War as I Knew It

by George S. Patton

Headquarters Third United States Army APO 9563 U.S. Army

  6 March, 1944

  Subject: Letter of Instruction Number 1.

  To : Corps, Division, and Separate Unit Commanders

  I. General

  This letter will orient you, officers of the higher echelons, in the principles of command, combat procedure, and administration which obtain in this Army, and will guide you in the conduct of your several commands.

  II. Command

  a. Leadership

  (1) Full Duty

  Each, in his appropriate sphere, will lead in person. Any commander who fails to obtain his objective, and who is not dead or severely wounded, has not done his full duty.

  (2) Visits to Front

  The Commanding General or his Chief of Staff (never both at once) and one member of each of the General Staff sections, the Signal, Medical, Ordance, Engineer, and Quartermaster sections, should visit the front daily. To save duplication, the Chief of Staff will designate the sector each is to visit.

  The function of these Staff officers is to observe, not to meddle. In addition to their own specialty, they must observe and report anything of military importance. Remember that praise is more valuable than blame. Remember, too, that your primary mission as a leader is to see with your own eyes and be seen by your troops while engaged in personal reconnaissance.

  b. Execution

  In carrying out a mission, the promulgation of the order represents not over ten per cent of your responsibility. The remaining ninety per cent consists in assuring by means of personal supervision on the ground, by yourself and your staff, proper and vigorous execution.

  c. Staff Conferences

  Daily, at the earliest possible moment that the G-2 and G-3 can get their maps posted, a Staff conference will be held, attended by the Commanding General, the Chief of Staff, and the heads of all General Staff sections, the Surgeon, the Signal Officer, the Ordnance Officer, the Engineer Officer, and other special Staff heads when called on. Also present will be the Staff officers described in paragraph II a (2) above, who visited the front on the previous day. Any person present with a statement to make will do so briefly. (N.B. If a Staff inspector saw anything during his visit to the front requiring immediate action, he would have reported the fact to the Chief of Staff immediately on his return.) The Commanding General then gives his intentions, and the Chief of Staff allocates the sectors for the day’s Staff inspectors.

  d. Rest Periods

  Staff personnel, commissioned and enlisted, who do not rest, do not last. All sections must run a duty roster and enforce compliance. The intensity of Staff operations during battle is periodic. At the Army and Corps levels the busiest times

  are the periods from one to three hours after daylight, and from three to five hours after dark. In the lower echelons and in the administrative and supply Staffs, the time of the periods is different, but just as definite. When the need arises, everyone must work all the time, but these emergencies are not frequent: unfatigued men last longer and work harder at high pressure.

  e. Location of Command Posts

  The farther forward the Command Posts are located, the less time is wasted in driving to and from the front. The ideal situation would be for the Army Command Post to be within one half hour’s drive in a C & R car of the Division Command Post. The driving time to the front from the Command Post of the lower units should be correspondingly shorter.

  Much time and wire is saved if Command Posts of higher units are at or near one of the Command Posts of the next lower echelon.

  All Command Posts of a Division and higher units must have at least two echelons; the forward one—and that is the one referred to in this paragraph (e)—should be kept as small and mobile as possible with the minimum amount of radio traffic.

  Combat Procedure

  a. Maps

  We are too prone to believe that we acquire merit solely through the study of maps in the safe seclusion of a Command Post. This is an error.

  Maps are necessary in order to see the whole panorama of battle and to permit intelligent planning.

  Further—and this is very important—a study of the map will indicate where critical situations exist or are apt to develop, and so indicate where the Commander should be. In the higher echelons, a layered map of the whole theater to a reasonable scale, showing roads, railways, streams, and towns is more useful than a large-

  scale map cluttered up with ground forms and a multiplicity t)f non-essential information.

  b. Plans

  Plans must be simple and flexible. Actually they only form a datum plane from which you build as necessity directs or opportunity offers. They should be made by the people who are going to execute them.

  c. Reconnaissance

  You can never have too much reconnaissance. Use every means available before, during, and after battle. Reports must be facts, not opinions; negative as well as positive. Do not believe intercepts blindly; cross-check—sometimes messages are sent out to be intercepted.

  Information is like eggs: the fresher the better.

  d. Orders

  (1) Formal Orders

  Formal orders will be preceded by letters of instruction and by personal conferences. In this way the whole purpose of the operation will be made clear, together with the mission to be accomplished by each major unit. So that, if during combat communication breaks down, each Commander can and must so act as to obtain the general objective. The order itself will be short, accompanied by a sketch—it tells what to do, not how. It is really a memorandum and an assumption of responsibility by the issuing Commander.

  (2) Fragmentary Orders

  After the initial order, you will seldom get another formal order, but you will get many fragmentary orders, in writing, or orally, by phone or personally.

