By Cesar Gorillo
HE had been a soldier by blood having a paternal grandfather who was a former general in the US Army and who fought during the US Civil War.
Because he loved to be where danger was, he was once injured while fencing and while horseback riding after he was kicked by a horse and in which doctors told him that he will never have a normal life anymore. But he proved his doctors wrong after he became the US contestant in the 1912 Olympics in which he was the participant in the hephtatlon contest. Every time the Army would assign him to an office job, he would find a way to be near a general so that he can request for an assignment that will allow him to engage his enemies. So he became close to the greatest US Generals: John Pershing, Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall.
But there was one thing he believed in winning the war. And that was the use of armored vehicles.
He thus studied tank warfare closely, helped in its design, lectured it to US Army men and actually operated it during World War I in which he was badly wounded after he stood at the top of the tank while commanding his forces.
The many difficulties experienced by the US Army during World War II, in the Battle at Kesserling Pass, the Battle of North Africa against General Erwin Rommel and the Battle of Sicily in which he was always the commander who operated and defeated their German and Itialian enemies, saw his mettle in the fields of war. Although always opposed by his own generals for his outspoken and controversial ways, the Americans could not do without him because he always produced winning results. During his assignment in Europe, he had slapped two soldiers, killed a horse carrying war supplies and had badmouthed some people in public. Only his people loved him and will do anything for him.
Controversial as he was, the planners of Operation Overlord also known as “The Longest Day,” an attempt to end World War II by invading France on the way to the capture of Germany in World War II had to assign him the 7th Army and later the Third Army. Almost all other generals disliked him except General Dwight Eisenhower who believed in him as a military genius.
True enough, when he landed in France with 100,000 men, he easily disposed of his enemies and by two weeks, was already 100 kilometers behind enemy lines. He could have been in Luxembourg by another two weeks if his commanders cooperated with him by providing him with much-needed supplies and according the the German generals interviewed after the war, he could have trapped the German Army behind the Siegfred Line had he been allowed to proceed. But the Allied High Command on urging of General Montgomery had other plans. They wanted to capture instead a bridge directly facing Antwerp, Germany by airborne troops known in the press as a Bridge Too Far; this plan failed miserably and led to the loss of thousands of troops.
As a result, our favorite General almost got trapped and had to do battle with the re-grouping German troops and lost a lot of his men.
However, during the Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive to recapture their lost territory using 250,000 men, this fighting General had already planned ahead and when General Eisenhower asked him what he can do and how many weeks it will take him to respond, he simply answered, “in seconds, Sir.” That battle was the most decisive in World War II and his genius was evident after he defeated the German War Machine in that historic battle.
According to historians, this General by the name of George S. Patton, from Normandy up to the capture of Germany in l945, was able to kill 47,500, wounded 115,700 and captured 1,280,688 as against only 2,102 killed, 7,954 wounded and 1,591 missing. They covered 281 days of fighting, crossed 24 rivers and recaptured 12,000 towns and cities.
Thus, General Patton will live in history as one of the greatest generals who ever lived.