General George S. Patton's Personal Jeep Driver Remembers the Legendary Man

they tell him he couldn't do it and his word was hell the hell i can't and hell you own the hell hell the hell with him you know i was born 1918. i was when the world war war and i found world war ii so jeep you could drive a jeep but you could also open the hood and do whatever you needed under i took an engine out in 40 minutes yeah i did in 40 minutes i took an engine out of the jeep the guy from the willy's company gave made me a special little wrench it was about that long but you get your hand in there and work it you know and you take the four bolts off the transfer transmission and then and took out the radiator and then you disconnect the manifold pull out the engine 40 minutes i did it well it was good that you had that skill because you had the unique it helped me yeah of driving two of the most important people yeah in the war didn't you yeah right eisenhower general eisenhower yeah well i said i'm not too much i didn't know nobody but that patton i did but general patton yeah you knew and you had a unique i'm jealous of you gee because you had you had the side stage view you saw everything because you were right there everything he did i saw that when he was me but if everyone was at the half track so i didn't know what he did but i did i saw the most of him he liked the small car and we went easy to get around you know yeah well we see him on the movies and others and he'd be standing up in the jeep that's what he does all the time you know why he's like the kid says where are you going george are you going to berlin to kill that son of a bastard hitler you know yeah well we saw him but you were driving the other one yeah i i didn't yeah i drove you i've seen a couple of pictures of myself and but uh you know but that didn't you don't know what i know but every time he used to love that way you know going to berlin but he wanted to burn in so bad what was the relationship like tell us what he was like he never talked about home never never said i did i didn't i remember one daughter ann and his wife but i don't he never never talked about always about the military you know this and that yeah yeah and to tell you never talk to me too much let me drive you know don't interfere with me but yeah he was uh he'd look around and uh slow down and turn here and go there you know and i did what he wanted me to do yeah but he was a lot of quiet guy but then all of a sudden i heard oh no it ain't going to work so he's figuring something that was going on but at the end it ain't going to work so he don't do it you know yeah but when we go to open we got into that and uh donald charleroy he found a place for post office and barbershop and all that stuff you know he was sharp yeah did you you heard him when he'd speak to the men you how would he interact with the soldiers that he would say wonderful yeah and then he clapped for a broad time yeah yeah yeah they liked him yeah oh yeah but sometime when he'd get out of the jeep but the guy the guys are doing something he'd go out and help them you know yeah you gotta hand them to that one time when they got stuck in that mud and uh he was out there get directed traffic and bradley said george you'd make one hell of a good cop you know you tried to direct the traffic getting them out of mud holy dare you don't yeah yeah well they liked him the troops liked him did you like him i did yeah i like that very much he was very good to me i mean never scolded me and never said but then things i don't do then he does like but my helmet when i was driving i hit that bouncing and he bounced him off the scene he didn't say nothing he said now can you see better and i just that's how it goes you know and then when i talked to one of them when he spurred all that money up from the the girls there you know and i said to him i said jesus you should give me that money he said well he said if you want to check i'll make you out of check right now he's oh he was comical too you know he was uh but he's always serious you could see he's always thinking he was always thinking about something that poor guy sometimes gets so red i used to get so scared this guy's going to have a heart attack but no he went to the end of the war but then i can see when the day when we got that phone call that he couldn't go to i could see the drop in him you know when he called and said he can't go to berlin yeah that the russians were going to take over berlin or at least the soviets man he couldn't he wasn't allowed to go yeah and you you were there when he got that call yeah i was in a cheaper and we had a radio from uh from bradley you know we had contact with bradley and then the driving house said you don't do this you don't do that and and then he never did just all of a sudden he looked up and he could see tears coming out of his eyes this is what he fought for he wanted to get in there you know he wanted to get to brother oh he wanted to berlin yeah but he never went that i know of nothing i never know enough that he went into berlin no how long were you all together do you remember from 1944 to 45 from the invasion of france to the end of war i've been with him but i've stayed longer than i had had to get his papers done and stiff this to take all the maps down off the tray off his truck and all yeah we had they had a van made for him he never slipped and stepped to the ground yeah i kept all his clothes in the maps in there on the table and there and he had a sleeping bag you know never used it when you were carrying