War as I Knew It

by George S. Patton

  I went through several of the living quarters, and also the cooking shacks, in which latter were some most ingenious cooking devices, mostly invented and constructed by members of the United States Army Air Force. They were based on the principle of a blacksmith’s forge and burned practically anything, during the course of which incendiary operation they produced the densest and most evil-smelling smoke I have ever encountered. With the aid of these cookers, the ample and well-selected supplies furnished by the American Red Cross1 were heated and made more palatable. During the last month the prisoners at Moosberg were wholly supported by American Red Cross packages, as the Germans made practically no attempt to supply food which they themselves did not possess. To their credit be it stated that they did not tamper with the packages.

  1These supplies were bought by the Army, packed by volunteer Red Cross workers, shipped by the American Red Cross vessels, and distributed by the International Red Cross.

  From here we drove to Landshut, where the 99th Division was crossing the Isar River. It was at Landshut in the chateau on the south side of the river that Colonel Codman spent quite a long period of confinement during the First World War, and from which he subsequently escaped. I took a picture of the chateau and also one of Charley with the chateau in the background.

  During the trip, we passed a German candy and cooky factory, where, on the previous day, General Van Fleet had found a mob of German civilians looting. Had it not been for the prompt and personal action of General Van Fleet and his driver, the valuable store of sugar, chocolate, and flour stored in the factory would probably have been utterly destroyed. As it was, we walked through passageways where sugar and chocolate lay on the floor higher than my shoetops. Apparently the desire for rationed food made the normally quiescent German completely crazy.

  When I got back to Headquarters, I discovered there was a movement on foot to turn over the reduction of the “Redoubt” to the Seventh Army. It occurred to me that, if we could secure a crossing over the Inn River at Wasserburg, so as to retain control of the road from Wasserburg to Altenmarkt and Salzburg, we would pinch out the embryonic ambitions of the Seventh Army.

  I called Van Fleet on the telephone and asked him to do his damnedest to get the crossing at Wasserburg and also to get other units across the Inn in his sector. He made a task force and forced the crossing at Wasserburg before daylight, which was one of the most handsome and fastest operations of the war.

  On the second, we were to move our Command Post from Erlangen to Regensburg, or Ratisbon, where Napoleon fought the famous battle and inspired the poem beginning: “You know, we French took Ratisbon, about a mile away, On a little mound Napoleon stood,” etc. Apparently army commanders did not get as relatively near the front in those days as they do now.

  Personally, I was unable to leave the Command Post until 1330, as I had to wait to find out from General Bradley whether or not we would continue the attack on the “Redoubt” or turn it over to the Seventh Army. At 1330 he gave me a new boundary, which answered the question; the Seventh Army got the decision. This boundary was as follows: the old boundary Third Army and III Corps northwest of Freising; thence in a general easterly direction to Muhldorf; thence along the Inn River to the junction of the Inn and the Salzach Rivers; thence to Strasswalchen; thence generally parallel to the Enns River to where it joins the Danube at Mauthausen, ten kilometers east of Linz. The Russians were on the other side of this river. North of the Danube, the temporary boundary between the United States and the Russians was the railway running north from the point where the Enns River enters the Danube. The result of this boundary was practically to pinch out the III Corps and also to give us a definite stop line.

  Being of a hopeful nature, I told the III Corps to hold on at Wasserburg, and also to get any other intact crossings over the Inn River which they could find.

  The Seventh Army asked us to take the 4th Infantry Division (Major General H. W. Blakeley) from them in exchange for our 86th Division at Wasserburg. Since there was no help for it, we agreed. However, we succeeded in getting the 23d Reconnaissance Squadron (commanded by Lieutenant Colonel R. C. Adkinson) of the 16th Armored Division, which had been with the 86th, pulled back, and also two companies of the 14th Armored Division which had been operating with the 86th.

  I called the III Corps and told them what had happened, but to keep going in the small zone which was still open to them.

  I had the idea of letting the XII Corps utilize the crossing made at Passau by the 65th Division of the XX Corps and move rapidly on Linz by the road Scharding—Linz. However, General Gay and General Maddox, dissuaded me, as they judged, more rightly than I did, the small amount of opposition in front of the XX Corps. I believe they also sensed, even at that time, the possibility of changing direction to the northeast with the XII Corps. There had been throughout the operation a strange fatality about the times the Third Army moved its Command Posts. Practically every time we moved them, we got a change in direction or a change in mission.

  On May 3 we heard over the radio of the unconditional surrender of the German troops in Italy.

  Both the 65th Infantry Division of the XX Corps and the 11th Armored of the XII Corps continued crossing the rivers which had been holding them up, and advanced rapidly on Linz. I decided to send the 4th Infantry Division to Nuremberg on line of communication duty and, in the event of an operation in Czechoslovakia, to give the III Corps a division from either the XII or XX Corps.

  We next visited the XX Corps Headquarters, which we found situated in a rather nice country house, with an excellent collection of old firearms. Apparently the ancestors of the owner had been proprietary colonels of an infantry regiment.

