"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, every one 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, God damn it, 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 rode 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. Someday 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 George Patton!'
"That is all."
