[War Department, Washington, D.C.] Oct. 20, 1942
For reasons of official secrecy, this will not be mailed for some time. Probably by the time you get it you will have read in the papers where I am and if I still AM.
In spite of my faults you have always treated me as a real brother and I have felt that way towards you. I do appreciate all you have been and done to and for me. My admiration for you as a man is without limit. You also have my devoted love as have all your family.
The job I am going on is about as desperate a venture as has ever been undertaken by any force in the world’s history. We will have to meet and defeat superior numbers on a coast where one can only land 60 per cent of the time. So my proverbial luck will have to be working all out. However, I have a convinced belief that I will succeed. If I don’t I shall not survive a second Donqurque (if that is how you spell it). Of course there is the offchance that political interests may help and we shall have, at least initially, a pushover. Personally I would rather have to fight — it would be good practice. However, in any event we will eventually have to fight and fight hard and probably for years. Those of us who come back will have had some interesting experiences.
And further, when we get back we will have a hell of a job on our hands. I should like to have a crack at the latter part. So far as Bea and the children are concerned, I know that under your supervision they could not be better off.
I am enclosing a sealed letter to Bea which you are only to give her when and if I am definitely reported dead. I expect you to keep it a long time. Letters even to me will probably be censored, so avoid political and financial statements you don’t want others to read.
This all sounds very gloomy, but is not really so bad. All my life I have wanted to lead a lot of men in a desperate battle; I am going to do it; and at fifty-six one can go with equanimity — there is nothing much one has not done. Thanks to you and Bea, I have had an exceptionally happy life. “Death is as light as a feather; reputation for valor is as heavy as a mountain.”
Very affectionately,
G. S. PATTON, JR.

[Headquarters Western Task Force, Office of Commanding General, Casablanca] Dec. 16, 1942
After the gloomy letter I wrote you upon leaving, this is somewhat of a comedown; that is, nothing very violent happened. We did have some very nice fighting while it lasted, although personally I was much safer during the fighting than I am in an airplane. In fact the night before last I nearly ended my career in one.
We got caught in a very violent storm, could not find the ground, and the radio went out, and we could not locate a place to land. After flying around for about an hour and a half, shooting off flares, we finally saw the airport through a hole in the clouds and practically dived into it. However, the boy piloting the plane made a perfect landing in mud up to the hubs of the wheels.
Last week I went up to the Tunisian Front for a day’s shooting or being shot at. I saw Johnny Waters [his son-in-law], who has done the outstanding job of any young officer, but I fear lie is in a position where his career is not apt to continue. Even his luck cannot hold forever.
This is great country for photography as everything is queer. You meet camels, burros, horses, and Arabs on the same road with tanks and selfpropelled artillery. You see palaces and hovels side by side. Everywhere there are violent contrasts, even in the cloud effects.

[Headquarters I Armored Corps, Office of Commanding General, Casablanca] Feb. 21, 1943
I had five days with the British 8th Army [in Tripoli] and learned a lot, both of what to do and what to avoid. We flew for several hours over the true desert —just a sea of dusty brown sand — not any vegetation at all. I got pretty sleepy and had just dozed off when all the machine guns in the plane let go at once. It scared the life out of me. I found out that they do it from time to time to see that all guns function.
Coming back [they flew over the German lines] we got caught in a storm and just missed a mountain. Actually, the tip of our right wing made the trees wave. The only consolation is that at 200 miles an hour it would not have hurt much or long.
I killed a huge pig recently. He was within 20 feet of me, coming straight on when I hit him. He fell on my right foot, but was stone-dead. These expanding slugs are bad stuff. I should like to hit a man with one.

[Headquarters I Armored Corps, Office of Commanding General, Rabat) March 2, 1943
By the time you get this you will have probably heard that John Waters is missing in action. His battalion was cut off during the German attack of February 16. They were holding a small hill. John stayed back with 150 men to cover their withdrawal and has not been heard of since. However, there is still a chance that he may have escaped as from time to time a few men of this detachment get back.
General Eisenhower, with whom I just talked on the telephone, considered his action one of the finest performed in this war and has given him the Distinguished Service Cross for it. He is further going to speak about John in his broadcast on March 14, on the occasion of the Annual West Point Dinner, so if you get this letter in time, which is highly doubtful, you had better listen in.

