Many veterans of my father's 712th Tank Battalion had stories about General George S. Patton, also known as "old Blood & Guts." The 712th, attached to the 90th Infantry Division, was part of Patton's vaunted Third Army. It was not uncommon to hear a veteran quote a Patton speech almost word for word more than 45 years later. As for his language, Arnold Brown, a rifle company commander in the 90th, said it best. His company was bringing up the rear on a road march, and had acquired several stragglers, when Patton drove up and asked "Who the blankety blank is in charge of this blankety blank outfit." You can fill in the blanks, Brown said.
Podcast: Lieutenant Tarr's Platoon
A little bonus material to the podcast, the chapter on General Patton in Tanks for the Memories Only a few of the following anecdotes are in the podcast)
Blood and Guts
The first time I saw
George Patton was on a hillside in England where he assembled all the
non-commissioned officers, right before we went into Normandy.
He gave one of the
typical George Patton talks. By the time you got through listening to his
speech, you wanted to go out with your bare hands and kill Germans.
He had a high-pitched
voice. He said, “Let me tell you one thing. After this war is over, when you
get home and are bouncing your grandchildren on your knee, you can tell them
that you fought with George S. Patton, and you didn’t shovel shit in Fort Polk.”
He kept on and on in that
vein. When you left, you just thought the guy was a born leader.
Wayne Hissong
I was taking three trucks
with gas on them to A Company during the breakout from St. Lo when I came to a
crossroad that wasn’t marked as to whether it was cleared of mines or not. So I
was sitting there debating what to do, when all of a sudden I look up and I see
all those stars shining. It was General Patton, and he wanted to know who was
in charge of the trucks.
I told him I was, and he
said, “Well, what the hell are you sitting here for?”
I said, “I’m taking gas
up to A Company. I know where they are, but I don’t know whether that road is
cleared of mines.”
And he said, “You take
this goddamn truck and drive it down that road, and we’ll find out whether it’s
cleared of mines or not, won’t we?”
So I went down the road,
at about five miles an hour, every moment wondering if it was going to happen.
Needless to say, it must have been cleared of mines or there were none there to
begin with, because we made it. We found the tanks and got them gassed up.
That was my encounter
with Patton.
Les O’Riley
Lester O’Riley, of Columbus, Ga., was a company commander in the 712th.
I was in front of the
bulldozer tank cutting down a bank on the far side of the Moselle River. About
every minute and a half a barrage would come in, and I would back up the tank.
One time I backed into a scout car. And I turned around to cuss out the driver
and there was General Patton, and a three-star general with him. And he jumped
out of the car, went down and pinned a Silver Star on an engineer who was
sitting in the shade, shook his hand, came over, got back in the car, and I
tried to apologize for cussing him out, but he said, “You’re doing your job.”
But when I turned around I could see those little first lieutenant’s bars
floating right off my uniform.
Russell Loop
One time we had just pulled
up on a four-way crossroad and were waiting for further orders, and here comes
Patton and his jeep.
He got out, and he walked
right by the officers and went around and shook hands and talked with nearly
every one of the enlisted men.
While he was there, a
German plane strafed that crossroads both ways, twice. And he just looked up
and said, “They must know I’m here.” But what he wanted to know was, “Are you
getting plenty to eat? Are you getting enough ammunition and gasoline? And is
there anything that I can do to make it better?”
And of course we all
said, “Yes, send us home!” But I got to shake hands with him on the front line.
Clegg Caffery
When we broke through in
Normandy, the battalion was acting as a point and protecting the right flank of
the 90th Infantry Division as we went down through Avranches. The Headquarters
Company had an assault gun platoon.
We came to this bridge,
and I was in charge of the assault gun platoon. I deployed the vehicles in what
I thought was the proper method to protect the bridge site, and just about five
minutes later, George Patton approached. He came up in his jeep, and I very
quickly ran to him and saluted and told him what the situation was, and his
words to me were: “Get the goddamn tanks across that bridge on the east side
and do it now!” I saluted very hurriedly and did that right quickly.