  Driving back to Third Army Headquarters, we passed a large number of Hungarians who looked extremely well fed, and were moving happily along with only one of our soldiers for about a thousand prisoners.

  We were very nearly killed by a bull-cart, which came out of a side street so that the pole missed us only by about an inch. The American soldier is absolutely incapable of enforcing the rule that civilians stay off the roads during active operations. His goodness of heart is a credit to him, but I am sure it has cost us many casualties. In war, time is vital, and bull-carts cause waste of time and therefore death.

  If I were to fight another war, I would make it an inflexible rule that no civilian vehicle, horse, cow, or motor-drawn, appear on any axial road, and I would enforce this by shooting the animals and destroying the vehicles. I did this in Sicily and was criticized by an ignorant press, who considered it very brutal to kick a few donkeys off bridges, and ignored the fact that by so doing we took Palermo in one day and at very low cost. Again, during the Saar battle, through the co-operation of the local authorities, we kept all the axial roads, including those in the city of Nancy, cleared for our use.

  On May 4, the 11th Armored passed the north-and-south line through Linz and therefore was about to run into the Russians. On the initiative of General Irwin, the 90th Division, the 5th Division, and the 2d Cavalry Group (commanded by Colonel C. H. Reed) all secured crossings over the mountains into Czechoslovakia, so that, in case we had to attack Prague, we would at least be through the passes before anything hit us.

  The V Corps, First Army, under General Huebner, was transferred to the Third Army. This gave us the biggest army we had yet had; namely, eighteen divisions, or slightly more than 540,000 men.

  My old-time friend of 1912 at Saumur, the French five-star General Jean Houdemon, called to see me on the fourth. A cavalry officer in World War I, he later became an aviator and fought for France in World War II, until, as he said, “le vieux Petain m’a renvoye.”1 At that time he was sixty-four, and the senior flier in the French Army. He then retired to his home at Pont-à-Mousson, where he acted as mayor and maintained a hospital in his house during the German occupation. Under pretext of negotiating some sort of armistice for the evacuation of his sick, he and his daughter, Catherine, an infirmiere, crossed the
Moselle under fire and came to my Headquarters. As a young cavalry officer on maneuvers, he had learned all the fords at this point of the Moselle, and his real purpose was to indicate them to me. Unfortunately, I was absent, and the officer who saw him did not realize that he was acting in good faith and ordered him back across the river with a parting shot at his boat for luck. He insisted, however, on leaving a note for me with a chart of the fords and the information that the medieval chateau of Mousson, on a steep hill behind the town, was an important German Observation Post. His. chart of the fords was the one we later used in crossing the Moselle. Two days after this visit to my Headquarters, the Germans evacuated him and we had quite a search trying to locate him and for a long time thought him dead. He was a very fine man and most interesting in his conversation. I later had him flown to Paris, which he enjoyed, as he had been chief of the southern portion of the French Air Force prior to the fall of France. His daughter received the Croix de Guerre for her work in the war, which included the heroic rescue from the Moselle of two wounded American soldiers.

  1The old Pétain sent me back.”

  At 1930, General Bradley called up and said the green light was open for the attack on Czechoslovakia, and wanted to know when I could put it into effect. I told him next morning. He was somewhat incredulous, but, as we were pretty well used to each other, he believed me.

  I immediately called the V Corps and told them to get going with the 1st (then commanded by Major General Clift Andrus) and the 2d Infantry Divisions1 and the 16th Armored. I also told the XII Corps to attack as planned. General Gay, who has a sixth sense, had already alerted the 16th Armored in the afternoon, because he felt that something was going to happen. We were very anxious to get the 16th into a fight before the war stopped, and they were very anxious to get there.

  1On May 5, 1945, the V Corps (Major General C. R. Huebner) was assigned to the Third Army.

  2General Huebner was sitting down to dinner, about seven-thirty, when his G-3 came in with orders assigning his corps to the Third Army. General Huebner remarked, “Well, I’ll give us just about twelve hours before General Patton calls up and tells us to attack something.” The soup was still hot when the Chief of Staff of the corps was called from the table to the phone. He came back with a grin on his face, saying, “General, it’s General Patton. He wants to talk to you.” The conversation went something like this:

  “Hello, Huebner?”

  “Hello, General. How are you?”

  “Fine. Where in hell have you been since Sicily-”

  “Oh, we’ve been around making a nuisance of ourselves.”

  “I’m sure glad you’re back with me again.”

  “Glad to be back, General.”

  “I want you to attack Pilsen in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine, move fast now. We haven’t got much time left in this war. I’ll be up to see you. Good-bye.”

  General Huebner returned to his table and said, “Well, I missed that one. Instead of twelve hours, it was twelve minutes. We attack Pilsen at daybreak.”

  Both corps jumped off between 0800 and 1000 on the morning of the fifth, the V Corps with the 97th and 2d Infantry Divisions land part of the 16th Armored. The 1st Division was to join in the attack starting on the sixth, also a portion of the 9th Armored Division.

