George Patton IV Quotes

In each generation, as long as we are to remain a great nation, a group of us are somehow chosen, perhaps by the Almighty, to serve our country and our army and to serve the nation. Perhaps it is a small group, woefully inadequate, but it is there, and regardless of how we see it, regardless of the dwindling budget, the ancient outdated tanks of the 1920s and equipment, the congressional pressures to cut, cut, cut, that group will stay, and as the poet said: "Some for honor, and some for pay."

I was still in Europe at the time. Truman said he had the authority to relieve him and he did it. I have never made up my mind whether he was right or not, but I happened to be with a British unit the night we learned of MacArthur's dismissal. The British had a brigade in Korea at the time and the British officers in the Mess were very anti-MacArthur and celebrating his demise. I think MacArthur was a magnificent general, but he became more and more insulated from the world by his staff, many of whom had been with him since the Bataan days. I think that was part of the problem. He was not a young man at the time of Korea. I think, perhaps, he got too dependent on his staff officers and certain things happened which were not in MacArthur's best interest... Even after MacArthur was relieved by the President of the United States he had a tickertape parade in New York City and he made two great speeches, one to Congress and one about Duty, Honor, Country. The Duty, Honor, Country speech is one of the greatest ever made by a military man, and he made it without a note at the age of seventy-five. I believe Douglas MacArthur in 1945 could have come home and run for president and won going away. He was worshiped at the end of the war.

I was right in the middle of examinations when they called me up into the Tactical Department Office. Colonel Russel "Red" Reeder told me what had occurred. He went on to explain that my father had suffered a broken neck and was paralyzed. He also said that they were in communication and would keep me informed. I went back to my room and wrote a cable which I went on December 10, 1945. It said: All of us here are praying for your speedy recovery and return home. I know you can do it. Your affectionate son. George.

Prior to Ap Bac, the Kennedy administration had succeeded in preventing the American public from being more than vaguely conscious that the country was involved in a war in a place called Vietnam.

Ever since I was a child I never wanted to be anything else but a soldier.

The lessons of West Point are many, but the Academy has been the source of discipline, courage, and strength for many of its graduates in both peace and war since its founding in 1802.

I went home and stayed at Green Meadows. A couple of days later we all went up to Boston and the aircraft landed. I'll never forget it. My dad got out of the aircraft and he really looked super; he was fifty-nine years old at the time. With him in the aircraft were a couple of division commanders, including John W. O'Daniel, who had lost his son in the Normandy invasion and who later became my commanding general at the Infantry School at Fort Benning when I went through the basic officers course in 1946. Also aboard was Leon Johnson [USAF], who had been awarded the Medal of Honor for the Ploesti Raid, followed by eight or nine noncoms, not one of whom was wearing less than a Silver Star. All of this was followed by a ticker-tape parade through Boston. That evening my father spoke at the Shell on the Esplanade in Boston. We came home that night quite late and the next morning he came upstairs and woke me up and said we were going for breakfast. I ate breakfast with him and then I got on a train and went back to West Point. It was the last time I ever saw him.

Christ, I'm busy and there's a lot of people who wanna give me parties and I've got to go and say good-bye to the troops. And Jesus, we've got some great troops here, just great. I'm so kinda sad leaving them, just kinda sad. I was sittin' in the chopper today and I just bawled my goddamn head off, I just did. Funny... It isn't that I don't want to come home; I want to come home and I'm sick of this war a little bit. But leaving this unit is tough, and that's all there is to it.

While I was never over-romanced by the West Point graduate, at the same time, I always felt, by God, a West Pointer ought to be damn good.

It was one of those hot days and it got to be about a hundred degrees, and old Mike just got fed up and threw his books in the corner, and said, 'See ya later, Doc, I'm going to war.' Next thing we heard, he was in Italy with the 3rd Division, where he later was awarded the Medal of Honor and received a battlefield promotion.

I've got to say the soldiers in Vietnam that I was associated with in my three tours, who were pretty much front-line troops, were the best I'd ever seen on any battlefield. The soldiers were up against some incredibly difficult rules of engagement. I'll tell you a story. It's a real good story. We had some villages to run civic action and medical help in. My engineer company built a school. We were in the village of Binh My, and we got some lumber to rebuild a schoolhouse. We were about two thirds of the way completed. We had a teacher hired who was a cripple. My engineer company was bringing in the supplies in an armored personnel carrier along the little road up to the schoolhouse and they hit a mine. Luckily nobody was seriously injured. Well, the engineers went out there and fixed the armored personnel carrier, and then continued right on building the school. I went up to them and said, "You all are pretty complacent about this." And they said, "Sir, that's our job." There's no way of telling who laid that mine. But it was someone who didn't want us to build that school. They knew we used that little trail. But we just went right on.

I don't know how long this thing will last... We can still lose this war. That's a real clear statement. I wouldn't be a goddamned bit surprised but that we can still lose it. And then you can just write those casualties off and those ever-increasing names on those ever-increasing monuments... You can keep putting them on the monuments and giving out all this crap, all this posthumous DSCs and Purple Hearts... but there's no end to this thing.

My father came to visit and spent about half a day with me during a weekend. At the time, September 1942, he was in a highly classified planning program for the attack on Morocco at Casablanca. He was unable to tell me anything about the operation, except that this would be the last time he would see me before going overseas. He said that I was not to tell anybody that he was going overseas, but that he was leaving soon. Of course, in those days, you didn't have too many privileges as a fourth classman, and besides there were so damned many generals at West Point, and in the Army, that his appearance, as I recall, didn't cause any particular stir. At the time he was a major general and had recently been training in Indio, California.

A great transformation came over West Point. Many of the staff and faculty who had been there previously were non-combat experienced and had been called up from civilian life. Then in came the new superintendent, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who brought to the Department of Tactics a collection of the finest officers that I have ever known before, or since.

No officer I ever met, either above or below me in rank, could touch General Creighton W. Abrams. He was the best soldier I have ever known, including all the members of my family.