# General George S. Patton addressing the troops on the eve of battle.



## Bob Hubbard (Mar 23, 2003)

I found this speech and though it might be of interest.  Warning, language may get a bit raw and get past the filters.

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> General Patton arose and strode swiftly to the microphone.
> 
> The men snapped to their feet and stood silently. Patton surveyed the sea of brown with a grim look.
> 
> ...


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## RCastillo (Mar 23, 2003)

George C. Scott was always the perfect one for "Patton!"

BTW, did you know that one of Dennis' Conatsers late Uncles served under the famous General!


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 23, 2003)

Nope..didnt know that...but my grandfather was an MP serving directly under GP in Europe.  I've gotten many good stories about the man.  

Pattons always been a personal hero of mine.


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## yilisifu (Mar 23, 2003)

One of the finest generals this country has ever produced.  He knew what war was about and he knew what it took to win a war.


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## RCastillo (Mar 23, 2003)

> _Originally posted by yilisifu _
> *One of the finest generals this country has ever produced.  He knew what war was about and he knew what it took to win a war. *



I wonder how he'd handle it if he were out in Irag with all the technology we have now.

I do know, that he would've hit Baghdad already! He would've kick butt, and taken names!:samurai:


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 23, 2003)

Georgie would have already pushed thru to Bagdad, and been half way to Tehran by now. 

He was a soldiers general, didnt give a rip about the politics, just point him at a battle and let him loose.


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## sweeper (Mar 24, 2003)

this thred makes me want to go get a patton biography


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 24, 2003)

The movie with George C Scott is a classic, as is the lesser known 'Last days of Patton'.

My grandfathers comment was 'they got the attitude right, but his language was saltier'.


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## Cliarlaoch (Mar 24, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Kaith Rustaz _
> *The movie with George C Scott is a classic, as is the lesser known 'Last days of Patton'.
> 
> My grandfathers comment was 'they got the attitude right, but his language was saltier'.  *



Saltier? Hah, the Dead Sea ain't salty enough. That man made sailors ask him to tone it down. 

I always thought it was one of the least honourable things anyone could have done to treat Patton the way they did once the fighting was over. I'm judging based on the movie's ending and what I know of his real life. They screwed him over, right? Told him to pack up, go home. He wasn't NEEDED anymore. No fete. No acknowledgement. Just go home, shut up, and don't bother us anymore. *sigh*

He deserved better. I may not have always agreed with the man, but boy, you have to respect a guy who has that much gusto.


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## Johnathan Napalm (Mar 25, 2003)

He would be fired in a NY second, in today's military.  He didn't care about battle casualties. He believed valor in combat brought reincarnation and eternal life. He openly professed that he was a reincarnated battlefield general who had fought in the Roman's conquest of Carthage, and  Napoleon's blunder into Russia, in his previous lives.  The guy was a nut case!  He would get Section 8!

Of course  I respect and admire his military genius. But there is a limit.


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## yilisifu (Mar 25, 2003)

Yes, he believed in reincarnation...but he was far from nuts..which is why he was never given a Section 8.

He was VERY strongly opinionated and sometimes spoke out against the powers that be.  He criticized his superiors and general officers of our allies.

In my opinion, he was right most of the time.  BUT he should have known better.

He was also very egotistical.  But then, so was MacArthur and most other famous military leaders.

And he was one hell of a fighter.


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 25, 2003)

Interesting facts on Patton:
http://www.bobtuley.com/georgepatton.htm


A short Bio: http://www.yorktownsociety.org/Gazette/G_Anniversaries.html


> Patton was born November 11, 1885, in San Marino, California. His family were from Virginia and fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. Mt. Wilson, overlooking Pasadena, California, was named for his mother's fathera very prominent and colorful early Californian.
> 
> Patton did not attend public schoolshe was educated mostly at home by his father and others. He attended a year at V.M.I. and then West Point. He was always the consummate soldier.
> 
> ...


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 25, 2003)

http://www.pattonhq.com/textfiles/reflect.html

The Patton Society.
http://www.pattonhq.com/homeghq.html


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## Johnathan Napalm (Mar 26, 2003)

> _Originally posted by yilisifu _
> *Yes, he believed in reincarnation...but he was far from nuts..which is why he was never given a Section 8.
> 
> He was VERY strongly opinionated and sometimes spoke out against the powers that be.  He criticized his superiors and general officers of our allies.
> ...