  Take down all oral orders and repeat them back. Have your juniors do the same to you.

  Keep a diary with all orders and messages and the resulting action pasted in it in sequence.

  Keep your own orders short; get them out in time; issue them personally by voice when you can. In battle it is always easier for the senior to go up than for the junior to come back for the issuance of orders.

  A division should have twelve hours, and, better, eighteen hours, between the physical receipt of the order at Division Headquarters and the time it is to be executed.

  (3) Warning Orders

  Warning orders are vital and must be issued in time. This requirement applies not only to combat units but also to the Surgeon, the Signal Officer, the Quartermaster, the Ordnance Officer, and the Engineer Officer, who must get warning orders promptly. They, too, have plans to make and units to move. If they do not function, you do not fight.

  Orders, formal or otherwise, concerning units further down than the next echelon of command, are highly prejudicial.

  (4) Keep Troops Informed

  Use every means before and after combats to tell the troops what they are going to do and what they have done.

  IV. Administration

  a. Supply

  (1) General

  The onus of supply rests equally on the giver and the taker.

  Forward units must anticipate needs and ask for supplies in time. They must stand ready to use all their means to help move supplies.

  The supply services must get the things asked for to the right place at the right time. They must do more: by reconnaissance they will anticipate demands and start the supplies up before they are called for.

  The DESPERATE DETERMINATION to SUCCEED is just as vital as it is to supply the firing line.

  (2) Replacements

  Replacements are spare parts—supplies. They must be asked for in time by the front line, and the need for them must be anticipated in the rear. An educated guess is just as accurate and far faster than compiled errors. During lulls, you can balance the account. Keep your combat units full. A company without riflemen is just as useless as a tank without gasoline.

  (3) Hospitals<
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  Evacuation or field hospitals must be kept close to the front.

  Visit the wounded personally.

  b. Decorations

  Decorations are for the purpose of raising the fighting value of troops; therefore they must be awarded promptly. Have a definite officer on your staff educated in writing citations and see that they get through.

  c. Discipline

  There is only one kind of discipline—perfect discipline. If you do not enforce and maintain discipline, you are potential murderers. You must set the example.

  V. Rumors

  Reports based on information secured through reconnaissance conducted after dark should be viewed with skepticism. The same thing applies to reports from walking wounded and stragglers. These latter seek to justify themselves by painting alarming pictures.

  It is risky and usually impossible to move reserves during darkness on every call for help. Units cannot be wholly destroyed in a night attack. They must stick. Launch your counter-attack after daylight and subsequent to adequate reconnaissance and see that it is coordinated.

  VI. Condition

  High physical condition is vital to victory.

  There are more tired corps and division commanders than there are tired corps and divisions.

  Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Men in condition do not tire.

  VII. Courage

  DO NOT TAKE COUNSEL OF YOUR FEARS.

  /s/ G. S. Patton, Jr.

  G. S. Patton, Jr.

  Lt. General U.S. Army, Commanding

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Headquarters Third United States Army APO 403 U.S. Army

  3 April, 1944

  Subject: Letter of Instruction Number 2.

  To : Corps, Division, and Separate Unit Commanders.

  I. General

  1. This letter stresses those tactical and administrative usages which combat experience has taught myself and the officers who have served under me to consider vital.

  2. You will not simply mimeograph this and call it a day. You are responsible that these usages become habitual in your command.

  II. Discipline

  1. There is only one sort of discipline—perfect discipline. Men cannot have good battle discipline and poor administrative discipline.

  2. Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so engrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.

  3. The history of our invariably victorious armies demonstrates that we are the best soldiers in the world. This should make your men proud. This should make you

  proud. This should imbue your units with unconquerable self-confidence and pride in demonstrated ability.

  4. Discipline can only be obtained when all officers are so imbued with the sense of their awful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or to praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.

  5. Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice. They must be pre-eminent in courage, deportment, and dress.

  6. One of the primary purposes of discipline is to produce alertness. A man who is so lethargic that he fails to salute will fall an easy victim to the enemy.

  7. Combat experience has proven that ceremonies, such as formal guard mounts, formal retreat formations, and regular and supervised reveille formations, are a great help, and, in some cases, essential, to prepare men and officers for battle, to give them that perfect discipline, that smartness of appearance, that alertness without which battles cannot be won.

  8. In the Third Army, when troops are not in the actual combat zone nor engaged in tactical exercises, or range firing, etc., Corps and separate Division Commanders will see:

  a. That regular reveille formation be held, in attendance at which there will be a minimum of one officer per company, or similar unit, and in addition thereto, when practicable, a minimum of one field officer per regiment or separate battalion.

  b. That it shall be customary for all organizations to hold formal retreat under arms. Attendance, in addition to the prescribed enlisted men, shall be all officers of company grade. In the case of regiments and separate battalions, a minimum of one field officer.

  c. That in the case where music is available and it is practicable from a billeting standpoint, frequent regimental and battalion retreat parades and similar ceremonies will be held.

  d. That unit and organizational guard shall be performed strictly in accordance with FM 26-5.

