NARRATOR: Although George
S. Patton would live to be 60 years old, he actually
lived in America's mind and heart for just about
three of those years-- 1942 through 1945. What a three years they were. In the biggest and most flaming
campaigns of World War II, he embodied the cutting edge
of American vengeance and power against the Axis hordes. He broke Hitler's legions
with the headlong lan of the hard-riding Western
cavalryman that he indeed was. But the heart and spirit
that always seemed so confident and invincible had
chasms of weakness and despair from which even his mighty
3rd Army couldn't save him. The truth was that
Patton the soldier was one of the most complicated
military men who ever dominated a battlefield. He captured or liberated
81,000 square miles of territory, like the
entire country of France. He captured over
1,250,000 prisoners. That's comparable to
nearly five armies, because his army's
strength was only 250,000. He killed or wounded a
half million Germans. Unbelievable. The greatest achievement
in all of military history. He believed, or
came to believe, that he was a reborn
warrior from times past. In fact, many times reborn, that
his soul had gone many times around the wheel. He believed God had put
him on Earth for a purpose. And that purpose was to
lead a great army in battle. He sauntered in Sunday
morning about noon, and I popped up and saluted. And he says, Eklund, he says,
you know Chaplain so-and-so? I said, yes, sir. He said, well, get rid
of the son of a bitch. He can't preach. There was such a contrast
between the public Patton who could curse like a
stable boy one minute, and the next minute, turn
around and get down on his hands and knees and pray to his god. NARRATOR: While he was
never defeated in war, he often found the battles
of peace unbearably hard. Little about the man
or his background was expectable or as it seemed,
except the size of the fight and determination in him. It ran in the family blood. [music playing] The fighting Patton blood
came to Virginia in 1770 with Robert Patton, a
highly successful merchant and civic leader. He was described as "a man who
was hot-tempered and something of a dandy," and as "a
mule-headed fiery little man." He married the daughter of
courageous Brigadier General Hugh Mercer, a prosperous
and legendary hero of the Revolutionary War. He had to be
bayoneted seven times, clubbed, and shot
before he would die while riding to
Washington's aid at Princeton. Robert's son, John
Mercer Patton-- doctor, lawyer, and politician--
married Margaret French and seeded the warrior strain
that was to mark the Patton ancestry. Of his eight surviving
sons, six would serve the Confederate
gray in the Civil War. From Bull Run to Cold Harbor,
four would fall, two would die. The eldest of these heroes was
the first George Smith Patton. At VMI, he had been rated
first in tactics, French, mathematics, Latin,
geology, and chemistry, showing the rage to excel that
would dominate his grandson. He had married redoubtable
Susan Glassell Patton and gone to the Civil War as the
father of two children, George and Nellie. After exemplary service and a
wounding in earlier battles, Colonel George S. Patton I
fell, mortally hit at age 31 in the Battle of
Winchester in 1864. His widow would sell everything
except her husband's sword, saddle, gold watch,
and Bible, in order to head for the
Western frontiers. The courage of such a move into
the unknown was pure Patton. In fast-growing
California, Susan married George Hugh Smith. Her eldest child,
George Patton II, father-to-be of
the future general, would grow up gripped with the
heritage of his late father, burning to pick up the fallen
banner of the dead hero. George Patton II absorbed
this memory of his father and wanted to fulfill what
he saw to be his father's thwarted destiny as a soldier. Went to VMI, graduated
first in his class. However, his family,
his widowed mother needed a breadwinner at home. So Papa resigned his
commission and became a lawyer in California. But that left him saddened. It left him dissatisfied. And in a very benign, loving
but nonetheless assertive way, Papa passed that
thwarted dream that he'd had of a military career on to
his young and ever-eager son, Georgie. NARRATOR: The future general's
maternal grandfather, Benjamin Davis Wilson,
contributed ferocity to the Patton blood. He was a trapper, grizzly
bear fighter, bandit killer, rancher, politician, and
real estate entrepreneur. He was known as Don Benito
and had a frightful temper. Ruth Wilson was his treasured
daughter, and certainly the carrier of
his warrior fires. She would marry George S.
Patton II December 11, 1884. On November 11, 1885, George
S. Patton III was born. Georgie, as he would
be called all his life, began as a charming, loving,
sweet-tempered child. That and his bravura good looks
made him the family favorite. And the Pattons knew
how to play favorites. They lined up to happily
spoil him rotten. The man to be famed for
his fierce discipline knew little of it in
his own early life. None, not even his father,
spoiled him as resolutely as Ruth Wilson Patton's
spinster sister, Anne, known as Aunt Nanny. Aunt Nanny's unrequited
love was Patton's father. She wanted to marry him. She was in love with him from
the time she first set eyes on him. Her sister won his
hand in marriage. But to her death, she
considered George S. Patton II her husband, and she
considered George S. Patton Jr. as her son. After she died, her
nieces went into her bureau and found not only some
of Georgie's baby clothes, but some of the
swabs and gauze pads that had bandaged scraped knees
from childhood that at that point were 30, 35, 40 years
old, that she had saved from those early days
at Lake Vineyard. He had his way in
virtually everything he did. He was given a horse. He was given a saddle. He was allowed to roam the
vast Patton estate in Southern California. He grew up happy-go-lucky,
totally unlike the character that he later became. NARRATOR: Georgie's younger
sister Anne, called "Nita," endured a lifetime in
the overpowering shadow of her brother, but still
managed to adore him along with the rest. But it was to his father that
young Georgie gave his heart. CARLO D'ESTE: His father began
to read to him at an early age, telling the stories and the
myths of the Patton family, of the tradition of
the Revolutionary War when General Hugh Mercer
died at Princeton, right on through the Civil War where
his own grandfather was killed at Winchester and his
great uncle was mortally wounded at Pickett's
Charge at Gettysburg. He saw himself as not
only the embodiment of these great
Pattons that had come before him, but as one who
had this destiny that he had to fulfill. young George S. Patton Ad was still in childhood,
there floated into his life the first ominous cloud. The golden-haired boy seemed
flashingly bright at play, but at lessons,
he was a disaster. Even the worshipful
Aunt Nanny began to suspect her beloved nephew
was, behind it all, dim-witted. The problem was the maddening,
then-unknown affliction dyslexia, which caused his
senses to garble writing. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I had trouble with my As, Bs, and-- now, what was that other letter? His parents read to
him continuously and also had tutors to try and help him. They were afraid to send him
to school until he was about 11 or 12 years old because
they would be embarrassed that he would be ridiculed
by his classmates. CARLO D'ESTE: His father and
his Aunt Nanny read to him. They read the classics. They read the Bible. Patton learned not only the
traditions of his family, but also the stories of the
great generals of history. Very early on
decided he needed to become the great warrior
that he dreamed of being. He imagined himself to be
weak, to be not intellectually gifted, to be pampered
at home, and he felt he needed to be tough. And he decided to act tough
even if he didn't feel tough. NARRATOR: Bravely,
young Georgie plunged into Pasadena's
Classical School for Boys where he had to develop
a photographic mind to make even acceptable
progress in reading and mathematics, yet he shone
in ancient and modern history. He would pattern himself
after the great heroes, and for a Patton, that
meant military heroes. One minute he was
this young, carefree, rather happy-go-lucky teenager,
and virtually the next minute, as he prepared himself to
enter West Point and to follow a military career, he decided
that he had to be this other character. And eventually, you could
not separate the character that he was portraying from
the real Patton himself. NARRATOR: But there was
to be a great distraction. During the summer of
1902, when Georgie was 16, a wealthy Boston
family, the Ayers, traveled to California
in their own railway cars to visit the Pattons. With them was an auburn-haired
16-year-old who had already entertained three
proposals of marriage, Beatrice Banning Ayer. She had recently been narrowly
persuaded by a governess not to have a square-rigged
ship tattooed on her chest. Young Georgie Patton
didn't know it yet, but Beatrice would
alter his life forever. The Ayers were a
wildly successful May-December marriage. He was a self-made patent
medicine millionaire, now 62, and she a successful actress
30 years his junior out of a powerful family that would
one day own Catalina Island. They were big-city
Easterners and would be no pushover for
any provincial suitor of their eldest daughter. Beatrice was a mountain of
talents, playing mandolin, piano, steel guitar,
and musical saw. She later wrote songs and a
