Posted on 12/23/2021 8:29:29 PM PST by max americana
I’d guess that nothing makes a soldier’s day like second-guessing and sarcasm by a bunch of embedded 4Fs.
I saw this interview. I found it quite interesting.
Here’s a another good one to go along with it.
Victor Davis Hanson | George S. Patton: American Ajax
https://youtu.be/EJsC-buIkSE
It is :) I just happen to collect some Patton-haters from the woodwork haha
“Jeff Sanza states he was there when Ike radioed him to STOP and not go further to Berlin.”
Ike didn’t have to tell Patton to stop. Patton ran out of gasoline. And ammunition. Patton had moved so quickly he outran the ability of the supply lines to keep up with him.
The logistics plan included a pipeline for bringing gasoline forward. The engineers couldn’t build it fast enough to keep up with Patton’s front. They were using the Red Ball Express to do what they could but eventually the supply trucks were using more gasoline than they were bringing to the front.
“Acording to my dad, Patton’s greatness was largely a media invention.”
He was good, although my dad who served under him wasn’t a big fan. My dad preferred General Patch who replaced him in 7th Army. Patton was a great tactical general, a fighter. But not a strategist.
“There are a few extant recordings of Patton; he sounded nothing like George C. Scott.”
A high pitched voice with a touch of Virginia from his dad. A family full of Confederate Army officers. The more excited Patton got the higher his voice would pitch.
“I always found the story about Patton on the bridge in Sicily shooting the mules to be fascinating,”
My dad was in 7th Army on Sicily when Patton was in charge.
I don’t know if this is the same incident but he witnessed an old Sicilian farmer obstruct a bridge with a slow donkey cart. The stubborn fool wouldn’t get out of the way when an Army convoy came up fast behind him so the lead truck shoved him, his cart, and the donkey over the side. High bridge.
Patton slapped what we would today would call PTSD sufferers. Ike investigated it and felt compelled to remove Patton from 7th Army largely in order to save him. Ike valued Patton and getting him out of the way let the uproar fade die down.
Up in France my dad’s AAA batallion had a couple of these guys assigned to his unit. They had been infantry types in heavy fighting and the Army didn’t want to send them home. One was such a wreck you could position him like a gumby doll and he wouldn’t move. The other one would pace non-stop whenever the 90mm guns were firing, and he would pace the entire time they were firing. He never slept. After a couple of weeks the powers that be finally took them out of the war. No slapping required.
I suppose it could be the same...I always thought there was an armored column stopped on a bridge, and it was vulnerable to being strafed if any Luftwaffe aircraft appeared, and when the enraged Patton was driven to the point of the obstruction to see it was caused by two obstinate mules hooked to a cart that wouldn’t move, he pulled out one of his ivory handled pistols, shot the mules in the head, and directed his men to throw them over the side.
But I could clearly be remembering it wrong.
That is what I have heard as well, that his voice had a higher, scratchy pitch to it!
If Eisenhower had listened to Patton at almost every step of the war, tens of thousands of Allied lives would have been saved. But Patton was resented because he was a rich kid who spoke his mind. (Weird. That sounds familiar.)
Ike, Bradley, et al detested him and would rather work with inferior officers who would get men killed than to allow George to get any glory. (Man, that sounds familiar.)
And sideline your greatest general in the midst of an existential struggle because he’s a jerk who slapped some kid? PRIORITIES!!!!!
And Hell, while we’re at it, why didn’t our naval officers utilize the experience gained by the Brits in the Atlantic?
I swear, the officer corp of the U.S. military is damned lucky they have so much hardware and so many good men at their disposal, because if we had to rely on their brains and integrity we’d be speaking German.
“But I could clearly be remembering it wrong.”
Probably nothing wrong with your memory. If the movie has that version it might be based on a similar incident or the same one with a little poetic license. Maybe they figured shoving some old farmer and his donkey off a bridge looked too harsh.
My dad mentioned the Luftwaffe threat for why the column didn’t slow down and hit him like a freight train. Not a game and they weren’t trying to be cruel.
