General Patton's Address to the Troops

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullsh_t. 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.

You are not all going to die. 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 b_tched about what you call "chicken sh_t 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 f_ck 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-_sshole-b_tch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of sh_t! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the b_stard asleep before they did.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse sh_t. The bilious b_stards 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 f_cking!

We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-b_tches we're going up against. By God, I do.

My men don't surrender, and 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 sh_t 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!

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 b_stard 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, G_ddamnit, 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. Sh_ts'.

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 G_ddamned 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 G_ddamned 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 road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-b_tching 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.

Don't forget, 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 b_stards to find out be the G_ddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their p_ss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the G_ddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-f_cking-b_tch Patton'.

We want to get the hell over there." The quicker we clean up this G_ddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple p_ssing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the G_ddamned Marines get all of the credit.

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 b_stards 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, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-b_tch 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-b_tches, we're going to rip out their living G_ddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-f_cking-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 G_ddamned 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 sh_t 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 sh_t 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 G_ddamn 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.

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 sh_t 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-G_ddamned-B_tch named Georgie Patton!'

This is the original text, not the Hollywood "PG" version from the movie.

Patton's words are timeless. Just replace Germans and Japanese with Afghans and Iraqis. These words in particular are well worth repeating:

"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 b_stards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home."

"On July 28, 1944, Chief Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower finally turned Patton loose on the Germans. In less than two weeks, Patton's army attacked the Germans harder than they had ever been hit. In one non-stop blitzkreig attack, never stopping, dishing out only fire and murder, the 3rd army pushed the Germans back more than 600 miles in only two weeks leaving nothing in their wake but destruction and death. Patton loved to attack. Only attack... refusing to let American boys die taking the same ground more than once like he had seen in the fields of France during the Great War in 1917.

By the time the shooting stopped in Europe, Patton's army had inflicted more than 1,500,000 casualties against the German enemy. The only time Patton ever slowed down was when his 3rd army liberated the Nazi Concentration camp at Buchenwald. When he saw what the Germans had done to the Jews and Gypsies of Europe he was so disgusted that he immediately enacted a strict policy forcing all German citizens in neighboring cities and towns to tour the camps to witness the result of their their hateful nationalism. Other generals adopted Patton's policy upon liberating other concentration camps."

http://www.bobtuley.com/georgepatton.htm

and i get 'pooh-poohed' for cussing on FR! lol!

can you imagine tom d'@$$hole as a general?

'now listen to me men & women, i want you to be as kind & gentle to the germanic persons ('kraut' being a no-no), and with your 'safe' bullets we hope to dissuade many from death and crippling injury. after all, they are as human as you and i and also have chilllllll-dren and families.

we are a TEAM and i will be right behind you along with the UN/ACLU to make sure there is no misconduct on our part. we must advance as slowly as possible so that the persons ('enemy' is a no-no) will have time to escape and maybe change their minds and come to our side. negotiations will be the order of the day. if you come upon one of their patrols, please don't behave rashly and start trouble. try a friendly hello, or offer them candy or rations (cigarettes are a no-no). sometimes even a drink of water will pacify the most hardened of soldiers. i am sure many will understand that we too are a peace loving people. after it's all over we will all return to our homes, jobs, and families. i myself hope to run for the presidency in order to keep mr. roosevelt's dream alive. i promise i will give you all free housing, food and clothing. with 'our' great wealth we will be able to feed, clothe and house the ENTIRE WORLD!!!!

now let us march on to victory, (and please try not to trample the daisies in the forest meadows). oh, and by the way, that miscreant general patton will be court martialed for daring to strike another soldier. family members of the soldier have filed a class action lawsuit against the army and i personally will see to them that justice is done and he is brought down and thrown in the stockade. we WILL NOT TOLERATE VIOLENCE against another person in this army'!

please come back general patton!

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