General Eisenhower did speak about Johnny Waters, and in ringing words, which were broadcast from General Headquarters in Algiers, he said: —

One month ago tonight an American detachment held a high hill above the Faid Pass in Central Tunisia. It was commanded by Johnny Waters, a West Pointer of the Class of ‘31. He was ordered to hold that hill.

He then had been engaged for three months in almost continuous battle, in every hour of which he lived up to the glowing prophecies made concerning him from the first day that he began his career at West Point.

At first light on February 14, the enemy poured in around his flanks and quickly he was surrounded by hostile mechanized forces. Undismayed, he carried on. For two nights and days he repulsed every attempt of the Hun to dent his position. Then the Corps Commander directed Waters to bring his troops back through the darkness to join the main American force. Efficiently and rapidly he organized for the withdrawal. His troops came out with 150 prisoners and joined the main body, while Johnny Waters — as you would expect — stayed with a small detachment to cover the retirement. His devoted men wanted all to stay until he himself could depart, but he had made them soldiers that obeyed orders instantly.

Since that moment we have not heard of Johnny Waters and his men. Wherever he is, whatever his fate, his example and his whole career typify the kind of service that West Point has a right to expect of her graduates. He knew his job and he devoted his full energies and his whole spirit to its execution.

If that spirit and example are characteristic today of West Pointers in every duty to which assigned, then our Alma Mater is a shining symbol of that Americanism that will win this war — definitely and conclusively. If there could be granted to me now an answer to just one prayer, it would be this: “God, let me, in my post, do my duty to my country as well as Johnny Waters did in his”.

On the same broadcast General Patton made this salient comment about the need for discipline: —

Of all the things West Point gives us, nothing is so important as the training we get in discipline, because discipline demands and produces alertness, instant obedience, and self-confidence. At the terrific tempo of mechanized war, lackadaisical men, lacking in self-confidence and slow to obey, are lost. And we, who lead in battle and fail to demand and secure the type of discipline we learned at West Point, are both murderers and suicides.

[Headquarters II Corps in the Field Tunisian Front, Gafsa] April 1, 1943
We have been in a hell of a battle now since the 17th. This morning I lost Dick Jenson, whom you know, by way of an air bomb. Last night they bombed us here and expect to get worse tonight. On the other hand, our anti-aircraft shot down six JU-88s today, which is always a great help. So far, we have taken better than 2500 prisoners and between 25 and 30 cannon, and have also accounted for 30 tanks. Of course, we have paid for this. Every day we expect the situation to change materially and every day it gets back into a dogfight.
I have not yet heard from either of the Bea’s, about the disappearance of Johnny, nor about the fact that he is definitely reported a prisoner.
This is the dirtiest place I have ever been. It was built by the Arabs and occupied by the French and then by the Italians. Every part of it smells like a very old toilet and most of it is. You cannot drink any of the water, eat any of the fruit, or use any of the latrines. If and when I get back to America, I am going to build myself a large bathroom and live in it.

[Headquarters II Corps in the Field Tunisian Front, Gafsa] April 10, 1943
I had a nice legal question this afternoon: Is a nurse guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order of military discipline if she has a baby in the theater of war, said baby appearing in a time insufficient to have been developed outside the continental limits of the U.S.? My point is that being in such a condition, she had no business coming to war and I am going to try her. This may be as important as the Dred Scott case in jurisprudence.
We have just terminated, or rather did on the 7th, a 23-day battle in which we were completely successful and inflicted really grueling losses on the enemy together with the capture of some 4000 prisoners, 70 guns, and about 100 machine guns. It was quite a show while it lasted and our soldiers displayed a truly remarkable fortitude. It makes you proud to be an American. This morning I went over the battlefield from the enemy’s viewpoint and I am not surprised that it took so long, but I am truly astonished that we could do it at all. The effect of our artillery, of which we had 30 batteries, was really appalling, but the fact that the whole area is covered with contact mines makes walking over it very irksome.