him around he was was he in constant communication with uh the other generals or no no no no he never he turned that damn thing off i don't want to hear it you know he knows what he's doing what he's got to do yeah and then sometimes he wants to get a hold of bradley and then he'd say turn around so he turned around sometimes see if they had some messages for him in there yeah he don't want to hear that squeaking noise yeah yeah he was he was all right a great general and he's a wonderful person he liked his man they like they liked him they used to talk about bloody guts but they liked them so let's talk about that helmet how did that helmet stay so shiny okay the helmet is a helmet there's an inner liner the inner liner that's the light you could take the helmet off and you have the hell in the inner line it was inside the helmet yeah three helmets he had and uh this is the one this shiny one he always wanted to go out you know classes so he would we he wanted a good shining soda he didn't know he didn't care what we did with it then we had our cabinet commanding officer he flew to some town to pick up some lacquer you know some lacquer lacquer yeah and we got the like there was eight coats of it on top of the on top that helmet and boy i'm saying you can put something on it just slides right off you know put water on there just rolled right off nothing stayed on that the guy dropped the hair on and the hair just rolled right off why did he do that why he just saw into his shiny helmet you ever see him in the movie or something like that that shiny helmet that's the one that we did yeah and uh he had the other ones with the with the metal the helmet and the in then we had the little stars were painted on the boat the boat they were painted on you know so but the ones that we have uh on him they were the nice little ones i have two stars from his jeep he had three he was a three-star general then at the time and uh i took him off and then he there one kid that was driving his head his half track he wanted one so i gave him what i brought two of them i still have the two stars at home from the jeep so and then the helmet he loved it it was a great boat every time he'd get sober and he could rub it off nice and didn't put her away at his truck who had to take care of it did you have to take care of that he had a dog robber when dog robber in the army is an officer takes good care of your clothes and then major stealer i just stay there with his dog polish his boots you know clean them up there have his clothes ready for him anytime if i want this for tomorrow he'd have it ready for him that was a major a major major stimulator yeah a major what about the timing was he always on time when that clock made alarm was he ready to go or did you have to wait hold on another time you come here he said i'm gonna leave at four o'clock you know and if in the morning you know if i'm instead of sleeping or something he'd sneak over and hey let's go let's go and maybe earlier you know he'd get you up oh yeah he'd get me up and go up and go before they used to have a bugler guy he used to wake up and they don't have them in the morning when the war was on his own you know so he did wake me up and go yeah this is the time when he went we had the meeting at the red school house and he and he told me and he said do you know where i know where's i was in 18 i said yeah i know where it's at so he said we got to be there at three o'clock in the morning and it's okay good three o'clock in the morning and eisenhower came in bradley was there marshall was there and uh hodges was there and we got there there was a forbes there eisenhower was in there yet so he comes over with a big cadillac that morning in patton spotted him out and he seen him he said drive over to his car and drove over to the car and uh he hired george hi he says and he said where's your helmet and i said oh i don't have to wear a helmet he said your road is worth it anybody in the front lines you got to wear a helmet he said yeah well whatever you start wearing the wear helmet you call me we'll have our meeting we took off turned around he said get back and we went back he left him there yeah then he's coming i guess i stuck my foot on his mouth again oh yeah the pearl handles the pearl handles is where i'm headed to here the pearl handle uh guns pistol pistols they were what about them were they really pearl well yeah yeah you know what i went up to when he sent me up to uh belgium to pick up the the the domes about you put it under the jeep and then i went there it was all full of holes you don't need that door no good so i seen pieces of uh plastic you know i just picked them up so i stuck them into my back and then that's when he said he wanted a pearl handle good things for his gun you know so i went back and i told my um this kid was making working there and i told him i said hey i said can you do this he said well yeah i said we're going to get a handles for a patent this pistol you know well he said yeah we could do it he's something with the plastic when we can make it when it's okay so one day i'd come back and i told him i wanted to go he took all the bullets out of it and he gave me that trip regular mcdonald was his name i gave him the gun you know i told him to take he took it off he took off the handles on both sides the plastic you know yet and i told him i said we want pearl handling and he said you crazy i didn't know i made pearl handling oh it's not makeup one and so and so he got him on he got this piece of plastic you know it was pretty thick it