novel that would be published, was a crack sailor, and
spoke sturdy French. The idyllic summer culminated
in a family theatrical called "Undine," with
Beatrice in the leading role and the future military
terror as a water sprite. Although they went
their separate ways after the magical season,
the bond between them, though nurtured only by
sparse letters and trinkets, would never be broken. With no openings at West Point,
Georgie followed the footsteps of his father and grandfather
to Virginia Military Institute. A cram school headmaster
told his father glumly, your son's case is one of
those from which we distinctly shrink. Still his father
continued to orchestrate a tireless letter-writing
barrage to all who could affect a West Point
appointment, calling in all the political IOUs of
both the Patton and Wilson families. The campaign would
take him only so far. In the end, Patton had
to get in on his own merit. He had to take the competitive
exam, and he did pass it. But nothing came
easy for Patton. He had to work twice as
hard as everyone else. NARRATOR: Now he
was a West Pointer, but his struggles
were far from over. His dyslexia dragged
him steadily downward despite his mightiest efforts. CARLO D'ESTE: He
had a terrible time. He couldn't read properly, so
that virtually everything had to be memorized. NARRATOR: At the end of Patton's
first year at West Point in May of 1905, he flunked and was sent
back to repeat his plebe year. The setback was
devastating to him. His entire life seemed over. He had to do things
better than anyone else. And his whole life was keyed
around this attempt, day in and day out, to prove himself. And so for him, mediocrity
was virtually a sin. NARRATOR: At West Point, the
terrible unstoppable resolve that was to characterize
the rest of his life now seized him as he drove
himself mercilessly to excel. Patton never lost his aversion
to those of allegedly inferior social status. Of his fellow cadets, he wrote
that "most were nice fellows, but very few indeed
are born gentlemen. The only ones of that
type are Southerners." Not surprisingly,
he made few friends and was deemed
arrogant and remote. On parade, he lamented that-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER): I
was only part of the Corps, not the whole thing. NARRATOR: Now he began
a conscious process of killing the sweet-tempered,
affectionate child he had been in order to produce
the profane, choleric adult that he felt his
new life required. He let his naked ambition
show and openly aspired to become the first
general from his class. Sensing the rising
momentum of his country in the young century, he
was already anticipating a great place in it. CARLO D'ESTE: He never threw
a single scrap of paper away. From the time he
entered West Point, he wrote in the notebook,
"for a future biographer, this may be of interest to you." And then he sort of
summarized his life. And here he is, a
19-year-old cadet and he really hadn't
done that much, but yet he was
already seeing someone down the line
years hence writing a biography of his life. NARRATOR: While he was far
from a natural athlete, he characteristically
turned his blazing will upon training himself at sports. He showed a remarkable
aptitude for fencing and fell in love with its
aristocratic overtones. His lifelong propensity to
injure himself came to the fore with his athletic striving,
and he limped frequently to the Academy infirmary. The reason that he
was so accident prone was that he never
did anything by half. For Patton, whatever it was,
whether it was running track or jumping over a fence
or sword fighting, he had to be the best. He knew only one way
and that was all out. NARRATOR: Things started
to look up all around. Beatrice and he had
become a definite item. His marks and his standing
in class improved. And he now had lower classmen
of his own to torment. His overzealousness
offended virtually everyone. He reported eagerly-- ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): I believe that I reported more men than
any other officer of the day this summer. They don't like me. But when I get out in front of
them, the foolishness stops. NARRATOR: With his dyslexic
difficulties at West Point now caving in to the
sheer weight of his will, George Patton found time
and confidence in 1909 to press his way toward the
hand of his ever more beloved, Beatrice Ayer. But there was a very large
persuasive and rich obstruction in his path. ROBERT H. PATTON:
The military was not a gentlemen's profession in
the view of Frederick Ayer. While willing to give his
blessings to the marriage of Georgie and Beatrice,
said, first and foremost, you must leave the military
and then we can talk. But Patton politely but
firmly resisted Frederick Ayer's entreaties to accept both
money and position as the price of giving up his career. NARRATOR: Later, Patton
would tell Ayer-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
It is as natural for me to be a soldier as
it is to breathe. NARRATOR: Defending his destiny,
he wrote to her parents-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I awaken at night in a cold sweat, imagining that
I have lived and done nothing. Worse than failure,
worse than mediocrity, Georgie feared as a young man
the acceptance of failure, the acceptance of mediocrity. NARRATOR: The truth was that
Beatrice dreaded the prospect of becoming an ill-housed
knockabout Army wife, yet she would lock
herself in her room and stage a hunger strike
to support her insistence on marrying her Georgie. Patton's graduation
from West Point came after five tough years,
with his creditable standing of 46th in a class of 103 being
achieved with sheer bulldog grit. It was a trait that
would become all too familiar to his
battlefield enemies. After his graduation
from West Point, George Patton chose the
cavalry as his assignment. But the neglected Army of
1910 defended a huge nation with a poorly paid 84,000
men and only 4,300 officers-- hardly enough to fill
a football stadium. He was assigned to a
hardscrabble outpost at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. CARLO D'ESTE: There
wasn't a great future. There were no wars
in the near prospect, and so it was a
courier for the hardy, for those that were
willing to endure a very difficult lifestyle. NARRATOR: As she
had at West Point, Aunt Nanny packed up and moved
to be near her treasured boy. But Georgie was distracted
from his loving aunt by the sudden success
of his romantic pursuit. Frederick Ayer finally
caved in to Patton's suit of his daughter with
generous words and deeds. "It has been my custom when
my children have married to give them a monthly income. I admire your
firmness of purpose in sticking to the Army." George Patton Sr. had sent
his new daughter-in-law a sentimental note
saying, "In my memory, I saw the little white-headed
kid who was Georgie. This far off father
surrenders his only little boy to your loving
keeping for always." Beatrice Ayer and Second
Lieutenant George S. Patton Jr. were married on May 26,
1910, in a great social event at the splendid
Ayer home of Avalon on Massachusetts' North Shore. When Georgie's mother fell
ill, a glorying Aunt Nanny took the place of honor
in the receiving line next to the only man she had
ever loved, the man at whose death she would one day
moan, "Wait for me, George. Wait for me." A long, stylish wedding
voyage to England began the marriage joyously. For Beatrice, it made the
return to the stark realities of a second lieutenant's wife
at a nondescript Army post even harder to bear. The way she coped was
to frequently go home to visit her parents,
to take breaks away from this strange alien life
that she'd been thrust into. Yet at the same time, she was
determined to tough it out. She married George S. Patton
for better or for worse, and by God, she was going
to see this through. NARRATOR: With the birth
of little Beatrice, called Bea, in 1911, Patton
found himself unready and this displeased. CARLO D'ESTE: He found
fatherhood extremely difficult. And he found the birth of
his first daughter, Beatrice, a traumatic event. He had a difficult
time adjusting. He felt lonely. He felt isolated. All of a sudden, he was no
longer the center of attention. NARRATOR: The Ayer coffers
helped raise the social level for Georgie's Army family. That money bought him one
of the first motor cars and a hot interest in
all things automotive. Still, he was not a
social class bully. A custom at Army
posts in the early 1900s was that young junior officers
were bumped from their quarters if a more senior
officer wanted them. Georgie thought this was a
great slight and a great insult, and therefore to avoid
that, always took the worst quarters on any post
that he was assigned to. NARRATOR: A transfer to Fort
Myer near Washington in 1912 rescued the Pattons
from the bushes and plunged Georgie into the
tony social world of parties, fox hunting, and polo in
the Virginia and Maryland countryside. Bea came back into
her own, and Georgie began to make contacts that
would serve him all his life. He found himself a regular
riding companion of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson,
who was impressed with the young officer
and pushed his interests aggressively. It was time to upgrade the
Patton horseflesh to reflect the new competition. He visited Lexington, Kentucky,
to buy seven new thoroughbreds. ROBERT H. PATTON: He was able,
through his wife's means, to afford not only many polo
ponies and English jumpers, but the very best
that could be had. At one Army post, he went to
the commanding officer's door when he first arrived