[Casablanca] April 21, 1943
In this last show, my car got hit while I was in it. A 155 shell hit the spot I had been sitting on two minutes after I had left it, and another salvo threw mud all over me. An Arab just missed me [he was fired at by an Arab on the Sidi-bou-Zid road] — unfortunately, I missed him, etc. I also forgot to say that on two occasions, enemy planes pursued me down the road, which is a form of sport I am not interested in. Also, in going through a mine field, I got through all right, but the next vehicle blew up. I was in the first vehicle. This is enough of self-advertisement.

[Headquarters Gen. Patton’s Sicilian Task Force, later the 7th Army, Mostaganem] May 5, 1943
Your letter of April 6 reached me just a month after mailing. In it you say, “I expect before this reaches you, you and Montgomery will have joined forces.” As a matter of fact, we did link up with Montgomery about 4.00 o’clock in the afternoon of the 7th, which is the day after you wrote.
I was two vehicles from the head of the advanced guard when we were within a mile of Montgomery’s left flank group but did not know it, and so many people were telling me how dangerous it was to be up there and urging me to go back that I finally stopped. If I had kept on half an hour more, I would have run into the 12th Lancers which were his left unit.
We had a little more fighting but finally cleaned up the whole situation on the 12th. Since that time I have been connected with something bigger and better which will not materialize for a while yet, and about which I cannot talk. However, if you remember the remark of Peter Pan, you will have to believe in the same thing when it does happen.
Prom what I hear of the German treatment of American prisoners, Johnny will not have too bad a time, but he will get even thinner than he was when I last saw him.
I think that the publicity I have been getting, a good deal of which is untrue and the rest of it ill-considered, has done me more harm than good. The only way you get on in this profession is to have the reputation of doing what you are told as thoroughly as possible. So far I have been able to accomplish that, and I believe have gotten quite a reputation from not kicking at peculiar assignments.
In this last show I was put in command of more thousand men than your Father was old at his death [Mr. Ayer lived to be 95], ten days before moving into battle under circumstances very unfavorable to both me and them. However, by the use of very violent and somewhat brutal methods, everything came out all right.
One thing which was tremendously impressed on me was the magnificent optimism and ability to live under horrible circumstances possessed by the American soldier. The only quality which he does not have is that of being a fanatic. This is a big disadvantage to us as we are fighting fanatics.
I am trying to think of some method analogous to the one Cromwell used when he created the new model army, of making our men more fanatical.
As an example, some of our engineers brought me in an Arab and a burro. The burro had panniers full of German mines and covered with a little grass. I asked them why they hadn’t buried him. They said that he was still alive. I said, “Well, go ahead and bury him,” but they said, “General, he is alive.” “Well,” I said, “that can be corrected.” It probably was. But when you think these men were being blown up by a dirty skunk like that and they showed no animosity against him, it is very interesting.
You mention the fact that the bomb that got Jenson might have been close to me. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. We had to put on a tank attack in nothing flat, and in order to create a staff for it on the spur of the moment, I had to pick up officers from anywhere. Jenson was one of these.
They had gone up the road about 20 miles of difficult fighting and had established command posts under a cut bank. They had three big radio sets working and made the mistake of not moving the command post about every four hours. The result was, in my opinion, that the Germans intercepted on the three radios and figured that it must be something big and so deliberately sent 12 bombers — I believe they were JU-88s — to wipe it out.
They dropped about thirty-six 500-pound bombs and only killed three men and wounded several others.
The bomb that caught Jenson was within a foot of his slit trench and the concussion killed him. There wasn’t a hole in him, but he was perfectly dead. He never knew what hit him.
General Bradley, the Deputy Corps Commander, was in the next trench, not five yards away, and wasn’t hurt.
Another man sitting in a tank was killed by concussion, and the tank was somewhat damaged in its electrical appliances, but was not materially injured.
It is rather interesting how you get used to death. I have had to go to inspect the troops every day, in which case you run a very good chance — or I should say a reasonable chance — of being bombed or shot at from the air, and shelled or shot at from the ground.
I had the same experience every day, which is for the first half hour the palms of my hands sweat and I feel very depressed. Then, if one hits near you, it seems to break the spell and you don’t notice them any more. Going back in the evenings over the same ground and at a time when the shelling and bombing is usually heavier, you become so used to it you never think about it.
It is about the same mental attitude that I have in the New York Horseshow. The first time I ride over the jumps, I am scared. By the end of the week, it is simply routine.
I think this is the reason that, veteran troops have such an advantage over green ones. They think more clearly under fire. In fact, the green ones do not think at all, but our troops are getting to be considerable veterans. I think the battle of El Guettar, in which the same troops attacked continuously for 22 days, is the longest battle in history — at least in which the same troops continuously participated. It is so far as my reading goes anyway.
I have appointed your friend Charlie Codman as Aide in place of Jenson. He possesses many qualities desirable in an Aide, including his ability with languages. Tn one of these big headquarters, and this is getting pretty big and will be almost three times bigger in the next show, one has to have a person of literary accomplishments to look after incoming and outgoing dispatches and see that the right things are done.
I think I wrote Bea about our medical service, which is really wonderful. In one hospital, which I inspected daily, 3900 cases passed through with only 25 deaths. Four of these died before they got to the hospital and most of the others died under operation. One man who survived was given 24 raw blood transfusions in 12 hours. The soldiers in the rear areas were really fine about donating blood. At this particular hospital, 20 men volunteered to go up every day and be tapped.

