From: ihc53 (ihc53@bellsouth.net)
Date: Wed Dec 21 2005 - 04:59:05 PST
Rest in Peace General....
***MV Content****
The Army has decided to keep the Patton Museum at Ft. Knox.
IHC
Everette wrote:
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jul 18 2006 - 21:37:14 PDT
Although the Armour Center is moving to Ft. Benning, the
Patton Musuem will not be going with them!
>
> December 21
>
> 1945 "Old Blood and Guts" dies
>
> On this day, General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. 3rd Army,
> dies from injuries suffered not in battle but in a freak car accident.
> He was 60 years old.
> Descended from a long line of military men, Patton graduated from the
> West Point Military Academy in 1909. He represented the United States in
> the 1912 Olympics-as the first American participant in the pentathlon.
> He did not win a medal. He went on to serve in the Tank Corps during
> World War I, an experience that made Patton a dedicated proponent of
> tank warfare.
> During World War II, as commander of the U.S. 7th Army, he captured
> Palermo, Sicily, in 1943 by just such means. Patton's audacity became
> evident in 1944, when, during the Battle of the Bulge, he employed an
> unorthodox strategy that involved a 90-degree pivoting move of his 3rd
> Army forces, enabling him to speedily relieve the besieged Allied
> defenders of Bastogne, Belgium.
> Along the way, Patton's mouth proved as dangerous to his career as the
> Germans. When he berated and slapped a hospitalized soldier diagnosed
> with "shell shock," but whom Patton accused of "malingering," the press
> turned on him, and pressure was applied to cut him down to size. He
> might have found himself enjoying early retirement had not General
> Dwight Eisenhower and General George Marshall intervened on his behalf.
> After several months of inactivity, he was put back to work.
> And work he did-at the Battle of the Bulge, during which Patton once
> again succeeded in employing a complex and quick-witted strategy,
> turning the German thrust into Bastogne into an Allied counterthrust,
> driving the Germans east across the Rhine. In March 1945, Patton's army
> swept through southern Germany into Czechoslovakia-which he was stopped
> from capturing by the Allies, out of respect for the Soviets' postwar
> political plans for Eastern Europe.
> Patton had many gifts, but diplomacy was not one of them. After the war,
> while stationed in Germany, he criticized the process of denazification,
> the removal of former Nazi Party members from positions of political,
> administrative, and governmental power. His impolitic press statements
> questioning the policy caused Eisenhower to remove him as U.S. commander
> in Bavaria. He was transferred to the 15th Army Group, but in December
> of 1945 he suffered a broken neck in a car accident and died less than
> two weeks later.
>
> Everette
>
> In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to
> give me light and strength.
>
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