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;