“If Eisenhower had listened to Patton at almost every step of the war, tens of thousands of Allied lives would have been saved.”
Ha. No. Patton was not a strategic general at all. He was a battlefield tactician and didn’t pay attention to logistics or larger army movements. Which is why he found himself sitting idle after having outrun his supply lines.
“Ike, Bradley, et al detested him”
True of Bradley, not at all true in regard to Eisenhower. Ike and Patton were friends. Eisenhower saved Patton’s hide after the slapping incidents. Patton could have been canned and wasn’t, thanks to Ike.
Yes, the Sicily campaign was incredibly tough. As always, the Brits got the glory job & gave the Americans the toughest one.
“Which is why he found himself sitting idle after having outrun his supply lines.”
He KNEW he was, but he hoped to get the gas to keep going due to his success. His men also stole gas shamelessly. He wasn’t stupid about logistics. He didn’t pay too much attention to the detail because he had great staff officers to work the details.
We’ll never know what would have happened if he had been given higher command. Bradley hated his guts. Eisenhower liked him but Ike was a politician first and foremost. He sucked at strategy and combat planning. Monty and Patton agreed on Eisenhower being stupid about strategy.
As happens too often, the US military ran WW2 with one eye and sometimes two on pleasing the press and the politicians. And of course, trying to keep allied with our questionable allies.
Got frustated by the BS this guy pumped out. Spent time talking about how Patton’s “Pearl handled pistols” were actually plastic.
The guns were ones Patton had owned for a long time. Ivory grips, and the guns still exist and are on display. Ivory, not plastic, and the grips were on them long before WW2 started.
“Although popularly remembered as the “two-gun” General, Patton actually seldom wore both of his “carrying guns” together. And, he owned several personal pistols aside from the two usually photographed on him in WWII. Further, his guns were usually ivory handled, NEVER pearl, as they were sometimes mistaken. The handguns most associated with him, and which are now in the Patton Collection of the West Point Museum, are a .45 Long Colt Single Action revolver, 1873 Army Model, and a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver.
Of the two of them, aides and relatives have said that the .45 Colt was the one Patton stressed for everyday carry, while the .357 was to be the “killing gun,” in his words, if the battlefield situation ever demanded it. The .45 was his oldest companion, having been purchased in 1916. There are two notches filed in the left-side ivory grip of the highly engraved .45. They came to be through a 1916 gunfight which took place in Mexico.”
https://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/george-s-patton-guns-that-made-him-great/247778
The guy was full of dog poop.
Ike was in charge of managing the alpha personalities in the ETO and keeping them focused on fighting the Germans instead of each other. He didn’t design strategy. His job was to implement it.
General George Marshall was Ike’s boss. Admiral William Leahy was Marshall’s boss. FDR was Leahy’s boss. Overall strategy was set at that level. Logistics is a huge portion of war strategy, far more than most civilians realize. Patton paid zero attention to logistics. It wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his staff’s job. Patton did things like hijacking other army’s gas supplies which had ripple effects all through the theater.
“Patton paid zero attention to logistics. It wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his staff’s job.”
Patton did not pay close attention to logistics. His staff absolutely did. You don’t keep an entire army moving while paying no attention to logistics. No numbered army exists without logistics planners. It is ONE of the constraints that shape the battle.
Ike needed to make strategic decisions. He did not. Both Monty and Patton were frustrated by his unwillingness to make decisions. He could not make them unilaterally but he needed to provide far more guidance than he did.
“Patton did not pay close attention to logistics. His staff absolutely did.”
Hardly. Logistics was back in England, at the Normandy beach head, at the ports, at the supply dumps. Logistics is the transport and the supply system, not the tip of the spear. That’s not what Patton’s staff was charged with doing.
“Ike needed to make strategic decisions.”
Strategy was determined at Casablanca, Tehran and Yalta. Eisenhower was a junior member among the crew there that set Allied strategy. They considered his opinion. Ike’s job was to implement the strategy given to him by FDR, Churchill, Marshall, the JCS. His bosses.
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