and knocked on the door and said, where will I
be stabling my 20 ponies? And of course, the
colonel probably had one pony to his name,
and this wasn't exactly the best introduction to
the Army post for Georgie. NARRATOR: With
the fifth Olympiad to be held in 1912
in Stockholm, Sweden, the United States turned
to Lieutenant George Patton for the modern pentathlon. Five events for soldier
athletes including running, pistol shooting,
swimming, fencing, and riding. They were betting on his
reckless determination and sheer guts. He had only a couple
of months to prepare. And he simply went out,
trained as hard as he could, ran as hard as he could,
jumped as hard as he could. And the amazing thing is
that he almost won a medal. ROBERT H. PATTON: Georgie
came running into the stadium at the end of the long distance
run in Stockholm completely exhausted, and apparently
crossed the finish line and collapsed in a heap. He was so delirious with
exhaustion that all he heard was his father who came
running down out of the stands, saying to the trainer,
will the boy live? Will the boy live? NARRATOR: He had
defeated 20 of 29 fencers and 17 of 23 swimmers without
being a natural athlete. It was the first of
many Patton trips into the national limelight,
and he wanted more. His showing inspired
a sword-training stint at the classic
French Cavalry School at Saumur, where he qualified
to become the first US Master of the Sword. He designed a new
US Cavalry Saber and published important articles
in the "Cavalry Journal." Times were good, and he knew
how to make them better. He flattered his superiors. He wrote a great many
letters telling other people how great they were. He advertised himself. He performed in horse races
and steeplechasing and polo and all sorts of things
to self-advertise. NARRATOR: Patton got
another plum assignment to cavalrymen's heaven-- the Mounted Service School
in Fort Riley, Kansas. It was all good riding, good
company, and good prospects. There was still a sign
reading "Officers will not shoot buffalo on
the parade ground from the windows
of their quarters." Still, he now began to chafe
at his lack of progress. The man who wanted to be
the first in his class to make general was now 29
and still a second lieutenant. Promotion in the peacetime
Army was almost non-existent. One could spend 10 or 15
years as a second lieutenant or as a first lieutenant. NARRATOR: Ruth Ellen
Patton was born in 1915. Not only did she disappoint
as another girl instead of the expected heir, but she
would turn into a spitfire to bedevil him in his own image. He even found fault
with her name. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I don't like the sound of either Ruth or Ellen. ROBERT H. PATTON: Across
the dining room table and across playrooms
and living rooms in the households
wherever they lived, they tended to argue and debate. And she did not back down. At one point, Beatrice was told
that her daughter, Ruth Ellen, was swearing in class in
first or second grade. And she called her daughter
in and said, why are you swearing in class? And she said, well, I'm
doing it because Daddy does. NARRATOR: Patton's
doldrums began to fade with the sharp
deterioration of relations between the US and Mexico as
revolutionary upheavals spilled across the southern border. He melodramatically
wrote Aunt Nanny-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
By the time this reaches you, I may be a heap of rotting
carrion on the sand hills of northern Mexico. NARRATOR: But the prospect
of a war, of course, delighted him thoroughly, and
it looked as though there were a couple of them coming. The Patton genius for
being in the right place at the right time when the
bullets were flying thickest would soon make its way
into national headlines in the Mexican War and
the First World War. ve n would move toward
the Mexican border under Brigadier General
John J. Pershing. The terror that young Lieutenant
George S. Patton Jr. felt arose from the prospect of
missing his call to glory in the coming trouble. The 30-year Mexican
dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz had been overthrown in 1910. But the democratically-elected
President Francisco Madero was murdered and replaced by
General Victoriano Huerta. A US effort to support his
opponent, Venustiano Carranza, had backfired into
growing anti-Americanism. Francisco Villa, known as
"Pancho" a murderous bandit leader and folk hero,
struck across the border with brilliant
guerrilla tactics. The last thing that
General Pershing needed in his
expeditionary force was another young lieutenant. The odds did not daunt Patton. So he literally forced himself
by virtue of going to Pershing and saying, I want to become
a member of your staff, and actually persuading John
J. Pershing to accept him as an aide when he didn't
have a vacancy for an aide. MARTIN BLUMENSON: He
modeled himself on Pershing to a great extent. He was very close to Pershing
during the expedition to Mexico. He noticed that Pershing was
very careful about details and small details. And Patton learned
that if one is very careful about the tiny
details, everything in the end is going to work out OK. I think Patton modeled his
bearing and his posture and his way of talking
on how Pershing did this. NARRATOR: Pershing was
a dominating commander, the ideal kind of
officer upon whom Patton could model himself. The glacial stare, the
no-nonsense discipline, the willingness to
accept unpopularity came to Patton straight out
of "Black Jack" Pershing. Patton's career certainly
wasn't hurt by the fact that his sister Nita and
Pershing had a romance. In fact, Patton at
one point almost became Pershing's
brother-in-law. NARRATOR: Pancho Villa
capped a rampage of murder with a raid on Columbus, New
Mexico, on March 9, 1916. 18 Americans died
in the fighting. The incident ruled the
headlines in the United States. The US Cavalry and George Patton
soon thundered into Mexico in hot pursuit. Young Patton learned
more than fighting. The problems of movement in the
desert were eagerly recorded. The lessons would serve
him crucially later in his North African campaign. It was the last significant
moment of the US Cavalry, and Patton warned that the
troops had not been allowed to bring their sabers. But his moment of
glory in Mexico was not on horseback, but
in the usurping automobile. The Punitive Expedition was
really the making of Patton. He launched what he
called "a great raid" to locate one of Pancho
Villa's senior lieutenants. They found him at a hacienda. There was a great shoot-out. Villa's henchmen was killed
along with two other Mexicans in a shoot-out. Patton overnight became
a national figure. He was reported in
all of the newspapers. The corpses of the
Mexican that he killed were placed on the
hood of his car and taken back and delivered
to Pershing, almost as if one would deliver a trophy. NARRATOR: As the Mexican
expedition went in circles, Patton grew depressed
and took refuge in some long-held beliefs. The idea of Georgie being
present at long-ago battles came about early in his mind. They didn't come from nothing. This idea of
reincarnation, spiritualism was part of the
family vocabulary. He'd fought with Hannibal. He'd fought with Caesar's
legions, Alexander the Great, and of course, the Civil
War with his ancestors. In each situation, he was a hero
who died on the battlefield. And that belief in
reincarnation combined with love of his ancestors inspired him to
be a courageous, brave soldier. And as a consequence, he felt
that he had experienced so much in warfare that he knew exactly
by instinct or by intuition what to do on the
battlefield to win. NARRATOR: With the inconclusive
end of the Mexican campaign, he again had time to worry
himself about his family. When his father made a
run for the US Senate, Patton was delighted, even
though George Sr. lost. Georgie, though
he loved his father, often criticized his
father for continuing-- long after the Pattons
had become wealthy, for continuing to
be a winemaker, to sell off parcels of land,
in effect to continuing to be a capitalist. Georgie said to his father,
you've got the money in effect. Now go and do something
noble and honorable. Go and run for office. Go and become a prestigious
cabinet official in Washington government. Do something in effect that
has the aspect of grandeur that, in Georgie's view,
business did not have. NARRATOR: Patton's career almost
ended when a gasoline lantern blew up in his face. The fate that would finally
get him was hunting. Yet for him, the gods of
war would always be kind. In the spring of 1917, the
US threw off its thin cloak of neutrality and responded
to the indiscriminate sinking of its ships by Germany. [pow] The country entered the
great European slaughter that had been raging since 1914. Mobilization was begun
on a massive scale, to the unconcealed joy
of George S. Patton. Most vitally for Patton, the
commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to
be his old Mexican commander, Black Jack Pershing. Patton was ordered to
Washington as his aide. On May 28, 1917, Patton, now
a captain, sailed for France. Beatrice would not see him
again for nearly two years. In France, a new weapon was
being slowly, painfully born. It would one day
bring George S. Patton to pinnacles of fame and glory. Patton's great opportunity
came at the end of 1917 when Pershing appointed him
to head the new AEF Tank Corps, which at the time
consisted of Patton and one lieutenant. Between January, 1918,
and the summer of 1918, Patton singlehandedly created
the AEF tank training center. He created the ideas,
