The Yanks Are Coming! (23 page)

THE CAVALRY

Patton benefited from having six years of formal military education. He graduated at twenty-four, accepting a commission in the cavalry and duty at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He liked the men, considered his commanding officer a true gentleman, but had doubts about some of the other officers, especially those who had come up from the ranks. In 1910, he was married to Beatrice Ayer, a family friend he had long courted. She, though Patton paid scant attention to this, came from a wealthy family. It wasn't money that mattered to him, but the fact that she was poised, pretty, and polished (she had been educated in Europe, spoke French, as did he, and played the piano). He credited her strength of character with strengthening his own. She also helped his spelling, as he now took to writing articles on military subjects (as well as riding to hounds, playing
polo, and other recreational endeavors appropriate for an officer and a gentleman). She bore him two daughters and a son.

At the end of 1911, he was transferred to Fort Myer, Virginia, where many senior officers lived, making it a prime duty post for an ambitious cavalryman. But aside from his ardor for his duties and his active social life with the right sort of people, Patton was starting to make his mark as an athlete—indeed, in 1912 he represented the United States at the Olympics, competing in the modern pentathlon, which tested a competitor's equestrian skills with a steeplechase, marksmanship with a pistol, fencing, swimming three hundred yards, and running cross country two and a half miles. The event reflected the actions that might be required of an officer delivering military dispatches. He came in fifth.

Back home, he wrote an article that led to the 1913 redesign of the U.S. Cavalry saber. In the fall of 1913, he was sent to the Cavalry School at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was to be both student and instructor, serving as “Master of the Sword.” At his own expense, he went to France to hone his swordsmanship before taking up his new post. When war erupted in France in 1914, Patton wanted to take up the sword in earnest, fighting in the French army. He wrote to General Leonard Wood asking for his advice and assistance. Wood replied, “We don't want to waste youngsters of your sort in the service of foreign nations. . . . I know how you feel, but there is nothing to be done.”
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Patton, like a young Napoleon, had ambitiously hoped to be a brigadier general by twenty-seven. At twenty-nine, he was not yet a first lieutenant.

Ambitions thwarted, his thirst for action still would not be denied. In 1915, he was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, where the cavalry troops were all turned out in “Patton swords”: “It was a fine sight all with sabers drawn and all my sabers. It gives you a thrill and my
eyes filled with tears . . . it is the call of ones [
sic
] ancestors and the glory of combat. It seems to me that at the head of a regiment of cavalry any thing would be possible.”
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What seemed immediately possible, or so Patton hoped, was war in Mexico that would involve the United States. When, in 1916, General Pershing was ordered to lead a punitive expedition into Mexico, Patton's regiment—and Patton—were to stay behind in Texas. But Patton would have none of this. He convinced General Pershing that he should serve him as his aide. He was zealous in his duties and got the action he sought. Leading an expedition of three cars and ten men whose mission was to buy corn for the soldiers in camp, he organized an impromptu raid that netted him one of Pancho Villa's officers and two banditos shot down in a gunfight—Patton armed with revolver and rifle. Patton and his men returned to camp with the corpses of the Villaists strapped over the hoods of their cars. He was promoted to first lieutenant.

He came away from his experience in Mexico full of admiration for—and a desire to emulate—Pershing. Under Pershing's command, “Every horse and man was fit; weaklings had gone; baggage was still at the minimum, and discipline was perfect. . . . By constant study General Pershing knew to the minutest detail each of the subjects in which he demanded practice, and by physical presence and personal example and explanation, insured himself that they were correctly carried out.”
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Patton followed Pershing to France as his aide. It was in this capacity that Patton met Field Marshal Haig. Haig, who didn't think much of most American officers, liked Patton, calling him “a fire-eater” who “longs for the fray.” Patton, in turn, liked Haig, a fellow cavalryman, thinking him a proper polo-playing gentleman and even “more of a charger than I am.”
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THE TANK CORPS