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Red Rose
Walter Hahn, he was
Colonel Randolph’s jeep driver, said Randolph came down with pneumonia
somewhere on the road, and he wouldn’t turn himself in. Some of the officers
reported him real sick, and the doctor checked him and ordered him to bed. And
Hahn said when Patton found out Randolph was
in bed – “Now I was standing right there with the jeep, right next to
the old building where they had Randolph in because he had pneumonia,” Hahn
said, “and Patton went in, and he came out in a few minutes,” and he said
Patton stood and looked at him and said, “You know, I’d give anything in the
world if the Third Army had as much confidence in me as the 712th Tank
Battalion boys do in Colonel Randolph.” And he said tears came into Patton’s
eyes.
Emil Brayfield
Emil Brayfield was a truck driver in Service Company.
I had a load of
ammunition. I was told to go up four miles and stop. The 105s were up there. So
I drove up there and got to the woods, and I saw General Patton coming toward
me. He came up to me and he said, “Hello, Soldier.”
I said, “Hello.”
He said, “Where’s my
goddamn officers?”
I said, “That’s what I’m
waiting for.”
He said, “I get the
message.”
He walked by, and I said,
“Sir, there’s Germans right up there.” He left and came back, and he said,
“You’re going to have people here right away.” And there were people there, and
that’s all it was.
I can tell you another
little story about Patton. Before we went into the Third Army, Patton gathered
all the officers from all the units that were going to go under the Third Army.
The officers from the 712th Tank Battalion were part of the group, and
everybody had to identify themselves. When it came to the 712th Tank Battalion,
Colonel Randolph got up and said, “712th Tank Battalion,” and told him the
officers.
And Patton said, “What
are you bastards doing here? You know we’re about to launch an attack.”
I didn’t talk to him. I
was sitting on a fender. It was just one of those things. You know, you’re
there when it happens. You wonder why sometimes.
I was in Service Company,
and I was an ammunition truck driver, so I was pretty close to the front. If
you understand military and war, the soldier, the leaders, let’s put it that
way, they were no better than you. They were your bosses, don’t get me wrong,
you respected them. Colonel Randolph would come down to me sometimes and say,
“We’ve got to move out.” I’d say, “Okay, I’ve got all the ammunition.” When we
crossed the Saar River they needed ammunition. I got there in the first truck,
and they had to build us a corduroy road. The ferry was knocked out twice
before I went across. All this time I was thinking, “How am I gonna get across
in this dark? If I get off that road, I’m stuck.” Paul Mowreader, my assistant,
was walking alongside the truck, and the Germans sent up flares. It was like
daylight. All of a sudden I could see. When we got to the front, the truck had
a lot of holes in it. Colonel Randolph was right there. And he said, “Here’s a
cup of coffee.”
General Walker from the
First Army called Patton and asked him to send up a recovery crew to remove a
gun that missed a curve in the road and went down a cliff. It was a 155 Long
Tom, towed by a big truck full of shells that stood five feet high and were
eight inches in diameter. This crew of five was on top of that truck when it
rolled over, and there were five bodies under that mess. That was our first
job, to turn that truck over, get the weight off, and bring those bodies up
that hill.
I met General Walker in a
little cabin up in the woods across the road, and we agreed that I could have
the road for three hours. I wanted four. Then he said, “You have the road from
midnight on.” So it was getting daylight. Removing the bodies and getting them
up the cliff took longer than we expected. Every time the men would pick up a
body they’d start vomiting. They had dry heaves. So I said, “Throw the canvas
over them and roll them in it. Out of sight, out of mind.” And we dragged the
bodies up to the road that way.
Just as I had the gun up
near the edge of the road, a sergeant from the medics came to me and he said,
“I understand you’re in charge of this operation. I’ve got 20 ambulances back
there, and if they don’t get to a doctor in an hour there’s gonna be a lot of
dead people.”
“Bring ‘em through.”
And this colonel that was
in charge of the gun said, “No you don’t. You get that gun up first.”
I said, “Those men back
there are more important to me than that gun there. Lower them cables,
fellows.” So we lowered the cables and they lay flat on the road, and I moved
the ambulances through. And this colonel said, “I’m going to court-martial you
for refusing a direct order.” I didn’t hear him.
We got all the ambulances
through and then we got the gun up on the road, and I said to the colonel,
“Okay, do you want to see General Walker about that court-martial?”