the tactics, the design, the uniforms, the procedures. Virtually everything that
was done came from Patton. Over 10,000 men had been trained
before the first battle took place. It was an amazing
accomplishment. NARRATOR: Patton studied the
Battle of Cambrai, in which the British had launched
the largest tank attack ever mounted. 324 machines struck
the Hindenburg Line and penetrated six miles,
overran two divisions, and captured 8,000 prisoners-- a success that
100,000 foot soldiers had failed to achieve four
months before in the same area. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
If resistance is broken and the line pierced,
the tank must and will assume the role
of pursuit cavalry and ride the enemy to death. NARRATOR: George
Patton's prophetic words became the bedrock of
all armored warfare for the rest of the century. lieutenant colonel in France,n George S. Patton set about
drilling his special brand of spit-and-polish discipline
into his blossoming tank corps. His men gained a
grudging, growing pride in the Corps and its commander. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I don't see why they like me, as I curse them freely
on all occasions. MARTIN BLUMENSON: He
was always concerned about what made soldiers fight
and what made them do things above and beyond
the call of duty. And I think it was
that that made him such a wonderful
trainer of people. There is a magic when
he's working with troops. There was a magic bond
between Patton and his men. NARRATOR: The fledgling
American troops were sent to the
Meuse-Argonne sector to straighten out a
bulge in the line called the Saint-Mihiel salient. [boom] The French had previously
lost 60,000 men in failing the same effort. Patton's tank brigade
was slated to go in. He joined dangerous patrols
to begin a lifetime obsession with the need of a tank officer
to personally see the ground on which he was to fight. His instructions to
his men were succinct. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
Remember that you were the first American tanks. You must establish the fact
that American tanks do not surrender. NARRATOR: The first American
tank attack in history went forward, led
by George Patton. He left his command post and
went into the battlefield on foot, kicking and
cursing the hesitant. As he progressed, he came across
an aristocratic officer walking coolly forward
with his infantry. As on later battlefields,
neither Douglas MacArthur nor George Patton would let
himself flinch from fire. [pow] [boom] CARLO D'ESTE: Patton
encountered MacArthur. Artillery fire was raining
down from the German side. Both were standing,
facing the enemy fire, neither one willing to
acknowledge the fact that they might be killed at any moment. Neither man flinching. It was really a case
of one-upsmanship. NARRATOR: Patton's courage
was remarkable-- bordering on foolhardy. He walked boldly over a bridge
reported mined by the Germans. Later he led his men
into a contested town riding on top of a tank being
splattered with bullets. He proudly said-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I am the only man on the front line except General
MacArthur who never ducked a shell. [explosions] He didn't know it at the
time, but eventually this helped to make his reputation
when it was widely reported that he had ridden
a tank under fire. And he also had the honor
of being perhaps one of the first Americans ever
to ride a tank in battle, because this was the first day
that American tanks had ever been employed in combat. NARRATOR: The carnage moved him
to follow his lifelong penchant to write melodramatic
poetry when saddened. ROBERT H. PATTON: Georgie
was by no means a great poet. A sort of poor man--
perhaps a very poor man's version of Rudyard Kipling. However, he took
it very seriously. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER): The
roar of the battle languished, the hate from the guns grew
still while the moon rose up from a smoke cloud and looked
at the dead on the hill. [boom] NARRATOR: Patton
had a great triumph in the Saint-Mihiel battle
and became fascinated with the potential of tanks in
a new sort of swift mobile war. On September 26, 1918, the
Americans and the French launched a great offensive
in the Meuse-Argonne sector. Patton's armor was
to be in support. The troops and
tanks went forward, and the Germans threw
everything they had at them. Artillery raked the
advance relentlessly. Near the town of Cheppy,
disoriented by fog, Patton found himself on foot
out in front of the tanks and came under severe fire
from some of the 25 machine gun nests defending the town. [gunfire] CARLO D'ESTE: It
was at this point that Patton later claimed to
have had a vision, that he looked up in the sky
and in the clouds he saw the outline or the
image of his Confederate kin, of his great uncle and
of his grandfather. And they seemed to be beckoning
to him, saying, come on. Come on. Get up. No Patton could be a coward. And he later related
that this inspired him to lead the men
out of this depression where they were hiding. NARRATOR: The results
were disastrous. His men were cut down. Patton took a vicious leg
wound from a machine-gun bullet and certainly would
have died if not pulled to the safety of a shell hole by
his orderly, PFC Joseph Angelo. Patton was badly wounded when
he was shot with a machine-gun bullet in his upper thigh. His doctors later
looked at the wound and marveled that he survived. NARRATOR: As he was
rushed back for treatment, Patton realized that he
was almost exactly the age his grandfather and namesake
was on the day he died at Winchester. So it was somewhat
to Patton's surprise that he survived and
was made a full colonel. He said he would have preferred
a medal to the promotion. On George Patton's
33rd birthday, the guns on the Western
Front grew silent as the armistice was signed. The end of the war robbed him of
the euphoria of defying death. It also ripped the special
bond that binds men in battle. His expected greatness
lay still unachieved. He suffered acute withdrawal
and a great letdown. One of his poems began-- ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): I stood in the flag-decked cheering
crowd where all but I were gay, and gazing on their ecstasy,
my heart shrank in dismay. NARRATOR: The peace he dreaded
would be less permanent than he feared. Some 350 miles east
of where Patton lay, an eccentric German
corporal named Adolph Hitler brooded vengefully on defeat. The men would meet at the
head of deadly legions. As the huge Army shrank
down, Patton's colonel's rank shrank back to captain
before inching back to major. He and his beloved
Tank Corps retreated into a painful irrelevance. Upon his return to
the United States, he found himself let down in
humdrum domestic doldrums, facing daughters he hardly
knew and who hardly knew him. He was gone for
nearly three years. And in that time, their mother
had painted their absent father as a knight in shining armor. This was truly the
walking god come home. Well, young Ruth
Ellen and young Bea, who were three years
old and five years old when he came home, were sorely
disappointed by the man. CARLO D'ESTE: At the
end of World War I, Patton returned to
the United States and was assigned to
Camp Meade, Maryland, where the Tank Corps
was then to be located. It was here that he met
a young tank officer by the name of Dwight
Eisenhower, who had spent the war training tank troops
outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They spent time together as-- thinking as tank officers
about the future of the tank. They experimented together. They played poker together. Their families
became close friends. NARRATOR: It was a friendship
which neither man knew had great implications
for the future. A future that would
carry one of them to the presidency
of the United States and the other to a soldier's
grave on a foreign shore. would discharge 2.6 million
enlisted men and 128,000 officers. The regular Army
fell to 130,000. Patton's wartime rank of colonel
had been reduced to major in the shrunken peacetime Army. The end of the war
left him to deal with the one thing for which
he was never prepared-- peacetime. The thrill of important rank
and leading men in combat in a huge and respected
Army was suddenly gone. The Army retreated to a small
tradition-encrusted force with no money, no future, and
certainly no impetus toward mechanization. Within a few months, it drove
Patton back from the Tank Corps to the Cavalry. The interwar year period
was a terrible time, not just for Patton, but
for all Army officers. They felt their careers
were at a dead end. Most of them felt that they
would either die or retire in the grades that they held. NARRATOR: The
long-awaited Patton heir arrived on Christmas
Eve, 1923, at Avalon, in the person of
George Smith Patton IV. Patton's old World War
I comrade, Joe Angelo, wrote his
congratulations and hoped the baby would become a great
officer like his father. In 1925, Patton took the family
in tow to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Duties in what was called the
Pineapple Army were light, and reviews, polo,
and parties plentiful. But he was miserable. He suffered during this
period from depression. His marriage was troubled. His assignments he found boring. It was a time when he
could see no future. [gunfire] His boundless creativity
tried to find expression in the invention of a device to
add portability to the machine gun. But there was too much
indifference to innovation in these interwar years
for anything to come of it. Goaded by hotheaded
