Well, hell, so did I, albeit some twenty-five years later. That must make me ‘Da Man.
Patton was a throwback; a reckless and incredible egotistic knight errant. My father’s friends, many of whom served with him and one of whom was chief medical officer at Third Army Headquarters (not chief medical officer of Third Army), thought little of him. Old men I have talked to who served in Third Army said of the “Blood and Guts” nickname that it was Patton’s guts and their blood. Bill Mauldin (the Willy and Joe cartoonist with Stars and Stripes and Yank) had no time for him at all.
It is worth noting that the old guys, my father’s friends regarded his death as a “happy accident.” That he chose to be buried in the military cemetery in Luxemburg and with a simple government head stone is the best thing that can be said about him.
Patton has developed a legacy that turns into blind hero worship sometimes, but Bradley had more than his fair share of faults as well. The “G. I. General” nickname wasn’t always used by men under his command, some of whom didn’t think very highly of him. Patton is the one thought of as a hot head, yet he relieved very few officers during the war, unlike Bradley who sacked generals during Normandy quite frequently. Amongst his questionable military decisions was his stop order to Patton during the Falaise encirclement, ordering him to halt and proceed no further than Argentan, which helped allow the defeated German armies to escape from Normandy. Another would be his support for the bloody meat grinder of an operation in the Hurtgen Forest, sometimes referred to as “Passchendaele with tree bursts.” On balance Bradley was a very good general, perhaps an excellent one, but he was far from nearly perfect.
The point is that Bradley, unlike Patton, unlike Montgomery, was always about getting the job done with minimum inefficiency and with constant attention to the objective, and not about ego. The advance limit imposed on US forces in Normandy was so that the British/Commonwealth forces could close the kill zone, which the British commander assured all they would do faster than the Americans would. It was another case where the wishes of the allies had to be accommodated.
The Hurtgen Wald had to be taken before the front could advance, it could not be by-passed because the German forces dug in there were too dangerous to just leave pocketed until they withered on the vine. They had to be rooted out and a bloody business it was. To criticize Bradley because Hurtgen was an expensive fight is like criticizing Grant for the Wilderness and Spotsylvania – the fight was essential to the mission, in one case to destroy the German ability to resist, in the other to pin Fee to the ground and not let him maneuver.
As far a reliving commanders goes, it is axiomatic that failure to get the expected results, no matter how blameless, gets a commander relived, whether it be a platoon leader or a Corps commander. There is no time to take the generous view. The mission is just too important.
While Bradley did give this as justification the Canadians had stalled driving south while XV Corps moving north was not. Haislip, the commander of XV Corps, and Patton both believed they could achieve a link up faster than the Canadians could, but Bradley over ruled them, countermanding Patton’s orders to XV Corps to continue to advance. Minimal inefficiency and constant attention to the objective would have dictated modifying the plan to accommodate the actual situation in this case. Bradley said in A Soldier’s Story the decision to stop Patton was his alone, and that he did not consult with Montgomery on it. I’m not trying to put Bradley through the ringer on this, I’m just pointing out that he was not nearly perfect.
Hurtgen may have had to be cleared eventually, but the manner in which it was done and the priorities given in it was the failing. From here:
True to some extent, but my point is that Bradley was sacking commanders of green divisions in Normandy at a rate far exceeding what occurred with similarly green divisions throughout the rest of the war. He relieved 5 divisional commanders out of 22 in the space of 2 ½ months. Relieving commanders for simply failing to attain expected results, regardless of how blameless they are is simply not axiomatic. If it were, armies would rapidly find themselves without any officers left at all.
I’ve criticized Grant for the Wilderness and Spotsylvania ;). Or at least the very least those ugly frontal assaults at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. I’m convinced Grant didn’t need to pursue his incredibly wasteful campaign of attrition as far as he did. He just had to maneouvre to keep Lee occupied. As long as he sat threatening Richmond, Lee himself wasn’t going anywhere and any strength Lee detached to shore up the west was likely to be either a) inadequate to the task given the threat confronting Lee, all the more so after the first clash or b) if it was substantial would have weakened him enough that Grant might have had a real chance at breaking him all at once. Meanwhile Sherman could continue to cut the Confederacy apart via its soft underbelly until the entire edifice disintegrated. Grant’s grand strategy ( however much of it was his and not Sherman’s ) was sound, but his execution on his end was ugly and clumsy in the Wilderness Campaign if you ask me.
Not that you did :p.
Anyway…sorry for the hijack. Now I feel like firing up my DVD of A Bridge Too Far to see Montgomery’s one clever plan come crashing down in disaster.
One of Patton’s grandchildren (who never met Patton) recounted seeing the movie based on Patton’s service in WW II (the producers tried to get the family’s participation, but because they contacted the family on the day that Patton’s widow was buried, the family declined to help) with his father, and noticing that his father was crying realized that the portrayal of Patton in the film was accurate. One of the soldiers who served with Patton later wrote a biography of Patton (one of the blurbs on the cover was by Patton’s daughter saying that the biographer got everything right) and in the footnotes stated that Patton surely would have approved of how he was portrayed in the film. Interesting because George C. Scott (who studied Patton intensely before performing the role) hated Patton, with one of the quirks of fate being that it is probably the role Scott will be most remembered for.
I can’t weigh in on the debate as to which one was the greater prima donna as I know almost nothing about Monty. (Though I’d vote for Monty since he didn’t drink. )
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