John Patton I Would Do It Again

1. Patton was an Olympic athlete.

As a 26-year-quondam Army cavalry officer, Patton was selected to compete in the kickoff-ever Olympic modern pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm. Of the 42 competitors, he finished in fifth place, although he might have medaled if not for a controversy in the pistol-shooting upshot. While the judges believed Patton missed the target with i of his shots, he argued that he was and so fine a marksman that one of his bullets actually traveled through a bullet hole he had already fabricated. Patton was also selected to the 1916 Olympic team, but the Games were cancelled due to World War I.

2. He believed in reincarnation.

Patton claimed he had seen combat many times before in previous lives, including as a Roman legionnaire and as role of the 14th-century army of John the Blind of Bohemia. Before the 1943 invasion of Sicily, British General Harold Alexander told Patton, "You lot know, George, you would have fabricated a great marshal for Napoleon if you had lived in the 19th century." Patton replied, "But I did." The general believed that after he died he would return to once again atomic number 82 armies into battle.

3. He was forced to repeat his showtime twelvemonth at West Point.

Patton struggled academically during his initial year at the U.S. Military machine University and was required to repeat his first year after failing mathematics. The plebe began working with a tutor and redoubled his efforts to receive adequate grades the residual of his tenure at Due west Bespeak, eventually graduating 46th in his class of 103 cadets.

4. Patton first saw combat and gained fame chasing Pancho Villa.

In response to a deadly 1916 raid past Pancho Villa in Columbus, New Mexico, President Woodrow Wilson ordered American troops across the Mexican border to capture or impale the Mexican revolutionary. Patton served every bit aide-de-camp to the mission'south commander, General John J. Pershing, and participated in the starting time motorized attack in the history of American warfare on May 14, 1916, in which Villa's second-in-command and two of his guards were killed. Patton garnered headlines past ordering the iii corpses strapped like trophy animals to the hoods of his unit of measurement'south automobiles before driving back to base.

5. He carried a pair of pistols with ivory handles.

Patton fired a new ivory-handled Filly .45 in the deadly Mexican shootout, just after the battle he decided to carry a second ivory-handled handgun for added firepower. The flamboyant pistols independent his hand-carved initials and became his trademarks.

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half-dozen. He earned a Purple Centre in World War I.

While personally leading an attack on High german machine gun positions as part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on September 26, 1918, Patton was struck past a round that tore into his left thigh. Badly wounded, he continued to command the battle for the next hr from a shell hole and insisted on filing his written report at division headquarters earlier beingness taken to the evacuation infirmary. When the Purple Heart was reinstituted in 1932, Patton was awarded the honor for his combat wounds.

vii. Patton played a pivotal function in the eviction of the Bonus Marchers.

On July 28, 1932, Patton received orders from U.S. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur to disperse the Globe War I veterans seeking cash payments for their veterans' bonus certificates who had occupied Washington, D.C., for ii months. Charging down Pennsylvania Artery and through the streets of the national upper-case letter, Patton led 600 cavalry troops on horseback who fired tear gas into the "Bonus Marchers," trampled noncombatant observers including Connecticut Senator Hiram Bingham and trounce protestors with the flats of their swords.

8. He was used equally a decoy in the pb-upwardly to D-Twenty-four hours.

Full general Dwight Eisenhower believed Patton also undisciplined to lead the Centrolineal invasion of Normandy, particularly after the impulsive Patton slapped two crush-shocked soldiers nether his command in an Italian field hospital in Baronial 1943. Nazi armed services leaders, all the same, considered him the Allies' best commander and expected he would atomic number 82 a cross-channel invasion. As part of the elaborate disinformation entrada leading up to D-Day, Patton was placed in charge of a phantom army, complete with plywood shipping and inflatable safety tanks, in southeast England to brand it announced he would strike at the channel'due south narrowest point at Pas de Calais, French republic. Fifty-fifty weeks later D-Day, the Germans connected to amass troops at Pas de Calais expecting that Patton would withal come aground at that place.

9. His grandfather was mayor of Los Angeles.

Patton'due south maternal grandfather, Benjamin Davis Wilson, was a powerful southern California landowner who became the 2d elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1851. He also served as a county clerk, a canton supervisor and a land senator. Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains is named in his honor.

x. He designed his own sword.

Patton was one of the top swordsmen at West Point and among the foremost fencers in the United States. He redesigned the Army's saber combat doctrine for the cavalry by favoring thrusting attacks over slashing maneuvers and designed the Model 1913 Cavalry Saber, a new directly-blade weapon designed for thrusting that became known as the "Patton sword."

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-george-patton

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