Ruth Ellen, Patton was not getting along much
better with his daughters. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
Beatrice Ayer Patton, how did a beautiful
woman like yourself ever have two such ugly daughters? NARRATOR: When Patton grumpily
ordered Ruth Ellen off a horse so he could show her how
to do something right, she was overheard
to mutter, dear God, please let that
SOB break his neck. At a moment when the frustrated
Patton needed no more misery, a great new sorrow arrived. George Patton Sr., beloved
father and grandfather, the family's great touchstone
to its gloried past, died at 71. After Papa died
in 1927, Georgie was unable to make the funeral. He couldn't get a ship from
Hawaii to California in time. When he arrived a
couple of days later, he first went to the
cemetery in full uniform, knelt on the grave,
said a prayer. And as he said
later, he looked up and he saw his
father's ghost walking along a flower-strewn
path beside the cemetery. He said, I saw
Papa looking at me. And Papa shook his head
and smiled and put fingers to his lips as if to say all
was well, I was not to mourn. Georgie was devastated by
the death of his father. It really was the trigger of a
succession of difficult events which then would come to
Georgie in the next five years. NARRATOR: One of those
was the Great Depression. While Patton was insulated
from the economic crunch by his wealth and career, he
was to confront the human costs. In 1932, he encountered
one of the ugliest moments of his career. Jobless disgruntled
veterans of World War I marched on Washington
to demand bonuses and established a shantytown
they dubbed "Hooverville." One of the veterans was the
man who had saved Patton's life in France, Joe Angelo. The embarrassed
Hoover administration decided to disperse
the marchers. The Army got the call
and George Patton had to suppress the men who
had once served him in battle. To cries of "shame,
shame," the horse soldiers drove off their former
comrades with tear gas, clubs, and the flats of sabers. As Hooverville was
put to the torch, Joe Angelo asked to be brought
to Patton, his old war buddy. CARLO D'ESTE: Patton
completely disavowed Angelo. He pretended that
he didn't know him. It was a traumatic moment. Angelo never forgave
Patton for ignoring him, for rejecting him. Patton himself may very well
have never forgiven himself for not acknowledging it. NARRATOR: After 14
bleak years as a major, Patton's permanent rank was
advanced to lieutenant colonel in 1934. Even in this rank,
his responsibilities didn't go much beyond
constructing squash courts and skeet ranges. Ordered back to
Hawaii in 1935, he decided to test the mettle
that he was not sure remained inside him. He risked himself and
his family by endeavoring to sail 2,238 miles
across the Pacific from San Diego to Hawaii on his
40-foot schooner, the Arcturus. ROBERT H. PATTON: He hadn't
had a great deal of experience sailing. He had-- was a self-taught
navigator, which was quite a feat, considering
he was never good at mathematics to begin with. And this was a way
of courting danger. And if he survived it,
then it was a testament from the heavens that they
still had something in store for Georgie Patton. And if he didn't
survive it, well, best to get it over
with then and know now, rather than later. NARRATOR: The grueling
month-long sail, in which his navigation
proved perfect, failed to restore his
spirits in Hawaii. He was 50 years old,
gray, and in the grip of a midlife crisis. At this time, Bea wrote and
published a successful novel and book of poetry,
and in general showed that she had always
been stronger than her husband. He resented it and
treated her badly. She did tell her daughter,
Ruth Ellen, at one point, she said, I'm staying
with your father. And I want you to remember that
I'm staying with him because he needs me more than I need him. And this I think was a very
important revelation for her as a wife to this man who
so long had dominated. NARRATOR: A stifling
tension fell over the Pattons' relationship. His daughter grew distressed
over his treatment of their mother. He played polo like a
madman, spoke indiscreetly, and drank too much. He also was tempted by another
snare of middle-aged men-- a much younger woman. His wife finally grew
so irritated with his kind of self-indulgent depression
that she wrote in her book, she said, I don't know how
long it takes for a man to spiritually gut himself. I suppose it depends on how
much guts he had to begin with. NARRATOR: Beatrice knew
that George's promotion to colonel in 1938 only reminded
him of the long-dead years since he had last held
that rank in 1918. But suddenly, on the morning
of September 1, 1939, Colonel George Patton had more
important things to consider-- the chance to achieve the
destiny for which he had waited for more than 20 years. With Adolf Hitler's
blitzkrieg into Poland, the world moved grimly
to the edges of war. As England was drawn
into the conflict, America realized that
the defense of its wealth and safety was in the hands of
a woefully unprepared Army that had to be restored with
breathtaking speed. A draft was instituted, and a
massive remanning and rearming program began. Patton had one huge
worry about his future in the building war machine-- his age. When George Marshall
became chief of staff, he began cleaning out the Army. There were too many old men. He got rid of most of the senior
officers over the age of 55. At the time he did this, Patton
was already 55 years of age. But Marshall knew Patton. He knew that this was
a man that was going to lead at least a corps, and
later, perhaps an army of men. NARRATOR: All careers
in the armored forces took a sharp turn upward on May
10, 1940, when German Panzer divisions under the tank
genius General Heinz Guderian broke through the French forces
and drove their British allies into the sea at Dunkirk. In the United States,
changes in armor organization would be rapid, especially for
Colonel George S. Patton Jr. In 1940, as long advocated
by George Patton, the American armored
units were welded into an independent force,
free of powerful infantry and cavalry chiefs. It was the death knell
of the old Cavalry and the rebirth of
Patton's career. CARLO D'ESTE: Patton's return
from the wilderness in 1940, when he was transferred
to Fort Benning, Georgia, to become the assistant division
commander of the 2nd Armored Division, was the real
breakthrough in his career. NARRATOR: Somewhat
to his astonishment, he found himself
missing Beatrice deeply. He seemed to realize what a
mess he had made of his marriage and belatedly apologized. ROBERT H. PATTON: Georgie
needed Beatrice very, very much. He wrote in so many
letters to her, in addition of the love
and romance that he felt. And indeed it was a very
nice, healthy, physical love that they had and he is
very frank in his letters about that. Also, though, he
laments her absence because he says that she keeps
him from getting in trouble. NARRATOR: Beatrice
arrived to join him, and they seemed to rediscover
some of their sense of fun on the local party circuit. He needed a smile because the
sad state of the 2nd Armored Division depressed him deeply. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Now we've got to make them attack and kill. God help the United States. NARRATOR: "The New York Times"
called them a "partly organized rabble of khaki-wearing
civilians." The Patton touch was
needed and arrived heavily. He decided that the first
thing his outfit needed was a visible commander. CARLO D'ESTE: His
general mode of arrival was with sirens
blaring and screaming, arriving with a bevy of
outriders, the military police. Everyone knew who it was. They knew it was Patton. They knew he had arrived. He believed in the
presence of a commander as having a
tremendous influence. NARRATOR: No commander
ever trained troops to a higher standard. It was rabid that they
not waste their lives in some foolish act. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): A pint of sweat saves a
gallon of blood. NARRATOR: Even the look on his
face was calculated to inspire. To him, there was
a Pershing-like way that a general had to look,
and he trained himself at it as rigorously as he
trained any of his men. He had what he
called his "war face." He practiced it in
front of a mirror. It was this stern
visage that many of us are familiar with was what
Patton called his war face. And he could turn the war
face on and off at will. NARRATOR: Patton's desire
to establish esprit de corps produced his much
ridiculed tanker uniform. It was a bilious green,
and some sniggeringly called him the "Green Hornet." After 31 years in the
Army, George S. Patton was now a brigadier general. He was more than ready to
make his weight felt at last. In the early '40s, a series of
sprawling war maneuvers sending 300,000 men across
the American South became the first test of
the rebuilding US military. The maneuvers broke
into national headlines, and unit commanders'
reputations were made or broken as thoroughly as they
would be in a real war. Patton's flair
for the unorthodox served him brilliantly. CARLO D'ESTE: The 1941
Louisiana and Carolina maneuvers helped make Patton. He commanded 2nd
Armored Division. He was making such a splash
that he appeared in July of '41 on the cover of "Life" magazine. At one point during
the Louisiana maneuvers when 2nd Armored was making
a wide sweeping movement to attack the enemy
force in the rear, his tanks began
to run out of gas. And being innovative and
not letting little things like having not
enough fuel stop him, Patton delved into