was which is what he needed and he carved it he carved the damn thing out i mean he did a hell of a job and then cleaned it all out something's going to clean it out he had to sand it out and with the crooked cloth they called it and sanded it all down there and showed no marks or nothing then he painted it with white paint you know then he put some lacquer on top and make it look good in the back of the outside and you put together your bait as you can point patton was so great that he had pearl handles he'd walk around you know you could see his parallel gun pearl handles that were real really plastic but i don't know if he knew it or not i guess he must know where the hell are you going to get pearl handle gloves in a war you know handling for the gun so that's the ones he made for him did he get angry was he angry do you see him mad sometimes he gets hot sometimes there's things that they tell him he couldn't do it and his word was hell the hell i can't and hell you own the hell hell the hell with him you know that was his head word hell was his word you know yeah he didn't you know john he'd get mad some time together well he said george you know doctor hell i can't do it i'll do it he said he did it too you know and then that's when he took that little town from montgomery oh montgomery come and found him in town oh she was i he called montgomery called i uh a patent he said some my pattern says what if you want me to give it back to him i'll give it back to him you know and let let my my country take it oh yeah deep what was it about him that men wanted to follow him why were they willing to to follow was it that he just had natural leadership he you know one day he talked to the guys you generally have like maybe 15 or 20 guys that come in there you know they're talking to him something going on on the field he was pretty good with it you know he was just like you and i the talking and the general didn't mean nothing the stars didn't mean nothing at the time it was like man-to-man yeah if you had a better idea he'd go for it that's right that's that's what that's what made them i mean the guys liked it but they call them blood and guts because you see the guy who goes you know our guts and your blood you know it's not that's where he was and i don't know whether you were there or not i don't even know if the story was true or not i suppose it was was that he kind of beat up on a on a soldier who i'll tell you the story about them and i wasn't dead this was in africa okay that's really that's where he got released to come up and they'd put him he was they were supposed to send him home and uh bradley kept him there for a while and they're talking eisenhower about keeping him there so he stayed there didn't go home and evidently when he went in and this kid was nervous you know he's all shook up like that and uh he asked him what happened and he told him something so he had a preparing left but the gloves hit the helmet it didn't hit him or nothing i hit the helmet but the media made it that big okay he said he hit the guy and he didn't he didn't hit him with his gloves yeah you and i were doing the same thing you know he just slapped him on top of the helmet he didn't get hurt and hit him in the helmet but then the pattern said put this guy up in the front lines you know yeah i remember that one he couldn't he wouldn't tolerate a coward no no no no no no he went up there just like the gi's did himself you know we go up the front lines we'd go there he was up there before you hit him going through and all that oh did he ever talk to you about that never never talked about it yeah it hurt him though kept him lots and lots and you could see he was scared a lot of time i could see i was too you know but uh you did what you had to do you do what you have to do if you duck them you talk them that's all but i'll tell you what before when when uh the war was over in europe they asked george if he wanted to go to uh you were in japan you know and he didn't he told me he didn't care to go he didn't want he didn't want to go over there and uh he said they're doing a good job over there he said and then when uh what he called called him uh uh harry truman truman and he told him about that about japan and then he said look he says we killed another man he says we don't need it this if you have any other ways that we can stop this war would stop it so and then he hit him he said what about atomic bomb if it takes atomic bomb give it to him so there was a nine to nine days there they were dropping leaflets that they were going to bomb the place and i guess they didn't pay attention to it and it happened i never i know one of the kids that was on the airplane that pushed pushed the button he was telling me so when that thing went off he said we ought to go higher you know because and uh but that happened then they gave him the other one and so until and then when he was they called it they called him and told him he said now and he says if they don't did the japanese say they'll never surrender well he said hit him with this everybody give him the pamphlets and tell me tokyo is next they surrendered in so truman actually conferred with patton about the yeah he asked him if he wanted to go there and patton didn't want to go there mccarthy said mccarthy doing a good job i don't want to interfere with him

Channel: American Veterans Center

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Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal

Id: Zq8F95LrHD4

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021