[Headquarters Gen. Patton’s Sicilian Task Force, Mostaganem] June 9, 1943
I don’t remember Lieutenant Marshall, but any artillery observer usually has a front seat. The picture of me that came out in the papers, sitting on top of a hill with a telephone near me, was from an artillery observer’s position, and from that place we actually watched the enemy get within about 350 yards, at which point we got him with artillery and destroyed him.
Your suspicions as to my future activities are probably correct, but you are very wise to only mention them as suspicions, and I have to observe the same lack of candor in commenting on them.
It is a strange thing that when the fellow told me as a Cadet that I should be hung for rape at 84, the thought has always been rather reassuring — not so much the cause of the death as the length of time to which it was postponed.
In any of these fights, a general officer who does his duty has got to expose himself. Otherwise, he cannot look himself in the face and order men to do things that he is afraid to do himself. I am sure that whatever success I have had has resulted from my adherence to this belief, and if you will study history, you will find that with the exception of the War of 1870 and the one of 1914-18, the successful generals have always obeyed this rule and have in a large measure survived.
The most striking examples occur in naval history and are well described in Mahan’s famous book, Lord Nelson and the Rise of the British Navy.
I suppose you have seen in the papers that my friend Vogues is out. So far as I was concerned, he played perfectly straight with me, and I believe that our mutual agreement was a great service to the country in a time of considerable stress. However, he belonged to the wrong party and had to go.
Save up a good drink, preferably a cocktail, of which I have only tasted three in the last 8 months, to drink when and if you read about me in the paper.
Also, and this is off the record so far as Ben is concerned, if I should conk, I do not wish to be disinterred after the war. It would be more pleasant to my ghostly future to lie among my soldiers than to rest, in the sanctimonious precincts of a civilian cemetery. Arlington is certainly out. However, don’t worry about this because I have no idea of departing this life.

[Mostaganem] June 15, 1943
It is indeed impossible for us to contemplate the state of mind of men who will go on strike and thereby endanger not only national victory but the lives of their own relations. I cannot understand such behavior, nor, so far as I can judge from the conversation of the troops, can they.
However, I did get quite a thrill out of the troops whom we looked at, particularly some of the new arrivals. They are really a magnificent group of men of which any country should be proud. It is my sincere belief that our troops now are as good and probably better than any in the world. At least we Americans have personally beaten the two best German divisions, so that anything else they should ever happen to bring against us will be second-rate in comparison.