his own pocket to help buy fuel to
keep his tanks rolling. NARRATOR: As the 14,000-men 2nd
Armored became a crack unit, Patton became a major
general and added inspiration to the training. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Battle is not a terrifying
ordeal to be endured. It is a magnificent experience
wherein all the elements that have made man superior to
the beasts are present. Courage,
self-sacrifice, loyalty, help to others,
devotion to duty. One of the phrases that
occasionally popped out was that wars are won
by blood and by guts. And some wag eventually
decided that this would make a good label to hang on Patton. And so it became-- what started out as
something fairly innocent became a label that was hung
on him that he really hated. No one ever called Patton "Old
Blood and Guts" to his face. NARRATOR: An overage colonel
named Dwight Eisenhower, not seeing much
future for himself, contacted the fast rising
star that was his old friend. Eisenhower wrote
to Patton and said, I hope you will
find a place for me. And Patton said, please come. I want to have you
serve under me. So Eisenhower's aspirations
at that early stage were merely to have
served as a tank officer under George S. Patton. He had no idea that Marshall had
other ideas about where he was going to go with his career. NARRATOR: Worse, tensions
with the Japanese empire rose starkly. In an effort to turn back
Japanese aggression in the Far East, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared a strangling
oil embargo against Japan. When diplomacy failed, Japanese
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States
into a two-front war against terrible enemies. [gunfire] North Africa, where the British
were locked in a death struggle with General Erwin
Rommel's Afrika Korps, was to be the destination of
the first American land combat units to cross the Atlantic. Operation Torch, the
Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, was
an ill-regarded brainchild of British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill. But it was a way to rush
green American forces into the war in the West. Dwight Eisenhower, pushed past
Patton to lieutenant general, received British endorsement
to command Allied forces in North Africa. Ike's natural affability and
diplomacy contrasted starkly with Patton's way. The operation was to make
three simultaneous landings near Casablanca,
Oran, and Algiers. Patton was picked to command the
Western force into Casablanca by General Marshall, who
maintained a weakness for fighting eccentrics. Patton's orders to his
commanders were blunt. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
If you don't succeed, I don't want to see you alive. [boom] NARRATOR: The Casablanca
landing and 74-hour struggle against the Vichy French was
not a shining military hour. The battles were
shadowed by complicating political negotiations. CARLO D'ESTE: Patton proved in
Morocco that he could be more than a commander. He proved that he could
also be a diplomat. His many years of hobnobbing
with the high and mighty, his knowledge of French enabled
him to interact very smoothly, not only with the French, but
with the Sultan of Morocco. NARRATOR: At the
front, the poorly planned and led campaign
was going badly everywhere. The thrust toward
Tunisia was bogged down, and German forces poured
into the area from the west and from across
the Mediterranean. Allied Forces were
being badly beaten. The Americans had
not shown well. The media played up a
competition with Afrika Korps Commander Erwin Rommel. "Time" magazine reported,
"Patton wanting to duel the German tank against tank." ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): It would be like a combat between
knights in the old days. The two armies could watch. If I killed him,
I'd be the champ. America would win the war. If he killed me, [snicker]
well, he wouldn't. NARRATOR: An American
disaster opened the door to Patton's destiny. The Germans turned a veteran
Panzer army against green and badly trained US forces
and inflicted terrible defeats at Sidi Bou Zid
and Kasserine Pass. American spirit, equipment,
tactics, disposition, and leadership all failed. The British and German alike
now viewed the Americans with contempt. Eisenhower now saw
that his forces lacked the tactical experience
needed to rescue the situation. He relieved the failed commander
and sent for the man born to fix combat calamities-- George S. Patton Jr. Rushed up to repair the crisis
in American armored leadership after the ugly defeat
at Kasserine Pass, George Patton at age 57
felt that his life had only just begun. And Patton came
running, because he wanted to be in combat,
loved to be in combat. Took command of the
II Corps, had 11 days to give them back-- give the
troops back their self-respect and train them. And he did that in 11 days
before leading them in battle, and they took El Guettar. And then they defended against
a massive German-Italian counterattack,
and they did well. They performed beautifully
and turned this disaster into a success. NARRATOR: Patton now made Omar
Bradley, a friend from Hawaii days, his deputy
Corps commander, launching a career and events
that would one day move Bradley above him. Bradley wrote
bewilderedly of Patton, "His language was studded
with profanity and obscenity, and I was shocked. Yet when Patton was hosting
at the dinner table, his conversation was erudite and
he was well-read, intellectual, and cultured." Now promoted to
three-star general, Patton remembered something
from his childhood. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): When I was a little boy at home,
I used to wear a wooden sword and say to myself, George S.
Patton Jr., lieutenant general. NARRATOR: The hero of Britain's
victory at El Alamein, General Bernard Montgomery, was
too much like Patton with his towering ego and vivid
hates for them to ever really get along. Patton found him
"wonderfully conceited," "the best soldier I
have met in this war." [explosions] The mere thought
of defensive hiding sickened Patton, whose
doctrine of attack held that soldiers in
defensive positions were waiting to die
in pre-dug graves. His pet peeves were
foxholes and slit trenches. And I remember Patton once
going up to Terry Allen's CP in a little palm
grove near El Guettar. And he saw all the slit trenches
around there and he said, Terry, you got a
slit trench too? As though he disapproved
of a general taking cover during a bombing. And Terry said, yeah,
right over there, General. And with that, Patton went over
and pissed into the trench. NARRATOR: Patton told all
generals where he wanted them during an assault. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Dammit, I want that hill in front of you. Get off your ass! Get a pistol in your hand and
lead that attack yourself! NARRATOR: Yet he was uniquely
loyal to his erring commanders. CARLO D'ESTE: He was
rarely willing to give up on an individual who had failed. He once was given, over
his objections, a division commander by Eisenhower
that he didn't want. And when the
commander messed up, Eisenhower said, I guess we're
going to have to sack him. And Patton said, we'll
do no such thing. He's my commander, and
by God, I'll make him-- I'll make him do it right. And he did. NARRATOR: In the final phases
of the Battle for Tunisia, the British, with open
contempt, assigned the Americans the menial task of
drawing off the Germans. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
Ike is more British than the British and is
putty in their hands. Oh, God, for John J. Pershing. NARRATOR: Patton had to struggle
with the skeptical Britons to gain his share of fighting,
but he performed with crushing brutal efficiency
when he finally got into the heart of the fray. German resistance in
North Africa collapsed. The canny Rommel later wrote,
"In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price
for their experience, but it brought rich dividends-- although we had to wait until
the Patton Army in France to see the most
astonishing achievements in mobile warfare." [explosions] In the summer of
1943, George S. Patton was hoping that the hard lessons
learned in the North African victory would ease the way for
Operation Husky, the landings at Sicily. Churchill's hope was to
knock Italy out of the war and open up what he insisted on
calling on "the soft underbelly of Europe," words
quickly made a travesty by the fierce German resistance. Patton's planning and presence
were key to saving the Sicily beachhead from disaster. Patton and Montgomery were
the invasion troop commanders, with British General
Harold Alexander overall. Patton had no doubt that
Americans would continue as second fiddle because
of Kasserine Pass. It enraged him when his
7th Army was assigned to guarding the flanks
of Montgomery's advancing 8th Army. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
When the 8th is going well, we're told to halt so as
not to take any glory. NARRATOR: Patton demanded that
Alexander allot the American Army a meaningful role in what
had become a one-horse race by the British to capture the
city of Messina to the north. It wasn't until
Patton became incensed and flew to see Alexander,
who was the Army group commander there, and got his
permission to head for Palermo. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I am getting tactful as hell. If you treat a skunk nicely, he
will not piss on you as often. NARRATOR: Patton gleefully
began a northward race against Montgomery's British. He was always at his best when
