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What Would Patton Do? |
by Thomas Lake
Staff Writer
The Salem News
Salem, Massachusetts
March 28, 2003
American and British armies blazing through Iraq toward Baghdad are on pace to become the fastest-moving war machine in the history of the world. Even faster than Gen. George S. Patton Jr., says military author Brian Sobel.
“Old Blood and Guts” wold be proud if he were alive to see the offensive, say four men who have written books about Patton, a onetime Hamilton resident.
Patton led his Third Army at breakneck pace through Europe in 1944 and 1945 in a campaign to liberate the continent from Nazi Germany.
“Speed will carry the day,” he used to day.
That strategy often left him with exposed supply lines — a problem U. S. forces encountered last Sunday when a supply convoy took a wrong turn and stumbled into an Iraqi ambush.
In Interviews with The Salem News, Patton biographers Sobel, Martin Blumenson, Carlo D’Este and Robert Patton (who is Patton’s grandson) drew numerous parallels between today’s war and the one Patton fought nearly six decades ago.
Some of their points:
- If the United states is able to outflank Iraqi forces with a larger force coming from the north or the west after drawing them out with a smaller initial assault, it will parallel a strategy Patton once used.
- “He used to talk about holding the enemy by the nose,” said Robert Patton, “and kicking him in the ass.”
- Just as U. S. forces on March 19 launched air assaults on Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad in an attempt to kill the dictator, Patton would have cut down Adolf Hitler if he had a chance.
- “Sure he would have tried to take him out,” said Blumenson, author of Patton: the Man Behind the Legend 1885-1945).
- Patton laid siege to several large cities in Europe, just as coalition forces are prepared to do in Baghdad. How would the general fight the Battle of Baghdad? “He would envelop it, and he would start strangling it,” said Sobel, who write The Fighting Pattons.
- In the spring of 1945, said Robert Patton (author of “The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family”) the Third Army tried to take a well-fortified city on the French-German border called Metz.
- Patton took criticism and his men took heavy casualties but he also took the city.
- Just as U. S. forces did last week, airplanes during Patton’s time dropped leaflets in enemy territory in an effort to persuade opposing forces to surrender. But Patton didn’t really think they would work.
His philosophy:
- “You have to go and kill the enemy.” said Blumenson.
- The United States is succeeding in part because their weapons are better. Patton won with a combination of intense research (he studied the German army for decades before World War II) and an uncanny ability to predict battlefield events.
- “He instinctively knew what needed to be done,” said D’Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War.
- Iraqi officials say raids on Baghdad have left scores of civilians dead and hundreds more injured. Patton regretted civilian casualties for more than one reason.
- “He said it was a waste of ammunition,” said Robert Patton.
- The U. S. decision to start the war earlier than anticipated so they could head off the oil well fires? Patton would have applauded it, said Robert Patton.
“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow,"” the general used to say.
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