Word: patton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Many a Third Army veteran will read with some surprise that hard-riding General Patton was "a hero to his men" and that he was generally called "Georgie." To most combat men, he was "Patton," their general and a good one, but they were seldom taken in by the publicity Patton courted. Most line troops resented his flashy, self-designed uniforms, sardonically muttered "our blood and his guts," when they heard his pre-battle exhortations. No Third Army infantryman could have written such stuff-&-nonsense as this: "An attack might appear suicidal, but if 'Georgie' ordered...
...What the Germans could not do, SHAEF did. Third Army was sat down. Patton was ordered not to seize Falaise. . . . The real reason was Montgomery's insistence that he close the gap. He demanded-and got his way-that Patton be halted from springing the trap he had forged. . . . During that time, the bulk of the trapped German armor escaped, to fight again and kill United States and British troops on other battlefields...
Lucky Forward is peppered with similar charges, none of them convincingly sustained. Says Allen: "Patton was the sparkplug and dynamo of the war in the ETO. The full record of his genius and far-flung impact on operations still is entombed behind an official wall of jealous silence and so-called 'classified documents...
Lucky Forward is likely to please only those who want to make a legend of Patton. Essentially it is a rewrite of Headquarters section reports into a kind of headline-writer's jab-&-smash jargon. It is jerky, often ungrammatical, unblushingly awkward: "The enemy's vitals had been pierced. An Armored poniard was stabbed squarely in the middle of his rear and athwart his main line of communications. . . . The enemy was beset from every quarter in a welter of triphammer blows, chaos, death, and destruction. On the ground and in the air he was mauled and ravaged from...
...German combat patrol, Allen recalls that they were "mowed down." A minor attack became a powerful counterattack, prisoners are credited to the wrong division and the negotiated surrender of a distant enemy division is described as if the enemy troops laid down their arms at the mere sight of Patton...