He said, “Aw, go to
hell.”
And I said, “The same to
you,” and I saluted him. Then I went in and talked to General Walker. He had a
bottle of Canadian Club on the table and I said, “God, can I have a shot of
that?” I was shaking like a leaf.
He said, “What’s the
matter?”
And I said, “Aw, there’s
a redheaded colonel out there, he wants to court-martial me for refusing a
direct order,” and I told him what had happened.
“You did the right
thing,” he said. “Those men had to get through.” So I had a shot of Canadian
Club, and he said, “How about another one?” Then he said, “If you see old
George, give him my regards.”
Dan Diel
Of the three or four
times that I had encounters with Patton, two stick in my mind more than the
others. One time we were reinforcing the 4th Armored Division; at one time we
were going to head for Berlin, before they made the agreement that the Russians
would get Berlin and we’d go to Czechoslovakia. We were still heading north. The
4th was making a big charge, and we were doing their mopup. They’d take off
down the road and the 90th Infantry would follow behind them and go out on each
side for two or three kilometers, into any little town that was close there,
and mop up. You’d call out the burgomeister and give him a proclamation to turn
in all of their cameras and firearms, daggers, swords, anything that they could
use, and anything that had to do with the military. This one day nothing was
moving, and old George came up to see what the holdup was. He gets up to the
front end of the column, and there was a congregation there. He stopped and
wanted to know what the problem was. They started to explain, and he said,
“Who’s in charge?”
Some guy jumped up and
said, “I am, Sir.”
Boy, he got read off. And
Patton’s closing statement was, “Captain, did you ever try to push a piece of
wet spaghetti?” And he got the message. To get that kind of a dressing down in
front of all of his brother officers, I imagine that he was damn glad to go to
the front of the column and see what the problem was.
The other time that I
came in close contact to Patton was after the war was over. The 10th Armored
Division had their third anniversary celebration in July, and they’d sent word
up to the 712th that anyone who wanted to join them was invited down. I think
it was Vink and I who went. They put on a first class banquet in a great big
hall. And part of the entertainment was Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe Dance Chorus.
Every girl over six feet tall. There was a lot of leg there. They put on their
show, and of course they had their speeches and old George, he gave a short
speech. Then when they got through, somebody said that George would sign
autographs. So right away, there’s a big line. The only problem was that some
of those girls were up in front of that line, and one of them asked him
something that he figured was a stupid question that was below him to answer,
and he just huffed and puffed and turned around and walked off and that was it
for the autograph signing.
Bob Vutech
I was invited to a
conference in Austria. It was a critique, and we sat with a whole bunch of
colonels and generals. I don’t know how I was chosen. I got to go, and maybe
one more person from the battalion. It was after the war in Europe was over,
but we were still fighting in Japan, and we didn’t know for sure whether we
were going to go over there or not.
We discussed the war day
by day, and the generals would ask us questions. “Why did you fire this type of
ammunition?” “Should we change our tanks?”
General Patton asked us
how many times we sighted a gun when we fired. The more we were in combat, you
didn’t take the time eventually to fire like you think a sharpshooter would
fire. You fired. You got the first round in if you could. You had a sense, you
knew where it was gonna go, you didn’t have to be told. When I grabbed a
machine gun, I never had to fire four or five rounds until I saw where the
tracer was going. All the sights that were put on these guns cost money. In his
eyes, the question was, do we need them? If you were a sharpshooter, yes, you
would need one. But when the average boy fired, our answer was no. We critiqued
the entire war that way.
At the end of the
critique, Patton asked if there were any questions. And I asked him why the
armored divisions got the first crack at the new equipment, why didn’t we get
some?
He asked me what I
thought.
I said we should have
gotten some of the new tanks like the armored divisions were getting.
He paused and said,
“Politics, son. Politics.” It was a good answer.
Afterward, we had a
social. Patton’s niece had come over, she was a Red Cross girl. She attended
the cocktail party, and a young major took a fancy to her. Then it came time
that the general wanted to leave. Well, when the aide tells you that the
general is leaving and he’s got his niece with him, you let the niece leave.
But this major kept talking, and Patton had to wait. The major was doing all
the talking, nobody else. The next day he was transferred to the Pacific.
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