as I've said, one who was more than a little bit interested in "putting on a show."
That fight in Chihuahua was the first time in history that American soldiers went into battle on an automobile. That's the way Georgie was -- he was an ancient warrior spirit but at the same time he was always looking for new ways to prosecute war, better ways to fight it, better ways to ensure that his soldiers got back home alive again. He used any means of mobility he could find, he spearheaded the use of tanks in the American army, he quickly grasped the advantages of fighting in concert with tactical air power, he adapted anything that gave his army the advantage. He might have been in some ways an historical anachronism but he wasn't trapped by it. When he made a mistake in battle he tried to learn from it and not make it again - and then he shared the experience with others. As a fighting man, he was the best of everything and he learned and adapted as he went along. He was willing to change the plan if he found it didn't fit the circumstances he found his army facing. If you are going to war, you need a General Patton to take you there.
By the way, if you'd like to see Georgie's side arms, complete with their ivory-grips... they are reportedly in the collection of this museum at Fort Knox. That collection also includes the Cadillac staff car the General was riding in when he sustained his fatal injuries in Germany in 1945.
No comments:
Post a Comment