Posted on 06/30/2004 4:44:08 AM PDT by SLB
Very appropriate.
Great stories, all of you.
Farewell General Patton.
May your soul rest in peace, brother.
I wasn't in the Armor School until I went to the Advanced Course (74-75). By then, I believe he had been reassigned.
I do remember him at a couple of big dress blue functions at the O-Club. Story was that his wife was always at his side, partly, to ensure he would mind his manners. After all, he was a Cav Officer. During that period it was not uncommon to see red and white bumper stickers around the post that read, "If you ain't Cav - you ain't S---!"
A LESSON IN LEADERSHIP
In 1980, I was the Army Material Command (AMC) Logistics Assistance Representative to the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany. Around the spring of that year, about thirty AMC staffers in theater, including Field Maintenance Technicians from our commodity commands, were called down to a meeting at Nellingen barracks to meet and hear from a EUCOM Brigadier who was getting ready to take over a slot at Headquarters AMC in Alexandria, Va.
His name was George S. Patton III, namesake son of one of America’s most famous WWII generals. BG Patton greeted us all, talked about the important work we were doing to support the readiness of our forces, and proceeded to tell a “logistics” story about his days as a young lieutenant.
He was commanding a tank during an exercise, when his sergeant tapped his boot and said “Sir, the engine oil light has come on. We need to shut down.” Patton replied with an expletive and directed that they proceed. It wasn’t too long before the vehicle came to a grinding halt with a burned out engine. Patton’s company commander was a young captain named Creighten Abrams, also a name with some familiarity today. Capt. Abrams directed that the cost of the engine be taken out of Patton’s salary, and it was many, many years of garnished pay before he reimbursed the Treasury for his mistake in judgment.
Now the morale of this story, according to the General, was that he learned that “he should always pay attention to what his NCOs tell him”.
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