No one cares what he personally believed. But it became a problem when you sent men on deadly missions with the mindset that " Hey, don't worry. Fight bravely. When you get killed,  you will come back as a general!"

He got canned because of a truckload of reasons on top of what you have mentioned.  He was dragging his feet when it came to denazification of the German administration. He thought they were good administrators and should not be purged simply b/c they were members of the Nazi party. lol  He made the comment that being a Nazi was no different than being a Republican or a Democrat. Nothing more than just party affiliation.  LMAO.

Then he wanted to redeploy the German troops to start a war with the Soviet.  In retrospect, he was right. Stalin was a monster and a mass murderer that killed tens of millions of his countrymen. A monster worse than Hitler.  Communism eventually destroyed generations of lives in Eastern Europe and Russia. The USSR was responsible for instigating countless bloodshed all over the world.


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## yilisifu (Mar 26, 2003)

That's true.  You know, Count Mountbatten, having been assigned to SE Asia following the war so as to restructure it, allowed the captured Japanese to act as officials and even as police in VietNam!

You can imagine what a big hit that was.

Then when he was made to send the Japanese back to their own land, he handed Nam back over to the French (since it had been their colony).  The Vietnamese despised the French and before long, there was war in "Indo-China" which ultimately turned into our war in Nam.

And nobody ever complained about Mountbatten's actions.


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## Johnathan Napalm (Mar 28, 2003)

Consider that the decision of one man, resulted in a chain of events that costed millions of lives later on.

The Vietnam war was just a foreign policy blunder. So was the Korean war.

The Vietnamese thought the US was an imperial, colonial power which aimed to enslave them. The US thought the Vietnamese was the stooges of the Chinese communists to invade Southeast Asia. Remember the Domino Theory?  What a disastrous miscalculation!  The truth is, the US didn't want their land. And they don't even trust the Chinese communists! Today, they want the US to go back to Vietnam to do business. "Gee, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

In Korea, Mao Tze Dung and Zhao En Lai asked Nehru to plead with the WhiteHouse not to approach the border, else the Chinese would be forced to send troops into Korea.  Nehru delivered the message several times.  The message was simply ignored.  Without the CHinese direct intervention, the Korean war would be different.  To this day, if you asked the Chinese, they believe they have won the Korean war. Mao was very proud of the PLA's performance in Korea. (The heartless mass murderer  sent those Kuomintang Nationalist troops that had surrendered to the Communists into Korea to fight in human wave formation right into the American's firing line, to their death. The communists could never trusted the loyalty of those troops. So they just sent them to Korea as cannon fodders. Killing 2 birds with 1 stone. ) He proudly declared that "The Chinese people have finally stood on our feet" ie no longer on their knees.  That was the first war the Chinese have not been defeated by a Western power.  That bolstered them to intervene in Vietnam later on.


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## rmcrobertson (Mar 28, 2003)

Gee, I pretty much agree. Then there's the fact that Johnson and McNamara out-and-out lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, using that "attack," (there wasn't one, and they knew it) as an excuse to send in massive amounts of planes and troops for the first time.


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## yilisifu (Mar 28, 2003)

If I remember right, the No. Koreans and Chinese suddenly crossed the 39th parallel and attacked the U.S. and ROK troops (which were minimal) in front of them.  Rather than taking prisoners, they butchered soldiers who surrendered.

   The allies were all worried about a Russian attack in Europe being started by this aciton in Korea - and that started our military's problems.


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## Johnathan Napalm (Mar 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by yilisifu _
> *If I remember right, the No. Koreans and Chinese suddenly crossed the 39th parallel and attacked the U.S. and ROK troops (which were minimal) in front of them.  Rather than taking prisoners, they butchered soldiers who surrendered.
> 
> The allies were all worried about a Russian attack in Europe being started by this aciton in Korea - and that started our military's problems. *



It seems that only WE observe the rules of war while every one else just ignores them.  While we do stand on the high moral ground, but our enemies do not respect nor fear us. They just see us as weaklings who do not have the guts.

Yes, it is true that most of our foreign policy was  filtered through the prism of Communist threat and WWIII, while in many situation, the locals couldn't give a rat *** about those considerations.

Side Note:  In the Korean war, our troops proved that they could be as savage and ruthless at the enemies when it came to knife fighting. There were battles of blood curding bayonet charge where US troops just skewed the Chinese wholesale. They celebrated the victories by throwing the Rebel yell!  (I apologize to our Wiccan friends who might read this.  I don't cherrish the thought of this act, as it might seem)


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