One of the fellows under me was Orde Wingate!’ …. Rank-and-file British soldiers trained kibbutzniks in military tactics. The British militarised the Yishuv and the 'Jewish warrior — as a cultural and social model and as a fact of life — emerged during the Arab Rebellion.’ …. Wingate slapped and struck Jewish soldiers in his squads, who took this as a necessary part of their drill and called Wingate the 'insane one.’ British soldiers such as Corporal Howbrook serving with the S[pecial] N[ight] S[quad]s saw the eccentric Wingate treat the Jews 'almost like dirt ... the rank and file he could do anything with them. He could push them around and order them about. And they'd almost run like kittens, little puppies.’

So wrote Matthew Hughes in Britain’s Pacification of Palestine. Was it really OK then for Patton to have slapped two of his soldiers?

Tag words: Orde Wingate; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power; American Army; German Army; Psychiatric cases; mental health issues; Patton slapping; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; PTSD; Ethan Watters; Crazy Like Us; American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM; debility syndrome; Da Costa's syndrome; shell shock; trauma;

Bradley's distaste for Lee, which he expressed frequently, was never explained. Bradley left behind two autobiographies, one co-written with Clay Blair. In neither does he mention Lee by name.

wrote Hank H Cox in his biography of General JCH Lee, The General Who Wore Six Stars. Without naming names Bradley had praised to the heavens what Lee had accomplished in the Battle of the Bulge, not naming him, of course. But Antony Beevor in his book Ardennes 1944, referred to this remark that Bradley had made in the presence of his chief of staff, Chet Hansen, and presumably others:

Bradley had boasted with justification on Christmas Eve that `no other army in the world could possibly have shifted forces as expertly and quickly as we have'. On the second day of the offensive, First Army moved 60,000 troops into the Ardennes in just twenty-four hours. The despised Com Z of General Lee had achieved miracles. It also managed to transport 85 per cent of ordnance stocks out of German reach. Between 17 and 26 December, 50,000 trucks and 248,000 men from quartermaster units shifted 2.8 million gallons of gasoline so that panzer spearheads could not refuel from captured dumps.

By not naming General Lee as being the man who successfully commanded this operation, Bradley was, in effect, claiming credit for General Lee’s remarkable achievement for himself. One of many times Bradley engaged in such conduct in respect of important milestones.

Tag words: General Omar N Bradley; Hank H Cox; General JCH Lee; The General Who Wore Six Stars; Battle of the Bulge; Antony Beevor; Ardennes 1944; Chet Hansen; Com Z; Eisenhower; John Kennedy Ohl; Supplying the Troops; General Somervell; Marshall; Stimson; Major General Mark Clark; A Soldier’s Story; Carlo d’Este; Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life; Rundstedt; Charles Darwin; Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Richard Weikart; Darwinian Racism; General Clarence E McKnight Jr; African Americans; General Benjamin O Davis; FDR; President Roosevelt; Geoffrey Perret; Beetle Smith;

The Times 6th December 1943 edition covered a piece written by The Quaker muckraker Drew Pearson, apparently tipped off by an OSS source, broadcast a garbled but uncensored version of the incidents during his weekly radio show as Rick Atkinson recounted in his book The Day of Battle. The Times piece read:

On November 21 crusading Drew Pearson, once called a liar by the President, let his nationwide radio audience in on a secret that scores of U.S. correspondents had shared with thousands of U.S. soldiers since August. George S. Patton, the General who does not believe in nerve difficulties, had some himself … . For slapping a hospitalized soldier, … .

Now Patton’s future was on the line. So, for that matter was Eisenhowers.

Tag words: Times; Drew Pearson; Rick Atkinson; The Day of Battle; George S Patton; Eisenhower; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; Private Charles H Kuhl; Private Paul G Bennett; Ruth Ellen; Stimson; Bedell Smith; General Marshall; President Roosevelt; Omar Bradley; Overlord; 12th Army Group; General John J Pershing;

Cowards. Cowardice. Fear. An army has to have soldiers who are afraid. If it didn’t it would be a disastrous army. Just enough fear is what is wanted, but if there’s too much fear then that spells disaster. To understand what I’m talking about you really have to get your head around this.

Tag words: Cowards; Cowardice; Nelson Mandela; Long Walk to Freedom; Jonathon Haidt; The Anxious Generation; fear; anxiety; Patton; Eisenhower; Rick Atkinson; Liberation Trilogy; The Day of Battle; Kay Summersby; Eisenhower Was My Boss; Past Forgetting; Harry Butcher; cowards and skulkers; Alexander; Eisenhower; Beetle Smith; Carlo d’Este; Blessé; Demaree Bess; A Genius for War; Major General John Porter Lucas; Marshall;

In the space of a week, 3 and 10 August 1943, two incidents occurred that could have resulted in the sacking of Patton. He he’d slapped and otherwise abused two different men in Evacuation Hospitals calling them both cowards and apparently threatening to shoot one of them. The story had reached the ears of four reporters, attached to the Seventh Army, Demaree Bess of the Saturday Evening Post, Merrill Mueller of NBC, Al Newman of Newsweek, and John Charles Daly of CBS.

Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Patton, A Genius for War, related what happened next:

Bess, Mueller, and Quentin Reynolds of Collier's, flew to Algiers, and on August 19 a written summary prepared by Bess was presented to Bedell Smith. The Bess report noted that Patton had committed a court-martial offense by striking an enlisted man, and ended: "I am making this report to General Eisenhower in the hope of getting conditions corrected before more damage has been done."

….

The arrival of the three correspondents reinforced Eisenhower's awareness that he had a tiger by the tail. What they wanted was a deal: In return for killing the story they wanted Patton fired. Correspondent Reynolds summed up the strong anti-Patton bias within the press corps when he told Eisenhower that there were "at least 50,000 American soldiers on Sicily who would shoot Patton if they had the chance." John Charles Daly thought Patton had gone temporarily crazy.

Eisenhower had no intention of submitting to an undisguised attempt to blackmail him into getting rid of Patton. Torn among loyalty to an old friend, the clear necessity that he must be disciplined, and the consequences of losing Patton altogether if the incidents became public, Eisenhower unhesitatingly decided that "Patton should be saved for service in the great battles still facing us in Europe, yet I had to devise ways and means to minimize the harm that would certainly come from his impulsive action and to assure myself that it was not repeated."

Now let me ask a question that you will definitely find odd. Had Patton done the wrong thing? So you can consider your verdict, here’s what happened.

Tag words: Patton; slapping incidents; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; General Eisenhower; Ike; Ernie Pyle; Rick Atkinson; The Day of Battle; Charles H Kuhl; Major General John Porter Lucas; Marshall;Private Paul G Bennett; Bradley; Brigadier General William B Kean; Brigadier General Frederick A Blessé; General Alexander;

Patton. I stand on shaky ground speaking about this American legend if I’m going to say anything negative about him. Luckily for me all of the men who served in his Third Army are now dead so I’m unlikely to get punched in the face for what I am going to say over the next few parts of this series about the man.

Carlo d’Este, in his biography of Patton, A Genius for War thought that this remark by the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, captured the spirit of Patton:

If the art of war consisted in not taking risks glory would be at the mercy of very mediocre talent.

Patton was certainly a general who was willing to take risks. So let’s see how Patton stacks up when looking at the war in Europe in those crucial months between the end of July 1944 and January 1945.

Tag words: Patton; Third Army; Carlo d’Este; A Genius for War; Napoleon Bonaparte; George C. Scott; World War II; Andy Rooney; General Omar N Bradley; A Soldier’s Story; Eisenhower; Adolf Hitler; Karl May; Westerns; Basil Liddell Hart; The Other Side of the Hill; Operation Cobra; Blumentritt; Pétain; Field-Marshal Rundstedt; God; Charles Codman; Compassionate; Ruth Ellen;

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Learn from the mistakes of others … You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself!”

It was almost a pity, which would have been of world altering consequences, that General Omar Bradley didn’t live by these words of wisdom. He chose instead to make the mistakes himself. The lesson that Bradley and Eisenhower should have learned was one of great note. One that both Bradley and Eisenhower had to have known about but, it seems, had simply dismissed.

Tag words: General Omar Bradley; Eisenhower; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Ardennes offensive; Battle of the Bulge; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals; Dominick Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Montgomery; Patton; Marshall; Lutes; David Irving; The War Between the Generals; Brehon Somervell; A Soldier’s Story; Chet Hansen; Middleton; VIII Corps; von Rundstedt; SHAEF; 82nd Airborne Division; 101stAirborne Division; Arnhem; Antwerp; Winston Churchill; William L Shirer; The Collapse of the Third French Republic; Hürtgen Forest; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; Carlo d’Este; Antony Beevor; Ardennes 1944; 12th Army Group; General William Donovan; Nigel Hamilton; The Battles of Field Marshal Montgomery; Court House; Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ Himself; J.C.H. Lee; General George Smith Patton;

Hitler’s seemingly insane gamble in the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, wasn’t perhaps as crazy and desperate as it seemed or has been represented. Consider this.

In Washington, after lunch on 27 December, 1944 Henry Stimson, the Secretary for War, walked over to the War Department. He went into Marshall’s office and sat down. He had come to talk about the unthinkable. Stimson later recollected what Marshall had said to him:

if Germany beat us in this counter-attack and particularly if the Russians failed to come in on their side, we should have to recast the whole war; we should have to take a defensive position on the German boundary — which he believed we could do with perfect safety — and then have the people of the United States decide whether they wanted to go on with the war enough to raise the new armies which would be necessary to do it.

so wrote David Irving in his book The War Between the Generals. Did Hitler almost succeed in driving America out of the war?

Tag words: Hitler; Battle of the Bulge; Henry Stimson; Marshall; David Irving; The War Between the Generals; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutentants; Eisenhower; Bradley; Nigel Hamilton; iThe Battles of Field Marshall Montgomery; Monty; Carlo d’Este; Patton; Stalin; Air Marshal Tedder; Major General Harold R. Bull; Operation OVERLORD; General Somervell; replacements; Dominick Graham; Shelford Bidwell; Coalitions, Politicians and Generals;