George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army / Leonard Pitts' column / CIA Factbook
file on Afghanistan / Know your
Foe! / (The Ground Zero Cross) /
(A Poem for A Marine at Christmas / Video Phone
Technology
Warning! Contains profanity.
Schoolkids should exit now. (Your teacher is watching.)
George S. Patton's speech to the Third
Army
As this United State's military site relates, "Patton's
speech to units within Third Army were directed to the private.
It was directed in a language he thought would appeal to them.
Appearing to be extemporaneous, the speech was actually a well
rehearsed performance. The Patton Museum has several copies of
the speech dating from March to May. Patton kept no record of
the speech. Each was copied by someone in the audience. The variations
in the text may have come from the recorder or Patton's variation
in the presentation. With minor variations such as 'toughest
boxer' for 'All American football teams' and cowards should die
like 'rats' or like "flies," each version of the speech
is remarkably consistent."
http://www.generalpatton.org/
Be Seated.
Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out
of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans
love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting
and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the
champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball
players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will
not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play
to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man
who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, nor
ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful
to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here
today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared.
Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't,
he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight
just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men
who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man
who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright
in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes
days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his
honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about "This
chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling
and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one
reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT
ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on
his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are
ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times.
If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind
him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit.
There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all
because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German
graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did.
An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This
individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards
who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't
know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about
fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best
spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I
actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against.
By God, I do!
My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier
under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you
are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either.
The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya,
who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept
the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche
with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed
another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's
a man for you.
All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either.
Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is
essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant.
Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain.
What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine
of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into
the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me
-- just one in thousands." What if every man said that?
Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't
say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole.
Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme
of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the
Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where
we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last
man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep
us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain
is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to
bury us we'd all go to hell.
Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy
fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army.
They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go
back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men
will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll
have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign
was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst
of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped
and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He
answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a
little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but
this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier.
There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter
how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his
duty might appear at the time.
You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The
drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over
those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering
from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time.
We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove
over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they
were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale
of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them
the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled
together and that chain became unbreakable.
Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact
is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed
to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding
this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first
bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them
to raise up on their hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ,
it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again."
We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there
and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down.
The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can
take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest
out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit.
Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with.
The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker
they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home
is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he
just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and
the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't
dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an
offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig
one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and
by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have.
There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when
you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least,
thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside
with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did
in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, "I shoveled
shit in Louisiana."
George S. Patton's speech
to the Third Army /
Leonard Pitts' column / CIA Factbook file on Afghanistan
/ Know your Foe! / (The
Ground Zero Cross) / (A Poem for A
Marine at Christmas / Video
Phone Technology
|