Patton wanted combat and knew he couldn't find it as a staff officer to Pershing; to see action he had to either lead infantry or train to become a tank officer. He chose the latter, thinking it the quickest way to combat and further promotion. He wrote to Pershing, reminding him that he was “the only American who has ever made an attack in a motor vehicle”
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(he was referring to the motorized ambush he had led in Mexico), that his fluency in French meant he could read French tank manuals and converse with and take instruction from French tank officers, that he was good with engines, and that as tanks were the new cavalry it was an appropriate branch for a cavalry officer like himself. Privately, he noted to his father, “There will be hundred[s] of Majors of Infantry but only one of Light T[anks].” He had his progress mapped out: “1st. I will run the school. 2. then they will organize a battalion and I will command it. 3. Then if I make good and the T. do and the war lasts I will get the first regiment. 4. With the same ‘IF' as before they will make a brigade and I will get the star”
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(of a brigadier general).

It worked out more or less that way, with Patton the first officer—or soldier of any rank in the United States Army—assigned to the Tank Corps, where he was charged with establishing the First Army Tank School. Before he did that, Patton gave himself a crash course in French tanks, which included test-driving them, firing their guns, and even walking the assembly line to see how they were made. He used that experience to write a masterly summary of everything one needed to know about tanks.

His new commander in the Tank Corps, as of December 1917, would be Colonel Samuel D. Rockenbach, a VMI graduate with an aristocratic wife, a taskmasterly way with subordinates, and the massive responsibility of creating the Tank Corps from scratch,
including acquiring tanks from the French and the British. When it came to men, Patton intended that the Tanks Corps' standards of discipline and deportment would exceed those of other American units, and he made a special point of looking after his men, ensuring they were given the best food and billets he could muster.

Patton's efficiency as a tank commander won him promotion to lieutenant colonel, but he worried the war would end before he had a chance to lead his tankers in combat. That chance came at Saint-Mihiel on 12 September 1918. Unsurprisingly, he didn't stay at his command post but roamed the field under fire, directing attacks; his tankers did well and showed plenty of fighting spirit.

He had been chastised for leaving his command post during the battle at Saint-Mihiel, but he did the same during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He followed his tanks into combat, even helping to dig a path for them through two trenches (and whacking a recalcitrant soldier over the head with a shovel). While attempting to lead a unit of pinned-down infantry against the Germans,
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he was shot through the leg but continued to direct the attack. He wrote to his wife from his hospital bed on 12 October 1918, saying, “Peace looks possible, but I rather hope not for I would like to have a few more fights. They are awfully thrilling like steeple chasing only more so.”
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He was promoted to colonel. The Armistice came on his thirty-third birthday. All in all, Patton had had a quite satisfactory war.

Peace was another matter. There was no glory in it and no chance for him to achieve the greatness he sought. Polo was his substitute.
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He studied military history, as well as the last war and current developments. He formulated his own views in articles, including his conclusion that “Tanks are not motorized cavalry;
they are tanks, a new auxiliary arm
whose purpose is ever and always to facilitate the advance of the master arm, the Infantry, on the field of battle.”
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Before the next great war he amended that view, recognizing that tanks could be an offensive force of their own.

On 1 October 1919, Patton gave a speech to the Tank Corps on “The Obligation of Being an Officer.” It touched on Patton's grand view of the profession of arms: “Does it not occur to you gentlemen that we . . . are also the modern representatives of the demigods and heroes of antiquity?. . . In the days of chivalry, the golden age of our profession, knights (officers) were noted as well for courtesy and being gentle benefactors of the weak and oppressed. . . . Let us be gentle. That is courteous and considerate for the rights of others. Let us be men. That is fearless and untiring in doing our duty as we see it.”
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Patton concluded with a list of recommendations for good behavior and decorum, essentially acting as Colonel Manners. Patton could, famously and frequently, swear up a storm.
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But he was nevertheless punctilious about gentlemanly conduct.

