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Patton to Troops 1944 (must read) warning: graphic language
Great speeches Timeline ^ | May 17, 1944 | Genl George Patton

Posted on 01/01/2005 9:01:45 AM PST by beebuster2000

NOTE : This speech contains language that may be considered offensive. User discretion is advised.

General George S. Patton, Jr., in characteristic unexpurgated detail, gives his troops a final pep-talk prior to the invasion of Normandy, Enniskillen Manor Grounds, England, May 17, 1944.

Men, this stuff some sources sling around about America wanting to stay out of the war and not wanting to fight is a lot of baloney! Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise a coward; Americans play to win. That's why America has never lost and never will lose a war.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you, right here today, would be killed in a major battle.

Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all of us. And every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes, but they fight just the same, or get the hell slammed out of them.

The real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared. Some get over their fright in a minute, under fire; others take an hour; for some it takes days; but a real man will never let the fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty, to his country and to his manhood.

All through your Army careers, you've been bitching about what you call "chicken-shit drills." That, like everything else in the Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is instant obedience to orders and to create and maintain constant alertness! This must be

_______________

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you, right here today, [will] be killed in a major battle.

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bred into every soldier. A man must be alert all the time if he expects to stay alive. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him with a sock full of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on his job--but they are German graves, because we caught the bastards asleep!

An Army is a team, lives, sleeps, fights, and eats as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of 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! Every single man in the Army plays a vital role. Every man has his job to do and must do it. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of a shell overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? What if every man thought, "They won't miss me, just one in millions?" Where in Hell would we be now? Where would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be?

No, thank God, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job, serves the whole. Ordnance men supply and maintain the guns and vast machinery of this war, to keep us rolling. Quartermasters bring up clothes and food, for where we're going, there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the guy who boils the water to keep us from getting the G.I. shits!

Remember, men, you don't know I'm here. No mention of that is to be made in any letters. The USA is supposed to be wondering what the hell has happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army, I'm not supposed even to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. I want them to look up and howl, "Ach, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!"

We want to get this thing over and get the hell out of here, and get at those purple-pissin' Japs!!! The shortest road home is through Berlin and Tokyo! We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by showing the enemy we have more guts than they have or ever will have!

There's one great thing you men can say when it's all over and you're home once more. You can thank God that twenty years from now, when you're sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the war, you won't have to shift him to the other knee, cough, and say, "I shoveled shit in Louisiana."


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: georgespatton; godsgravesglyphs; kerrynopatton; patton; speech; truehero
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To: The Drowning Witch
I can only imagine what Patton would do if he had to deal with today's Washington press corps.....

The press corp of WWII hated Patton. They cost him his command after he slapped a slacker for saying he was too scared to fight. They cost Patton his command in Germany after World War II was over.

Drew Pearson, was a leftist sexually challenged columnist who hated George Patton. He was the media star they a used to take down George Patton after his great victories in Africa and Sicily.

The main stream media took down Patton again after Germany was defeated. The second time they got him for using former Nazis to run Germany after WWII and for not sucking up to Stalin and his Communist buddies.

A WWII correspondent who never missed a chance to trash Patton in his reports was a young CBS War Correspondent named Andy Rooney. You may have seen him on Sixty Minutes a time or two. He was as big and as stupid an a$$ in world war II as he is today.

41 posted on 01/01/2005 6:31:51 PM PST by Common Tator
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To: Common Tator

GRANDFATHER-

COL.GEORGE S.PATTON,I
22ND VIRGINIA INFANTRY REGIMENT,CSA
KIA,WINCHESTER,VA. 1864


42 posted on 01/01/2005 7:33:36 PM PST by hillyes
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To: beebuster2000
And if you couple this speech by Patton with the speech from the same website by Charles Lindbergh on Apr. 23, 1941, you will see that most DemonRats are saying similar things today about the war in Iraq. There were panzies then, and there are panzies today. I do indeed thank God that George Patton wasnt a panzy...
43 posted on 01/01/2005 7:48:30 PM PST by Vanman
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To: beebuster2000

Patton - great man and leader of men.

I enjoy the film often and some might be interested in the blooper in that:


http://www.storypundit.com/archives/002198.html


44 posted on 01/01/2005 7:48:38 PM PST by eleni121 (Xronia polla! 4 more years and then 4 more again.)
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To: beebuster2000

A wonderful tribute to General Patton here as well. Includes many of his quotes.

http://www.pattonhq.com/unknown/chap13.html


45 posted on 01/01/2005 7:55:17 PM PST by eleni121 (Xronia polla! 4 more years and then 4 more again.)
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To: pickemuphere

Sorry for the month-later reply here, but I had to point something out...

Rumsfeld's "you go to war with the army you have" fits in quite nicely with Patton's entire idea of war--go now, not later. Attack now, not later. "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week." While "the army you have" isn't inspiring, it wasn't meant to be--it was a response to a question from an already-inspired soldier who was coached by a journalist.


46 posted on 02/02/2005 4:31:22 PM PST by Terpfen (New Democrat Party motto: les enfant terribles)
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47 posted on 06/03/2009 5:42:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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