| Patton's
speech Patton's Speech to the 3rd Army |
Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944
"Be seated."
"Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America
wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of
bullshit.
Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans
love the sting and clash of battle.
You are here today for three reasons.
First, because you are here to defend your homes and your
loved ones.
Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would
not want to be anywhere else.
Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men
like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all
admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the
toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the
All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate
a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the
time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's
why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea
of losing is hateful to an American."
"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right
here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared.
Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in
his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are
cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the
hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as
scared as they are.
The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.
Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes
an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear
of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate
manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being
can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that
is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He
Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and
probably more so. They are not supermen."
"All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what
you call "chicken shit drilling". That, like everything
else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness.
Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a
man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you
wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must
be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not
alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak
up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit!"
"There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily,
all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German
graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did."
"An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team.
This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards
who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't
know any more about real fighting under fire than they know
about fucking!"
"We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit,
and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those
poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do."
"My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier
under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if
you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit
either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like
the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest,
jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and
busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun
and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was
coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There
was a real man!"
"All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every
single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever
think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must
do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck
driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead,
turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard
could say, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' But,
what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What
would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No,
Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every
man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the
vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and
machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring
up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of
a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one
who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'. Each
man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy
fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army.
They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home
after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed
more brave men.
Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of
brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top
of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped
and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He
answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right
about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.'
I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered,
'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a real man. A real
soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how
seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great
the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia.
Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over
those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their
course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through
on good old American guts.
Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours.
These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job
to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part
of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost.
All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable." "Don't
forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to
be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened
to me.
I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed
to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned
Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind
legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that
son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'.
We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up
this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against
the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before
the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit."
"Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The
quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who
started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go
home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And
when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper
hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"
"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all
day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea.
The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want
them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And
don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war,
but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans
that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have.
We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their
living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're
going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket."
"War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their
blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot
them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you
wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt
it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you,
you'll know what to do!"
"I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my
position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans
do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in
holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls.
We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of
him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep
on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through
the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like
shit through a tin horn!"
"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are
pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such
complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of
sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more
Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men
will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to
remember that."
"There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say
after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be
thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the
fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what
you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough,
shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled
shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and
say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch
named Georgie Patton!'"
"That is all."
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