George Patton


George Smith Patton (November 11, 1885 - December 21, 1945), born in San
Gabriel, California, was an American general leading U.S. forces in various
World War II campaigns.

Patton's grandfather was a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War.
Patton was educated at the Virginia Military Institute and at the West Point
Military Academy.

During the Mexican Border Campaign of 1916, Patton, while assigned to the
13th Cavalry Regiment in Texas, accompanied then-Brigadier General John
Pershing as his aide during the Punitive Expedition into Mexico.

During World War I, Patton, then a lieutenant colonel, was placed in charge
of the U.S. Tank Corps, which was part of the American Expeditionary Force
and then the First U.S. Army. He took part in the St. Michel offensive of
September, 1918, and was seriously wounded.

Between the wars, Patton wrote professional articles on tank and armored car
tactics, suggesting new methods to use these weapons.

During the buildup of the American Army prior to its entry into World War
II, Patton established the Desert Training Center in Indio, California. He
also commanded one of the two wargaming armies in the Louisiana Manuevers of
1941. Fort Benning, Georgia is well known for General Patton's presence.

In 1942, Major General Patton commanded the Western Task Force of the U.S.
Army, which landed on the coast of Morocco in Operation Torch. Following the
defeat of the U.S. Army by the German Afrika Korps at the Battle of
Kasserine Pass in 1943, Patton was made lieutenant general and placed in
command of II Corps. Although tough in his training, he was generally
considered fair and very well-liked by his troops.

Patton led the Seventh Army in the 1943 Sicilian campaign, but relinquished
command of the Army prior to its operations in Italy. During this period,
while visiting a hospital, he slapped a soldier who he thought was showing
cowardly behavior. (The soldier was suffering from battle fatigue or
shell-shock and had no visible wounds). Because of this action, Patton was
kept out of public view for some time.

In the period leading to the Normandy invasion, Patton gave public talks as
commander of the (fictional) First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG), which was
supposedly intending to invade France by way of Calais. This was part of a
sophisticated Allied campaign of military deception, Operation Fortitude.

Following the Normandy invasion, Patton was placed in command of the Third
U.S. Army, which was on the extreme right (west) of the Allied land forces.
He led this army during Operation Cobra, the breakout from earlier slow
fighting in the Norman system of planting hedgerows, besieged Cherbourg, and
then moved south and east, assisting in trapping several hundred thousand
German soldiers in Falaise.

The Third Army was stopped because of a lack of fuel in September, and
resumed offensive operations in the late fall of 1944. When the German army
counterattacked during the Battle of the Bulge, Patton was able to disengage
his army fighting eastward and turned it ninety degrees north—a
considerable tactical and logistical achievement.

Once the Bulge was reduced, Patton moved into the Saar Basin of Germany.
Patton was planning to take Prague, Czechoslovakia, when the forward
movement of American forces was halted.

In October 1945 General Patton assumed control of the Fifteenth Army, a
paper army, in American-occupied Germany. He died from injuries suffered in
an auto accident and was buried in American War Cemetery in Hamm,
Luxembourg.

George Patton was the focus of the 1970 Academy Award winning movie Patton.
As a result of that movie and its now-famous opening monologue, in popular
culture Patton has come to symbolize a warrior's fierceness and
aggressiveness.