  When music is available, formal guard mounts will be held frequently.

  e. That officers in formation wear uniform analogous to that worn by the enlisted men, and that all officers participate in all drills and marches at all times with their organizations or units. This includes marching to and from training areas and ranges.

  9. Officers are always on duty and their duty extends to every individual, junior to themselves, in the U.S. Army—not only to members of their own organization.

  10. Americans, with arms in their hands, are fools as well as cowards to surrender. If they fight on, they will conquer.

  11. Cases of misbehavior before the enemy will be brought before General Court Martial and tried under the 75th Article of War. It has been my experience that many Courts Martial are prone to view this most heinous offense, for which the punishment of death may be inflicted, in too lenient a manner. They should realize that the lives of troops are saved by punishment of the initial offenders. Cowardice is a disease and must be checked before it becomes epidemic.

  III. Tactical Usages

  1. General

  a. Combat Principles

  (1) There is no approved solution to any tactical situation.

  (2) There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum time.”

  (3) In battle, casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed to effective fire. Your own fire reduces the effectiveness and volume of the enemy’s fire, while rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure. A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood!

  (4) Battles are won by frightening the enemy.

  Fear is induced by inflicting death and wounds on him. Death and wounds are produced by fire. Fire from the rear is more deadly and three times more effective than fire from the front, but to get fire behind the enemy, you must hold him by frontal fire and move rapidly around his flank. Frontal attacks against prepared positions should be avoided if possible.

  (5) “Catch the enemy by the nose with fire and kick him in the pants with fire emplaced through movement.”

  (6) Hit hard soon; that is, with two battalions up in a regiment, or two divisions up in a corps, or two corps up in an army—the idea being to develop your maximum force at once before the enemy can develop his.

  (7) You can never be too strong. Get every man and gun you can secure, provided it does not unduly delay your attack. The German is the champion digger.

  (8) The larger the force and the more violence you use in the attack, whether it be men, tanks, or ammunition, the smaller will be your proportional losses.

  (9) Never yield ground. It is cheaper to hold what you have than to retake what you have lost. Never move troops to the rear for a rest or to re-form at night, and in the daytime only where absolutely necessary. Such moves may produce a panic.

  (10) Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk—see that they keep firing!

  b. Tactical Rules in Particular Subjects

  (1) Use roads to march on; fields to fight on. In France we will find roads mined or demolished in many places, certainly when we approach the enemy. When that happens, get off the roads and keep moving.

  But when the roads are available for use, you save time and effort
by staying on them until shot off.

  (2) Troops should not deploy into line until forced to do so by enemy fire.

  (3) When you are advancing in broken country against possible tank attacks and using the leapfrog method described in my Sicilian notes, be sure to keep the antiguns well up.

  (4) In mountain country secure the heights. This is best done by daylight reconnaissance followed by night attack of a platoon reinforced at dawn twilight.

  (5) In forcing a pass secure the heights first. There are always trails leading to the rear of hills. Remember that inviting avenues of approach are invariably defended, and an advance by such lanes, without securing the heights covering them, is suicidal.

  (6) The effect of mines is largely mental. Not over ten percent of our casualties come from them. When they are encountered, they must be passed through or around. There are not enough mines in the world to cover the whole country. It is cheaper to make a detour than to search; however, the Engineers should start clearing the straight road while the advance elements continue via the detour. See that all types of troops have mine detectors and know how to use them. You must—repeat—must get through!

  (7) Never permit a unit to dig in until the final objective is reached; then dig, wire, and mine.

  (8) Slit trenches in artillery will be placed within ten yards of the guns. They will not be placed under trees, as those induce air bursts. Camouflage nets must be rigged so that when they catch fire they can be immediately pulled off.

  (9) Take plenty of time to set up an attack.

  It takes at least two hours to prepare an infantry battalion to execute a properly co-ordinated attack. Shoving them in too soon produces useless losses.

  (10) In battle, small forces—platoons, companies, and even battalions—can do one of three things, go forward, halt, or run. If they halt or run, they will be an even easier target. Therefore, they must go forward. When caught under fire, particularly of artillery, advance out of it; never retreat from it. Artillery very seldom shortens its range.

  (11) Security detachments must get out farther, and must stay out at night. One radio car, well off the road, or where it can see the road, or where a member of the crew can observe the road from close quarters, can send information which will be vital.