Word: patton
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Dozens of divisional and regimental histories were in print or preparation. Many were dedicated to the proposition that "our outfit won the war single-handed." A pretentious quickie with this theme was Newspaperman Robert Allen's Patton-worshiping history of the Third Army, Lucky Forward. Patton's own War As I Knew It was much better written, naturally more authoritative, a rich mine of precepts-into-practice for students of warfare. A superior war book of a different kind was the late John Gilbert Winant's Letter from Grosvenor Square, a moving account of wartime faith that...
...Patton's awareness of military history crops up constantly. Before the Normandy invasion he read Freeman's Norman Conquest to check on the roads used by William the Conqueror in Normandy and Brittany. He was the only one of his staff who knew that captured Regensburg was the Ratisbon of Napoleonic fame. The Melun crossing of the Seine, he noted, was the same used by Labienus with his Tenth Legion about...
...Patton's well-known contempt for Montgomery seeps into these pages, but with less virulence than his supporters have indulged in. "The 31st was the last day on which Montgomery was to command United States troops, so all of us had a keen appetite for dinner. At 0800 [the next morning] we heard that Montgomery had been made a Field Marshal and proclaimed the greatest living soldier. Our appetite for breakfast was not so good." He quotes with approval Bradley's comment that Monty's promise of a "dagger thrust" at Germany would be more like...
...Patton admits that he did not at first realize the seriousness of the Nazis' breakthrough in the Battle of the Bulge. As late as Dec. 25, 1944, he wrote optimistically: "Christmas dawned clear and cold; lovely weather for killing Germans. . . ." By Jan. 4, he confided to his diary: "We can still lose this war . . . the only time I ever made such a statement." The plan for the Third Army's subsequent breakthrough, Patton claims, was in his head complete as he awoke one morning: "Whether these tactical thoughts of mine are the result of inspiration or insomnia...
Like many a U.S. soldier, Patton approvingly noted the energy of the then well-fed German civilians. ". . . I saw five Germans, three women and two men, re-roofing a house. They were not even waiting for Lend-Lease, as would be the case in several other countries I could mention." Later Patton's regard for Nazi efficiency resulted in his loss of the Third Army command in Bavaria. He persisted to the end that he was right. In his last entry, three months before his death, he wrote: "The one thing which I could not say then, and cannot...