General George S. Patton addressing the troops on the eve of battle.

Bob Hubbard

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I found this speech and though it might be of interest. Warning, language may get a bit raw and get past the filters.

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General Patton arose and strode swiftly to the microphone.

The men snapped to their feet and stood silently. Patton surveyed the sea of brown with a grim look.

"Be seated", he said. The words were not a request, but a command. The General's voice rose high and clear.

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

The General paused and looked over the crowd. "You are not all going to die," he said slowly. "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 **** 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 **** for a man who's not always on his toes. 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-*******-***** is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of ****!" The men roared in agreement.

Patton's grim expression did not change. "There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily", he roared into the microphone, "All because one man went to sleep on the job". He paused and the men grew silent. "But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did". The General clutched the microphone tightly, his jaw out-thrust, and he continued, "An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse ****. 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 ******g!"

The men slapped their legs and rolled in glee. This was Patton as the men had imagined him to be, and in rare form, too. He hadn't let them down. He was all that he was cracked up to be, and more. He had IT!

"We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world", Patton bellowed. He lowered his head and shook it pensively. Suddenly he snapped erect, faced the men belligerently and thundered, "Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do". The men clapped and howled delightedly. There would be many a barracks tale about the "Old Man's" choice phrases. They would become part and parcel of Third Army's history and they would become the bible of their slang.

"My men don't surrender", Patton continued, "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 **** 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!"

Patton stopped and the crowd waited. He continued more quietly, "All of the real heroes 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 man 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, Goddamnit, 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 K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'."

Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, "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 fire fight 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!" 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 rode 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."

The General paused and stared challengingly over the silent ocean of men. One could have heard a pin drop anywhere on that vast hillside. The only sound was the stirring of the breeze in the leaves of the bordering trees and the busy chirping of the birds in the branches of the trees at the General's left.

"Don't forget," Patton barked, "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. Some day 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-******g-***** Patton'."

"We want to get the hell over there", Patton continued, "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."

The men roared approval and cheered delightedly. This statement had real significance behind it. Much more than met the eye and the men instinctively sensed the fact. They knew that they themselves were going to play a very great part in the making of world history. They were being told as much right now. Deep sincerity and seriousness lay behind the General's colorful words. The men knew and understood it. They loved the way he put it, too, as only he could.

Patton continued quietly, "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 and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin", he yelled, "I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-***** Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"

"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 **********s by the bushel-******g-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!"

"I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living **** out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like **** through a tin horn!"

"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that."

The General paused. His eagle like eyes swept over the hillside. He said with pride, "There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled **** in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-***** named Georgie Patton!"
 
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RCastillo

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George C. Scott was always the perfect one for "Patton!"

BTW, did you know that one of Dennis' Conatsers late Uncles served under the famous General!
 
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Bob Hubbard

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Nope..didnt know that...but my grandfather was an MP serving directly under GP in Europe. I've gotten many good stories about the man.

Pattons always been a personal hero of mine. :)
 
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yilisifu

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One of the finest generals this country has ever produced. He knew what war was about and he knew what it took to win a war.
 
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RCastillo

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Originally posted by yilisifu
One of the finest generals this country has ever produced. He knew what war was about and he knew what it took to win a war.

I wonder how he'd handle it if he were out in Irag with all the technology we have now.

I do know, that he would've hit Baghdad already! He would've kick butt, and taken names!:samurai:
 
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Bob Hubbard

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Georgie would have already pushed thru to Bagdad, and been half way to Tehran by now. :)

He was a soldiers general, didnt give a rip about the politics, just point him at a battle and let him loose.

:)
 
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Bob Hubbard

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The movie with George C Scott is a classic, as is the lesser known 'Last days of Patton'.

My grandfathers comment was 'they got the attitude right, but his language was saltier'. :D
 
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Cliarlaoch

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Originally posted by Kaith Rustaz
The movie with George C Scott is a classic, as is the lesser known 'Last days of Patton'.

My grandfathers comment was 'they got the attitude right, but his language was saltier'. :D

Saltier? Hah, the Dead Sea ain't salty enough. That man made sailors ask him to tone it down. :)

I always thought it was one of the least honourable things anyone could have done to treat Patton the way they did once the fighting was over. I'm judging based on the movie's ending and what I know of his real life. They screwed him over, right? Told him to pack up, go home. He wasn't NEEDED anymore. No fete. No acknowledgement. Just go home, shut up, and don't bother us anymore. *sigh*

He deserved better. I may not have always agreed with the man, but boy, you have to respect a guy who has that much gusto.
 