  I had instructions from Bradley, which I passed on to the corps, that we were not to advance beyond a northwest-southeast line through Pilsen in large force, but could and should reconnoiter vigorously toward Prague.

  The XII Corps jumped off with the 90th and 5th Divisions and also captured Linz with the 11th Armored and 26th Divisions, which were then released for action to the north by the 65th Infantry Division of the XX Corps.

  I remember that, during this offensive, I was talking to General Paul, commanding the 26th, and he reminded me that when his division had gone in green on October 7, I had told him that his soldiers were a group of amateurs about to play in a professional league, and it behooved them to bestir themselves in order to compete with the pros. He said those remarks applied equally well to his final attack on Linz, because, owing to casualties and attrition, the division was largely filled with un-battlewise soldiers. However, there is a great difference between an old division, irrespective of the individuals composing it, and a new division. War develops a soul in a fighting unit, and while there may not be many of the old men left, it takes very little yeast to leaven a lump of dough. I suppose I might be funny and say it takes very few veterans to leaven a division of doughboys.

  It is an unfortunate fact that few commanders, and no politicians, realize the individuality of units and the necessity of playing on human emotion. Speaking of this reminds me that this same Paul once told me, with perfect sincerity, that the greatest moment of his life had been at the Battle of the Bulge when I put my arm around him and said, “How is my little fighting son of a bitch today?” He said that this remark inspired not only him, but every man in the division, and it is highly probable that it did.

  Huebner told me that when and if I met any Russians, I must be prepared for mutual exchange of medals, flags, and personal equipment, and that for that reason I had better not wear my good pistol nor my expensive watch, as I would certainly not get the equivalent from the Russians in a swapping match. I immediately called General Bradley and asked what authority I had to present medals. We arranged that we would give medals approximately as follows: a division could give six Legions of Merit of the lowest grade, and six Bronze Stars to the Russian division with which it made contact. In the corps, we could give nine Legions of Merit and three Bronze Stars to the opposite corps. In this case, half of the Legions of Merit were of the officer grade. In the Army, we could give twelve Legions of Merit of assorted grades, including the third, or commander, grade, and piece out with a few Bronze Stars if desirable. We immediately set to work and secured the requisite number of medals.

  In view of the radio reports that the Czechoslovakian citizens had taken Prague, I was very anxious to go on and assist them, and asked Bradley for authority to do so, but this was denied. As a matter of fact, however, reconnaissance elements of the Third Army were in the vicinity of Prague, and by that act marked the farthest progress to the east of any western army. Also, the Third Army had the distinguished privilege of being the last western army to maintain the offensive.

  On the sixth it was definitely established that we were not to pass beyond the stop line running through Pilsen for greater distances than required by security reconnaissance—up to about five miles. I was very much chagrined, because I felt, and I still feel, that we should have gone on to the Moldau River and, if the Russians didn’t like it, let them go to hell. I did not find out until weeks afterward the reasons, which were sound, which implemented General Eisenhower’s decision to order us to stop where he did.

  We were also directed to stop our advance southeast in the Danube Valley and to stand fast where we were until the Russians made contact with us. As of 1100, the leading Combat Command of the 16th Armored Division (commanded by Colonel C. H. Noble) entered Pilsen. We moved the III Corps to the vicinity of Nuremberg to start occupying Bavaria under the so-called Eclipse Plan.1

  It was also reported to us that one hundred thousand White Russians were attempting to surrender. These people were certainly in a bad fix and had a number of women and children with them. The soldiers were treated as prisoners of war, the women and children as displaced persons.

  On the seventh, we knew the war would end at midnight on the night of May 8-9. Bradley sent a Russian colonel general through the V Corps to go to Prague and inform the German Army Group Commander there, General Sthoerner, of the rules for the surrender.

  General Gay had the forethought to direct the Chief Surgeon of the Third Army personally to inspect Moos-berg and to be sure that the Allied prisoners of war were getting proper medical attention and ample
food.

  Judge Patterson, the Under-Secretary of War, spent the night of May 6-7 with us and on the seventh we flew to the XX Corps, utilizing two Cubs. During this day we crossed the Enns River and also the Isar and at one point saw at least one hundred undestroyed locomotives on a side track.

  On arrival at General Walker’s Headquarters, we found that the XX Corps had captured intact, at an adjacent chateau, the whole of the Imperial Spanish Riding Academy which had left Vienna on the approach of the Russians. This Academy had been running in Vienna since the time of Charles V of Spain.

  Originally the gyrations taught the. horses were of military importance. That is, the courbette, or half-rear, was for the purpose of letting the horse come down at the same time that the sword was swung, so as to give the latter more force; the volte, or demi-volte, was for the purpose of avoiding attack; while the leap into the air, striking out fore and aft with the feet, was for the purpose of extricating the rider from too close contact with the enemy, and so on. With the passing years and changes in the art of war, the purpose of this form of equitation was forgotten, and the movements were taught as of value in themselves. In other words, people began, as in many other arts, to glorify the means rather than the end which the means were supposed to produce.