When the Tank Corps was assigned to the infantry, Patton rejoined the cavalry. His wartime rank of colonel was reduced to captain, though he was swiftly promoted to major, and he was assigned to Fort Myer. In 1923, he was sent to the cavalry field officers course at Fort Riley, Kansas, and then on to the Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. His previous studies helped him excel here and earned him staff officer posts in Boston, Hawaii, and Washington, DC; enrollment at the Army War College; and his eventual return to Fort Myer in 1932, where he had the “most distasteful” service of dispersing the bonus marchers.
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In 1935, now a lieutenant colonel, he sailed his yacht from California across the Pacific to take up a new post as director of intelligence for the Hawaiian Department. He returned stateside in 1937, and while on leave suffered a serious horseback-riding accident, breaking a leg, and leaving him bedridden for months with complications; it
was even feared it might end his active service in the Army. He became an instructor at Fort Riley and worked diligently to regain full use of his leg; when he did, in 1938, he was sent to Fort Clark, Texas, to command the 1st Cavalry Division as a colonel.

But just as he was thrilled to be training a division for combat, he was recalled to Fort Myer, which required officers of means, like Patton, who could afford to keep up the social obligations of the post. The posting had the compensation of reuniting Patton with his fellow veteran of the Great War George Marshall. In 1940 Marshall, as Army chief of staff, recommended him for promotion to brigadier general and assignment to the 2nd Armored Division. Patton was back in tanks and began earnestly preparing for the next great war.

“AMERICANS DO NOT SURRENDER”

He relished training troops because he believed it was men—not weapons—that were decisive in war and that the crucial factor in making a good soldier was providing him with good leadership. Patton was certain he could do that. He was an active, encouraging officer and imparted his knowledge of war with morale-raising gusto. In 1941, he became a major general. After Pearl Harbor he was made commander of the I Armored Corps, and in February 1942 was ordered to the California desert to train for fighting in North Africa against German General (later Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel.

As good as he was at training men, Patton inevitably wanted to lead them into action. (“All my life I have wanted to lead a lot of men in a desperate battle,”
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he later wrote his brother-in-law.) When President Roosevelt gave orders for Operation Torch, the
American invasion of French North Africa, Patton was given his chance. In early November, as the transport ships neared Morocco, Patton issued an order to his troops to “remember your training, and remember above all that speed and vigor of attack are the sure roads to success and you must succeed—for to retreat is as cowardly as it is fatal. Indeed, once landed, retreat is impossible. Americans do not surrender. . . . A pint of sweat will save gallons of blood. . . . God is with us. . . . We shall surely win.”
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They surely did. The Vichy French resistance had been spirited, but on 11 November, as Patton was about to launch his attack on Casablanca, they surrendered. Patton liked the French, and left the administration of Morocco largely in their hands.

It wasn't until March 1943 that Patton was called into action again—this time in Tunisia, as commander of II Corps after Rommel had mauled American units in the Kasserine Pass (among those taken prisoner was one of Patton's sons-in-law, the West Point–educated John Waters). In the ten days before going into action again, he gave II Corps the Patton treatment, requiring spit and polish and an aggressive attitude, even urinating in one commander's foxhole to show his contempt for going on the defensive. That commander, General Terry Allen, led the II Corps' 1st Infantry Division to victory a few days later, at Gafsa and El Guettar. Patton was promoted, shortly before the attack, to lieutenant general.

Next up for Patton was the invasion of Sicily as commander of the United States Seventh Army. In stiff fighting Patton's men took their beaches, seized Palermo (netting fifty thousand captured Axis soldiers; one hundred thousand by the end of the Sicily campaign), and won the race against British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army to seize the prize of Messina, which Patton entered, the victor, on the morning of 17 August 1943. If
there were any doubts, since the Battle at Kasserine Pass, about the efficiency and fighting spirit of the American Army, Patton had dispelled them.