Johnathan Napalm

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He would be fired in a NY second, in today's military. He didn't care about battle casualties. He believed valor in combat brought reincarnation and eternal life. He openly professed that he was a reincarnated battlefield general who had fought in the Roman's conquest of Carthage, and Napoleon's blunder into Russia, in his previous lives. The guy was a nut case! He would get Section 8!

Of course I respect and admire his military genius. But there is a limit.
 
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yilisifu

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Yes, he believed in reincarnation...but he was far from nuts..which is why he was never given a Section 8.

He was VERY strongly opinionated and sometimes spoke out against the powers that be. He criticized his superiors and general officers of our allies.

In my opinion, he was right most of the time. BUT he should have known better.

He was also very egotistical. But then, so was MacArthur and most other famous military leaders.

And he was one hell of a fighter.
 
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Bob Hubbard

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Interesting facts on Patton:
http://www.bobtuley.com/georgepatton.htm


A short Bio: http://www.yorktownsociety.org/Gazette/G_Anniversaries.html
Patton was born November 11, 1885, in San Marino, California. His family were from Virginia and fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. Mt. Wilson, overlooking Pasadena, California, was named for his mother's father—a very prominent and colorful early Californian.

Patton did not attend public schools—he was educated mostly at home by his father and others. He attended a year at V.M.I. and then West Point. He was always the consummate soldier.

On graduation he was commissioned 2nd lieutenant, U.S. Cavalry and married Beatrice Ayer, who remained in love with him all her life. Their first post was Ft. Riley, Kansas, where they lived in a one room tar paper shack. (2nd lieutenants were not supposed to have wives.) Beatrice Ayer was from a wealthy family and accustomed to a fairly luxurious life style. Patton himself was one of the richest officers in the army—but neither of them complained.

By exerting a prolonged and extraordinary pressure, Patton got himself assigned to Pershing's expedition against the bandit armies in Mexico in 1916.

In World War I, as a Lt. Colonel, he commanded one of the first tank attacks in history and won every decoration the American army then had to give, except the Congressional Medal of Honor, including the Purple Heart.

In World War II he led the initial invasion of North Africa—playing a large part in taking Africa back from Rommel. He and Montgomery's British 8th Army invaded Sicily, but it was Patton's U.S. forces who got to Messina first and forced the German surrender.

On the continent, of all the armies (including the Russians) pushing against Germany, Patton's 3rd Army amounted to less than 10%; but he probably accounted for more than half the victories over the Germans, who regarded Patton as by far the most effective and dangerous of all the generals opposing them.

At the close of the war; Truman, Marshal, Ike, Biddle-Smith and Bradley (mediocre men at best) thought we could live in peace with the Russians by handing over to the Soviet Union most of those countries which Patton thought he had been fighting to liberate.

Patton saw this as dishonorable, cowardly and stupid. He hated communism and didn't trust the Soviet Union. He wanted to accept the offer of Germans and other East Europeans to join him and go straight on to Moscow and thus save all humanity from half a century of world wide communist subversion, aggression and continuous war. He knew that the Germans had exhausted the Soviet Union—they had had enormous casualties, their supplies were low, they were at their weakest point—and he knew that many Russians would greet the Americans as liberators. Patton understood war, and history has proved him right.

Nevertheless, for holding these views Patton was relieved of command and it became known that he planned to return to the States and tell the American people what he now knew about the politics of World War lI. Two days before his planned departure he had a fatal accident in his staff car. Many believe that he was murdered.

As they generally do with American patriots of great merit and achievement, the liberal media invariably describe General Patton as "controversial"—as though superior ability, unfailing valor, unalterable loyalty to country and the highest esteem of companions and opponents alike should somehow be doubted in spite of the evidence.

Many books have been written about Patton. Some of particular interest are: Before the Colors Fade, by his nephew Fred Ayer, Jr.; the battle memoirs, War As I Knew It, (edited by Douglas Southall Freeman, the great biographer of Washington and Lee) and Patton - A study in Command, by Gen. H. Essame of the British Army.
 

Johnathan Napalm

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Originally posted by yilisifu
Yes, he believed in reincarnation...but he was far from nuts..which is why he was never given a Section 8.

He was VERY strongly opinionated and sometimes spoke out against the powers that be. He criticized his superiors and general officers of our allies.

In my opinion, he was right most of the time. BUT he should have known better.

