\n\n\n\n\nPatton\u2019s Speech to the Third Army, June 5th, 1944
\nGentlemen, be seated,
\nMen, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That\u2019s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
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You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he\u2019s not, he\u2019s a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he\u2019s scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call \u2018this chicken-shit drilling.\u2019 That is all for a purpose\u2014to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier. I don\u2019t give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit. There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job\u2014but they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.
An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don\u2019t know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. And we have the best team\u2014we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we\u2019re going up against.
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don\u2019t ever let up. Don\u2019t ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn\u2019t like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, \u2018Hell, they won\u2019t miss me, just one man in thousands.\u2019 What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don\u2019t say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn\u2019t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don\u2019t want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we\u2019ll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, \u2018Fixing the wire, sir.\u2019 \u2018Isn\u2019t it a little unhealthy up there right now?\u2019 I asked. \u2018Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.\u2019 I asked, ‘Don\u2019t those planes strafing the road bother you?\u2019 And he answered, 'No sir, but you sure as hell do.\u2019 Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.
And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Gab\u00e8s. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old American guts. These were not combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.
Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can\u2019t win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Japs. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. So keep moving. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don\u2019t dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We\u2019ll win this war, but we\u2019ll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we\u2019ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We\u2019re not just going to shoot the bastards, we\u2019re going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We\u2019re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
Some of you men are wondering whether or not you\u2019ll chicken out under fire. Don\u2019t worry about it. I can assure you that you\u2019ll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it\u2019s not dirt, it\u2019s the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you\u2019ll know what to do.
I don\u2019t want any messages saying 'I\u2019m holding my position.\u2019 We\u2019re not holding a goddamned thing. We\u2019re advancing constantly and we\u2019re not interested in holding anything except the enemy\u2019s balls. We\u2019re going to hold him by his balls and we\u2019re going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We\u2019re going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
There will be some complaints that we\u2019re pushing our people too hard. I don\u2019t give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. My men don\u2019t surrender. I don\u2019t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That\u2019s not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another German. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That\u2019s a man for you!
Don\u2019t forget, you don\u2019t know I\u2019m here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I\u2019m not supposed to be commanding this army. I\u2019m not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl 'Ach! It\u2019s the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!\u2019
Then there\u2019s one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you\u2019re sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, 'What did you do in the great World War Two?\u2019 You won\u2019t have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.\u2019 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!\u2019
All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I\u2019ll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That\u2019s all.\u201cAll the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don\u2019t ever let up. Don\u2019t ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn\u2019t like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won\u2019t miss me, just one man in thousands.\u2019 What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don\u2019t say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn\u2019t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.\u201d
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