Word: patton
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...Patton's sense of the dramatic is coupled with a sound sense of battle. The Gen eral's troops may be hopped up to believe they can make their way to the Russian front in two quick jumps, but Patton does not fool himself. There is no more enthusiastic and optimistic battle planner, but as the action develops, he is quick to see what he can and cannot do. His advanced forces get their noses bloodied now & then, but they do not get them...
...Night. Impatient of routine and red tape, Patton habitually asks and gets the impossible from his supply men. During the winter bog-down on the Saar front, the Third's tanks floundered in the greasy mud. Someone recommended "duck bills"-metal flanges to be welded to tank treads to give them wider grip. Patton tried to get them, "through channels," and finally got 168 duck bills- enough to equip one tank. Next day four companies of the Third's ordnance mechanics, about 1,000 men, were set to work on scrapped treads and other material. Patton wanted duck...
...General inspires hot loyalty. No other U.S. Army in Europe has higher mo rale, higher unit pride. Third Army men do not call Patton "Old Blood & Guts" (that nickname came from such fervid advice to trainees as: "Rip their belly buttons; spill their guts around"). To his own men Patton is "The Old Man" or "The Big Guy"-and they say it respect fully...
...General stopped the rain after the Rundstedt breakout last December. Rundstedt's offensive was blessed by soupy days at its start. No planes flew. Tankmen, called on to drive 80 miles in a night, could not find the enemy in the endless drizzle. By the third day Patton, who can be reverent and blasphemous in the same breath, called one of the Third's chaplains. The reported conversation...
...Patton: I want a prayer to stop this rain. If we got a couple of clear days we could get in there and kill a couple of hundred thousand of those . . . krauts...