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GEORGE S. PATTON PREPPING HIS THIRD
U.S. ARMY FOR D-DAY - 1944
All Real Men Like to Fight
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George S. Patton.
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Patton's D-Day speech.
It follows the full text transcript of
George S. Patton's All Real Men Like to Fight speech, delivered
in England - June 5, 1944.
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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, everyone
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. 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
bullshit 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, Goddamnit, 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
road 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. Some day 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 cocksuckers 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 Georgie Patton."
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