Every goddam day

   The tall, granite-faced General, immaculately turned out from the tip of his two-starred helmet to his polished, handmade cavalry boots, rode in aboard the landing craft towards the Moroccan beaches. Suddenly he spotted a small boat laden with ammunition, stranded on a sandbank. The helmsman was struggling to wrench it free while the crew looked on helplessly from the shore. Vaulting over the side of his craft, the General waded furiously through waste-deep water to the beached boat, put his shoulder to it and yelled to the startled crew: ‘Come over here, all of you! On the double, goddammit! Lift and push!  Now push, goddammit, push!’

   Thus did General George Smith Patton jr., In his own words “the best damn butt-kicker in the whole United States Army,” burst onto the stage of World War II. He was to walk off with almost every scene he played in it, despite wrangles over star billing with other prima donnas of the Allied high command – and he certainly wrote himself some of the best lines.

   “I don’t want a lot of staff officers around me who get waffle-tailed from sitting at desks,” he snarled as soon as he landed in North Africa. When Supreme Allied Headquarters in Europe ordered him to bypass Trier as it would take at least four division to capture the city, Patton who had already taken it with two, cabled tersely: “what do you want me to do? Give it back?”

   Patton who had created the US Tank Corps  in World War I – at first he was the only American soldier who could drive one – had an invariably prescription for success in tank battles: “Hold the enemy by the nose and kick him in the ass.“ That meant, pin him down with part of your force and send the rest around to cut him off behind. Naturally, Patton’s own tank was the most flamboyant ever seen with broad bands of red, white and blue around the turret.

   He got his name of “Old Blood and Guts” from a favourite pep-talk he delivered to recruits: “ War is a killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood or they’ll spell yours. Rip ‘em up the belly, or shoot ‘em in the guts.”. True to his philosophy, he designed a special cavalry sabre with extra-deep grooves for the blood.

   Patton, who came of a proud Confederate family, was a cavalryman of the old school,already 57 years of age when he stepped on that Moroccan beach in 1942. Just before America entered the first floor, he laid the foundations of the Patton legend in Mexico, in pursuit of the guerrilla chief Pancho Villa: he shot down the rebel’s bodyguard with an ivory-handled six-shooter in one hand and a regulation army automatic in the other. He was the best pistol shot in the cavalry and carried a weapon in a shoulder holster even when wearing white tie and tails.

   In battle, he wore a pair of ivory-handled revolvers, which became as much a Patton trademark as the big cigar jutting from his lips, the “steamboat trombone” mounted on his jeep which would be heard 8 miles away on a clear day and the superb appearance he  presented. He was always dressed as if for parade with his uniform sharply pressed,  although he invariably slept in it the night before a big attack.  Patton had an obsession about smartness: a particularly snappy salute was known as a ‘georgepatton’.

   Despite his celebrated profanity, Patton was a deeply religious man who prayed on his knees and carried a bible with him throughout the war. One day a group of clergyman visited his third Army headquarters and were surprised, knowing his blasphemous reputation, to see a  Bible on his desk. “General, do you read the Bible?“ asked one. “Every goddam day,“ replied Patton