He was also very egotistical. But then, so was MacArthur and most other famous military leaders.

And he was one hell of a fighter.

No one cares what he personally believed. But it became a problem when you sent men on deadly missions with the mindset that " Hey, don't worry. Fight bravely. When you get killed, you will come back as a general!"

He got canned because of a truckload of reasons on top of what you have mentioned. He was dragging his feet when it came to denazification of the German administration. He thought they were good administrators and should not be purged simply b/c they were members of the Nazi party. lol He made the comment that being a Nazi was no different than being a Republican or a Democrat. Nothing more than just party affiliation. LMAO.

Then he wanted to redeploy the German troops to start a war with the Soviet. In retrospect, he was right. Stalin was a monster and a mass murderer that killed tens of millions of his countrymen. A monster worse than Hitler. Communism eventually destroyed generations of lives in Eastern Europe and Russia. The USSR was responsible for instigating countless bloodshed all over the world.
 
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yilisifu

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That's true. You know, Count Mountbatten, having been assigned to SE Asia following the war so as to restructure it, allowed the captured Japanese to act as officials and even as police in VietNam!

You can imagine what a big hit that was.

Then when he was made to send the Japanese back to their own land, he handed Nam back over to the French (since it had been their colony). The Vietnamese despised the French and before long, there was war in "Indo-China" which ultimately turned into our war in Nam.

And nobody ever complained about Mountbatten's actions.
 

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Consider that the decision of one man, resulted in a chain of events that costed millions of lives later on.

The Vietnam war was just a foreign policy blunder. So was the Korean war.

The Vietnamese thought the US was an imperial, colonial power which aimed to enslave them. The US thought the Vietnamese was the stooges of the Chinese communists to invade Southeast Asia. Remember the Domino Theory? What a disastrous miscalculation! The truth is, the US didn't want their land. And they don't even trust the Chinese communists! Today, they want the US to go back to Vietnam to do business. "Gee, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

In Korea, Mao Tze Dung and Zhao En Lai asked Nehru to plead with the WhiteHouse not to approach the border, else the Chinese would be forced to send troops into Korea. Nehru delivered the message several times. The message was simply ignored. Without the CHinese direct intervention, the Korean war would be different. To this day, if you asked the Chinese, they believe they have won the Korean war. Mao was very proud of the PLA's performance in Korea. (The heartless mass murderer sent those Kuomintang Nationalist troops that had surrendered to the Communists into Korea to fight in human wave formation right into the American's firing line, to their death. The communists could never trusted the loyalty of those troops. So they just sent them to Korea as cannon fodders. Killing 2 birds with 1 stone. ) He proudly declared that "The Chinese people have finally stood on our feet" ie no longer on their knees. That was the first war the Chinese have not been defeated by a Western power. That bolstered them to intervene in Vietnam later on.
 
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rmcrobertson

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Gee, I pretty much agree. Then there's the fact that Johnson and McNamara out-and-out lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, using that "attack," (there wasn't one, and they knew it) as an excuse to send in massive amounts of planes and troops for the first time.
 
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yilisifu

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If I remember right, the No. Koreans and Chinese suddenly crossed the 39th parallel and attacked the U.S. and ROK troops (which were minimal) in front of them. Rather than taking prisoners, they butchered soldiers who surrendered.

The allies were all worried about a Russian attack in Europe being started by this aciton in Korea - and that started our military's problems.
 

Johnathan Napalm

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Originally posted by yilisifu
If I remember right, the No. Koreans and Chinese suddenly crossed the 39th parallel and attacked the U.S. and ROK troops (which were minimal) in front of them. Rather than taking prisoners, they butchered soldiers who surrendered.

The allies were all worried about a Russian attack in Europe being started by this aciton in Korea - and that started our military's problems.

It seems that only WE observe the rules of war while every one else just ignores them. While we do stand on the high moral ground, but our enemies do not respect nor fear us. They just see us as weaklings who do not have the guts.

Yes, it is true that most of our foreign policy was filtered through the prism of Communist threat and WWIII, while in many situation, the locals couldn't give a rat *** about those considerations.

Side Note: In the Korean war, our troops proved that they could be as savage and ruthless at the enemies when it came to knife fighting. There were battles of blood curding bayonet charge where US troops just skewed the Chinese wholesale. They celebrated the victories by throwing the Rebel yell! (I apologize to our Wiccan friends who might read this. I don't cherrish the thought of this act, as it might seem)
 
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