he let loose after galling restraint. Patton would take chances. He'd push, push, push. He used to call himself
"the best damned ass-kicker in the United States Army." And he always had the ability
to get more out of a division commander than a division
commander thought he could give. NARRATOR: The campaign through
the rugged Sicilian mountains was a vicious one, with both
sides showing little propensity to take prisoners. With feats like marching
over a hundred miles through brutal
terrain in 72 hours, Patton's forces were
quickly in Palermo. Patton took every delay
as a personal insult. Where he was checked
at the coast, he conducted rash
amphibious operations to go around the Germans. Some of his officers objected
to the strategy and casualties, but he went forward. With the British delayed
in a hard fight at Catania, the Americans were now
welcomed as full participants in the bloody drive on Messina. [explosions, gunfire] Patton had made Omar Bradley a
Corps commander in the Sicilian campaign, giving him a chance
to shine that Bradley did not miss. The quiet Bradley had some
misgivings, saying, "To George, tactics was simply a
process of bulling ahead. He never seemed to
think out a campaign." ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Even if you've got to spend men
to do it, I want to beat Monty into Messina. NARRATOR: The Americans
were first into Messina. The arrival was no more than
symbolic, but it was important. MARTIN BLUMENSON: The business
of getting to Messina ahead of the British is what convinced
the British that the Americans were just as good--
at least just as good as the British soldiers. I think that's why Patton wanted
so badly to get to Messina ahead of Montgomery, who
should have been there. NARRATOR: For George Patton,
the most important explosion of the nasty Sicilian campaign
would come not from a gun, but from a glove. In Sicily, George S. Patton's
thoughtless and impatient worship of military courage
was to turn against him the kind of forces he was
least able to turn back. He went to a field hospital
to visit the wounded. It was very difficult on Patton. He was very emotional. When he came to a soldier who
had combat exhaustion or combat fatigue, what they called
"shell shock" in World War I, Patton just couldn't
stand it anymore. Lost his temper and drew his
glove and slapped the soldier. NARRATOR: News that Patton
had slapped not one, but two soldiers in Sicily would
turn Patton's moment of triumph into a disaster. Eisenhower angrily
ordered him to apologize to his entire Army. In one case, his magnetism
turned the moment of humiliation into
something of a triumph. The men assembled to listen
to his speech of apology would not let him get started. They began chanting something
to prevent him from speaking, because they did not believe
that he owed them an apology. And so they kept
chanting and cheering, and Patton choked up and
began to cry and walked off. NARRATOR: The man he had
slapped with say of Patton, I think he was suffering a
little battle fatigue himself. But now Eisenhower was fighting
loud cries for Patton's scalp, and there were widespread
doubts about his stability. You never knew what
he was going to say, and sometimes never knew
what he was going to do next. He was impulsive and impetuous. He wore his opinions
on his sleeve. And he had opinions on
everything under the sun. NARRATOR: The Germans
weren't the only ones who regarded Patton as the
Allies' best fighting general. The US High Command, as
exasperated as they were with him, knew there
was critical work to come for such
a fighter, and he would be vital to Operation
Overlord, the assault across the English
Channel on Hitler's fast-heartening Fortress Europe. But Patton didn't know that. CARLO D'ESTE: In
the autumn of 1943, Patton was in virtual
exile in Sicily. 7th Army had been
stripped away from him. He felt he had no future. And yet, while he was undergoing
literally the tortures of the damned, wondering if he
would ever see another command again. He was actually
under consideration for two major commands. One was the command of
the Anvil force, which was going to invade southern
France in the summer of 1944. And the other was as the
commander of 3rd Army, which is the job that he eventually got. NARRATOR: The men who
would command Overlord knew their Patton well. Eisenhower, who
would be at the top; Montgomery, who would be
temporary commander of ground forces; and Patton's former
Corps commander, Omar Bradley, who would command the
American ground armies. Patton was ordered to
England in January of 1944 to command the 3rd Army, then
forming in the United States. But meanwhile, the Allies would
use his formidable reputation with the Germans in the
war's greatest deception. Patton was brought up as
the fictitious commander of a fictitious command. That deception plan called for
the creation of an army that consisted of nothing of
about 200 radio operators who filled the air with traffic. The deception plan, which
was passed on to the German by their agents that had
been turned by the British, Patton was to attack
across the Pas de Calais with this fictitious Army group. NARRATOR: The ruse would keep
the desperately needed German Panzer units defending the
Pas de Calais from reinforcing Normandy. Meanwhile, Patton's mouth
made new trouble for him at an English social
club in Knutsford. He allegedly suggested
carving up the postwar world between Britain and the United
States, leaving out Russia. It slipped through the censors
and became a cause celebre. Calls went out for Patton's
head, for his relief, and it very nearly
cost him 3rd Army. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
If I was reduced to colonel, I'd demand the right to command
one of the assault regiments. Both Eisenhower
and George Marshall felt that the way
to control Patton was to put him under the command
of someone who could command him and administer
him with an even hand. And they certainly felt that
Omar Bradley filled that bill nicely. NARRATOR: Politics turned
back into war on June 6, 1944. On D-Day, the Allies stormed
across the English Channel into Normandy, and
at Omaha Beach, held on by the skin of their teeth. As the fighting raged,
Patton waited impatiently to lead 3rd Army into action. When the call came,
he would write new and indelible chapters
into the history of war. When Patton and his
3rd Army finally arrived in Normandy on
July 6, one month later, he found a situation much
graver than the one imagined by the planners at this stage. Casualties were
severe and the Allies were bogged down by
fierce German resistance and an impenetrable
tangle of hedgerows. The desperately needed
advance was nowhere in sight, and recriminations
filled the air. After the failure of the British
to punch through at Cannes, General Bradley conceived and
put into effect the thunderous Operation Cobra. It would be Patton's job
to exploit any success with his armored columns. The American attack
began behind 34,000 tons of crushing aerial bombing
in the area of Saint-Lo, followed by several days
of hard ground fighting. Then suddenly the German
front began to collapse. A full-scale breakout
from the tangle of hedgerows into the
open plains was in reach. Eisenhower knew it was
time to cut Patton loose. Warfare would never be the same. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
The crust has been broken. We're about to eat the pie. NARRATOR: Patton's
tanks shot forward in a frenzy of spectacular
battles and advances that shattered the German
left flank in Normandy. Marshall was right when
he had said, "Patton is the man with the
drive and imagination to do the dangerous
things fast." The greatness, the fame of
General George S. Patton Jr. was achieved in a nine-month
period in the ETO in Europe starting in August,
August 1, 1944, and continuing through
to May 8 of 1945. That's where Patton
achieved his greatness. CARLO D'ESTE: The end of
July and the beginning of August of 1944 were
Patton's golden moments. What had been a
stalemate in Normandy was now a breakout
in the pursuit as he watched his units move
across France, sometimes at the rate of 40
or 50 miles a day. I mean, this is
what you train for, is to see your army on the
loose, defeating your enemy. Patton was simply enjoying
himself as perhaps no commander before or after. NARRATOR: At Avranches, Patton
achieved what was described as "pushing 200,000
men and 40,000 vehicles through what
amounted to a straw." Every manual on road movement
was ground into the dust. Patton bridled at
what he thought was a missed opportunity on
the part of his superiors. When a failed German
cover attack at Mortain allowed a vast encirclement
of German armies in the Argentan-Falaise
area, Patton felt that he had been
held back from closing the gap between
himself and Montgomery and sealing the Germans in. Monty was pressing
down from the north. Patton was pressing
up from the south to close the gap
and bag the German. Boundary line ran
across Argentan. Patton was not to
go above that line. Patton pleaded with
General Bradley to break through the
line and close the gap. He said, let me go, Brad, and
I'll chase those goddamn limeys is right into the sea. NARRATOR: Some
thousands of Germans got out, though mostly
without their armor. Patton was smoldering. And now, with the loss
of time at Falaise, as his sprint to the Seine was
too late to cut off the Germans there, and he was
ordered to stop. [cheering] Patton was content when General
Jacques Leclerc's Free French Division was allowed
to take Paris. He thought it would free him to
drive full tilt into Lorraine. It was a time for hot