[Headquarters 7th Army, Palermo] July 5, 1943
This letter will be mailed after D-Day, which is some time in the future. As I wrote you before the African landing, it is not a good-bye, as the higher ranking I get the less chance I have to do any real fighting. However, one can always take a long swim, and swimming in oily water, which is on fire, is not healthy.
It seems to be certain that a number of us will go down; although a good many less than we probably anticipate. In any event, we will have plenty of men when we get ashore to lick anything we meet, and our soldiers now are really good.
As you wall have read in the papers, I am new commanding the 7th Army. It is actually not a great deal bigger than what I commanded in Tunisia, but will continue to grow until it is quite sizable.
If you read in the papers that I have been killed, wait till you get a War Department confirmation, because I have a great many lives, and at the moment do not feel at all dead; in fact, I am looking forward with a lot of pleasure to some very good excitement.
However, in the event that the War Department does announce that I have passed on, you can give the letter for Bea, which I wrote you last October, to her. Otherwise, keep it for future eventualities.
If we should not meet again until we get to the other side, I am assured on credible authority that the heavenly foxes are fast, the heavenly hounds keen, the fog-bank fences high and soft, and the landings firm. The horses of the sun have always been celebrated. “Whoop Ho! for a kill in the open!”

[Sicily] August 6, 1943
Your letter of July 9th with the P.S. of July 12 just came. That was great news and at almost the same time came the news that we have taken a town that we have been attacking for three days, so I feel pretty good, especially as Bernard [General Montgomery] had wired me that he was coming to my assistance. Now he don’t need to. We are having a horse race who wall get the last big town first — it will be a close match, but I hope to beat him and so make a clean sweep.
This is a truly horrid country in climate, fleas, mosquitoes, sand bugs, mountains, and inhabitants.
Sergeant George Meeks, my colored orderly, has it sized up pretty well; he says, “When you and me commanded the 5th Cavalry, them Mexicans was mighty low; then when we got to Morocco, the Arabs was worse; then when we commanded the 2d Corps in Tunisia, that was worse yet; but when we got back to Algeria, that was the bottom. Now here we is, commanding a army and these natives is lower than the bottom!” He is about right.

[Palermo] September 26, 1943
Ever since I got to Sicily I have been going to Catholic churches largely for political reasons but also as a means of worshipping God, because I think He is quite impartial as to the form in which He is approached.
This morning I went to the Episcopal Church and for the first time in my life found it crowded with American soldiers and sailors. I had very strange feelings in watching the faces and types of men who went to Communion.
There were men with the shoulder patch of the 9th Division beside aviator ground crews who had never fired a shot or been in danger. There was an Irish Guardsman and a Navy cook; a 6' 2" Coldstream Guard kneeling beside a little runt from the 1st Division who, to my certain knowledge, had killed a dozen men. It was a very strange mixture. Whether it is faith or superstition I do not know, but certainly it comes out in war and is coming out faster all the time.
I had all the non-Catholic Chaplains in the other day and gave them hell for having uninteresting services. I am convinced that man does not want to be preached to on the Divinity of Christ or the efficacy of prayer—certainly not preached to for half an hour. I told them that I was going to relieve any preacher who talked more than ten minutes on any subject. I will probably get slapped dowm by the Church Union, but I am absolutely right.
Every once in a while I become completely amused at the amount of formality accorded me, particularly when I think that within a reasonable time I will be riding a solitary bicycle from Green Meadows to Hamilton. Now when I go abroad, the sirens of motorcycles scream, armored cars pursue me, and to cap the climax, the other day I went on a private train on a private railway with a pilot train ahead of me to see that the rails were not mined, and a second pilot behind me to see that some malign influence did not jam into my sacred rear. When we stopped for lunch, soldiers sprang from bushes to patrol the sides of the track.
As I say, it was very amusing and I know that it accounts for the stuffiness of many generals. As long as I can see the funny side of it, perhaps I am safe.

(To be continued)