pursuit, not consolidation. But a furious Patton soon
found himself confined to a static campaign before
Metz, pinned in place not only by stubborn German defenses, but
by withholding of gasoline that halted his armor. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): God damn it, my men can eat their belts,
but my tanks got to have gas. NARRATOR: But the truth
was that by August 1944, the 3rd Army had gone so far
and so fast it had crucially overstretched its supply line. Patton took desperate
measures, including stealing from Montgomery's supply line. COY EKLUND: He just stopped that
column that was headed north to go to General Montgomery. He just said, dump
it right there. And truck after truck,
dump it right there. And he just had them dump
about 10 truckloads of gasoline right there on the
side of the road. And we had gasoline
for a little while. NARRATOR: In times of stalemate,
his soldiers found time to poke fun at his frailties. COY EKLUND: The voice was
high-pitched, extraordinarily high-pitched. And when you went
by the office door, if the phone rang and he
picked it up, he'd say, (HIGH-PITCHED) General Patton. (NORMAL VOICE)
That was his voice. It was incongruous. NARRATOR: A figure of fun was
his ill-tempered dog, Willie. Cartoonist Bill Mauldin,
after visiting with Patton, wrote, "Willie had his
beloved boss's expression and lacked only the
ribbons and stars. I stood in that door staring
into the four meanest eyes I'd ever seen." But there were no smiles
in the Lorraine campaign. By November, it
was a bitter battle of attrition in the worst
winter weather in 38 years. He drove his men. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
There are more tired division commanders than there
are tired divisions. NARRATOR: Again, the gods
of war summoned Patton. On December 16, 1944, Hitler
launched a huge surprise attack spearheaded by
two Panzer armies. It knifed deeply through the
lightly defended Ardennes forest. German Commander
von Rundstedt's goal was to capture the key
supply port of Antwerp and starve the Allied attack. In what history would call
the "Battle of the Bulge," Bradley urgently
ordered General Patton to rush help to the north. Germans drove into the Ardennes in December of 1944
split the American armies from the British and turned the
momentum of the European war from the gates of Germany
back into the vulnerable heart of Belgium. The pivotal road
junction of Bastogne was cut off along with the
101st Airborne Division. Eisenhower called Patton
to a desperate meeting. RICHARD J. STILLMAN: Patton saw
it as a glorious opportunity, so he told Eisenhower that he
could turn his entire army, 250,000 strong, from facing
east to a northerly direction. And it was bitter cold, three
feet of snow, terrible fog-- just miserable,
miserable conditions. Roads all icy. Eisenhower said,
George, be realistic. What the hell do you mean
you can turn your men around in 48 hours? What can you do? He said, we can do it. NARRATOR: Well ahead of
schedule, Patton's 3rd Army tanks turned to north and raced
for the besieged Bastogne. RICHARD J. STILLMAN: So I'd see
him time and again on the road, encouraging his troops,
inspiring them in an open Jeep in bitter cold weather,
encouraging them on. It's a difficult thing
to disengage and move laterally in the
face of the enemy at any time, even a small unit. It's a dangerous move. NARRATOR: Even God got a steady
stream of Patton admonitions in the form of prayers. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): You seem to have given von Rundstedt
every break in the book. You have to make up your
mind whose side you're on. I've lost all patience
with your chaplains. NARRATOR: Patton's armor
was not to be denied. On the day after Christmas,
elements of the 4th Armored Division broke through
spirited German resistance and entered Bastogne to
relieve its bloodied defenders. There was more tough
fighting ahead, but Patton's race
to the rescue had broken the back of the
Germans' last major effort. The 3rd Army now
duplicated its rampage across France in the bloody
clearing of resistance before the Rhine. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): I've just pissed in the Rhine River. For God's sake, send gasoline. NARRATOR: Patton was ordered
to bypass the city of Trier because it would take four
divisions to capture it. He radioed tersely-- ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Have taken Trier with two divisions. Do you want me to give it back? NARRATOR: When Patton inspected
the Ohrdruf and Buchenwald concentration camps
3rd Army had liberated, he became physically ill. He got the burgermeister
of the nearest town to call all the citizens
together-- people who said they had never heard
of a concentration camp before. He marched them
through the place. The same day, the
burgermeister and his wife returned home and
committed suicide. His last military
disappointment came when he was ordered to stop
at Pilsen while the Russians occupied Berlin
and Eastern Europe. The joy of receiving
a fourth star was dimmed by Bradley's having
gotten the promotion first. On May 7, 1945,
Germany surrendered. [cheering] Patton understood the wild
joy, but could not join in it. When peace came
to Europe, Patton was exhausted physically,
mentally, morally, every which way. His exertions during the
war had burned him out. There seemed to be no
future role for Patton. No one wanted him. He had visions of
going to the Pacific, fighting with an
army under MacArthur. MacArthur didn't want him. He ended up as the
occupation commander in Bavaria, commanding 3rd
Army in a role for which he was wholly unsuited. It was a depressing time when
Patton went almost overnight from being a hero to being a
man no one wanted any part of. NARRATOR: He returned to
America on a bond tour. The hero's welcome
that he received was barely enough to feed an ego
bereft of the war that had fed it. He wondered whether the
family he so awkwardly loved would be enough to sustain
him in his remaining years. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I've become sort of a demigod, and I don't know if fox hunting
and sailing are going to divert me. NARRATOR: He returned to Bavaria
to begin rebuilding and get a new government started. But again, he spoke
self-destructively. MARTIN BLUMENSON: He feared
that the Soviet Union was going to take control
of all of Europe. He thought that the Germans
would be excellent allies to use against the Russians. And he thought that the
Germans and the Americans should band together now
and take on the Russians. NARRATOR: In
rebuilding Germany, he found the former
Nazis the most capable and put them in key positions. RICHARD J. STILLMAN:
At a press conference, Patton was asked by
a reporter why he had so many Nazis in key positions. Patton replied, the
Nazis, it's a party, just like the Democrats
and Republicans. As we walked down the
hall after the conference, he remarked, stupid
goddamn statement. I knew better, but I wouldn't
give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of knowing it. NARRATOR: That was
the final straw that caused his relief from
command of the 3rd United States Army. Eisenhower would say,
I'm not moving George for what he's done, just for
what he's going to do next. It was the end of
their long friendship. A bitter Beatrice would
later turn down invitations to the Eisenhower White House. It was a very sad
affair for all of us. A few of us went down
to the train station to say goodbye to him, and there
were tears in all of our eyes. ACTOR AS PATTON
(VOICEOVER): Caesar couldn't have been a supply
sergeant in the 3rd Army. Oh, it's hell to be old,
[inaudible] and know it. NARRATOR: Fate stepped
in for the weary hero. On December 9, the day
before he was to fly home, Patton was involved in
a low-speed car crash while going hunting. No one else was hurt. Patton was thrown forward
and instantly paralyzed, his neck broken. While Willie mourned
and Beatrice was rushed to Heidelberg where
Patton was hospitalized, desperate doctors
improvised a harsh device to relieve pressure on
his shattered spine. Fish hooks were obtained
and put under his cheekbones to help traction on his back. He endured what I
consider unspeakable pain. ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
This is a hell of a way to die. NARRATOR: After a blood clot
caused his lungs to fill, General George S. Patton
Jr. died at age 60 on December 21, 1945. Both his daughters reported
visitations by his spirit. A funeral train
passed from Heidelberg to his final resting
place at Hamm, Luxembourg. It made numerous stops
in terrible weather. It was raining. It was ugly. It was cold. It was dark. And yet, wherever
the train stopped, soldiers and ordinary citizens
came forward to honor Patton, to put flowers on the train. NARRATOR: Among his last words,
heard by his beloved Beatrice, were "I guess I
wasn't good enough." As had been the case many
times in his magnificent life, he had spoken too quickly. There was a tremendous
outpouring of grief. Soldiers who knew him by
reputation, soldiers who had served under him
but never met him were deeply affected
by his death. NARRATOR: A correspondent said,
"Georgie Patton didn't die from an automobile accident. He died of a broken heart
when they took away his army." General George S. Patton was
buried in the Ardennes soil in what he had called
"poor tank country." To the silent beloved soldiers
at whose head he would forever lie, he undoubtedly proclaimed
his favorite greetings to his troops-- ACTOR AS PATTON (VOICEOVER):
I'm damn glad to be here. [music playing]
