Patton Was Not a Tanker Mike Sparks

(Editor’s note: GEN George Patton’s leadership is viewed here through the lens of a movie. While we recognize this is an unusual approach, it vividly points out Patton’s enduring legacy. The movie this article is based on is Patton, a two-disc collector’sedition www.amazon.com/Patton-Two-Disc-Collectors-George-Scott/dp/B000EHSVS2/ref=pd_cp_d_0. The DVD includes an introduction by screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola; commentary by Coppola; “History Through the Lens: Patton – a Rebel Revisited” documentary; “Patton’s Ghost Corps” documentary; “The Making of Patton” documentary; production-still gallery accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith’s complete musical score; and behind-the-scenes still gallery accompanied by audio essay on the historical Patton trailer.) In 1970 my World War II combat-veteran father took me to see Patton starring George C. Scott. I know now from the two-disc collector’sedition DVD release that Robert Patton, GEN George Patton’s grandson – roughly my age – was also in a movie theater with his dad, Vietnam legend COL George S. Patton IV, having values passed down from father to son. In his case, grandfather to son to grandson. I did not know what was happening then, all I wanted to see was battle “action.” In fact, there is very little action in Patton. Patton is the most important American military movie to date and the most dangerous if viewed wrong. When it premiered, Americans demoralized by failure in closed-terrain Vietnam wanted to latch onto an authority figure – a hero. They wanted someone to show them the way to victory. Patton is a reminder of “what right looks like” so we embraced it all – his vanity and outward appearances – without realizing the actual ulterior motivations. Not long after, we ditched our blood-earned experiences in Vietnam in favor of reliving World War II at the Fulda Gap by building our own supertanks to duel the Soviets in Europe’s open terrain – Patton: the Cold War Sequel coming soon to World War III in the European country nearest you. Yet the actual way to victory was sitting in the theater watching his father win World War II. COL Patton’s armored cavalry regiment had found a formula to win even in the closed terrain of Vietnam, but it involved using lighter tanks to maneuver – not duel other tanks. Instead, a generation of Army leaders chose to recreate the Army depicted in the El Guettar battle scene – and not the actual content of the film, which shows how Patton used maneuver, not tank duels, to defeat the Germans. Win wars, don’t fight for the sake of ego. The damnest thing is that Scott, who is playing Patton, looks straight into the camera and tells the audience – like it was an assembled group of Soldiers – in the first lines of the movie: “The object in war is to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Patton is telling us right then and there to stop with the narcissism of our own deaths and casualties as badges of honor – what matters in war is victory, and being alive to enjoy it, so let’s get on with it. Do not be impressed or rely on battle to self- and peer-validate; be objective and professional, and get the results. War is not a duel. Patton is telling us right there to not obsess with tank dueling. Win battles. He then tells us how to do it – with maneuver. “We are going to hold them by the nose, then kick them in the pants.” Patton is saying that one maneuver axis will hold the enemy’s attention so another – a cavalry that is more mobile than the main body – will go around and defeat the enemy by maneuver-terrain-leverage; not slamming into the enemy and dueling him. This is the whole thrust (pardon the pun) of the movie. There is not much battle action in Patton because Patton is winning by maneuver. This is the secret of his confidence and the true meaning of the movie. Gain the MTL and the enemy will be defeated because he is off-balance and in ano-win situation – exactly what we refused to do in Vietnam by not stopping the closed-terrain infiltration and holding them by the nose. Instead, we went all over Vietnam (and later Cambodia) trying to kick the enemy in the pants without first holding him in place. In this special-edition DVD, 25th Infantry Division combat veteran and director Oliver Stone said the movie Patton convinced President Richard Nixon to invade Cambodia and then leave – resulting in the destabilization of that country into communist genocide. The real GEN Patton said always get a winning concept of operations. Throughout the movie, once you decipher that “it is the maneuver, stupid” – not battle – you will see Patton surrounded by others who simply do not get it. They see the only ways to win are by slamming into the enemy and suffering casualties by combat. They are the GEN Bernard Montgomerys of the British army who want to build up supplies and slam into the enemy as the only way forward. When planning to seize the island of Sicily at the southern end of Italy, Montgomery wanted to land in the south and drive north with Patton on his left – “two big blue arrows” massed in one direction – but the enemy clearly saw and reacted against this. Patton wanted to land elsewhere and surprise the enemy at Palermo, at the island’s north, and head east to cut off the German retreat as Monty pushed up. The cautious and tactically naive Eisenhower – even though he had just seen the Kasserine Pass consequences (dead Americans in the desert after Rommel attacked them in the movie’s second scene) when Operation Torch landings missed taking Tunisia – opted for the conservative approach and ordered Patton to land to Monty’s left. Had Patton landed where he wanted, the Germans would have been trapped on Sicily and not lived to hold us off for two more bloody years in the mountains on Italy’s boot. Patton made do. He detached apart of his force and drove north to Palermo, where he wanted to start from in the beginning, then headed east by a series of small amphibious landings to unhinge the Germans tactically. MG Lucian King Truscott of 3rd Infantry Division stormed into Patton’s headquarters and demanded a 24- hour delay so his men could rest before the amphibious landings. Patton refused and explained that the key was to be audacious and exploit the enemy’s unpreparedness. Patton said that in the long run it would save lives, but this fell on deaf ears because it was misinterpreted as excuses so he could gain personal-ego benefit over rival Montgomery by reaching Messina first. Coppola smeared Patton’s sound military art by citing his vanity and narcissism. The DVD special-edition documentary reveals that Patton’s overbearing behavior – “a gentleman must be able to curse non-stop for three minutes without repeating himself” – was a deliberate showmanship tactic of visible personality to buck up citizen-Soldiers with little military drive. Karl Malden’s GEN Omar Bradley did an eloquent job of explaining how the Soldier had no dreams of military glory and just wanted to survive. However, in the anti-war vein in which the movie is written, Scott’s Patton’s true argument that “bold maneuvers will save lives and shorten the war” is lost. One walks away thinking that being the nice-guy Bradley and just slugging it out – as told by the bureaucracy – is somehow best serving the Soldier when really it is not. However, there was some very interesting character development in Bradley later in the film. After D-Day the Allies were stuck in the hedgerow country of France. Monty couldn’t take the city of Caen, which was defended by the weight of German panzers. Af-Patton Was Not a Tanker by Mike Sparks 9 ter realizing Patton was right all along, Bradley finally offered Operation Cobra, where Monty held the Germans’ attention and out came Patton’s Third Army in behind them. Hold them by the nose, then kick them in the pants. Bradley had changed. He represented the change the audience was supposed to realize, but more often than not, unsophisticated Americans only see the outward mannerisms of Patton and assume it means that the formula for success is being an overbearing donkey and slamming into the enemy. They fail to decode the real message of the movie – and Patton’s life – which is maneuver. Patton defends against the Afrika Corps. The opening-scene speech also has Patton saying that we are not going to defend anything, but keep on moving until we get to Berlin and collapse the Nazi government and end the war. Note this is a fragment from a speech to troops in France on the same land mass as Germany, not North Africa. Many use this speech to protest developing any kind of defensive excellence in America’s army; it also contradicts Patton’swords that we need to hold the enemy. In fact, the very first battle scene has Patton in defense at El Guettar. Oops. It’s clearly a flaw in the film that screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola – who has no military background – unintentionally created by assembling a montage of Patton speech quotes from different times and places to be a representative example. This has made the false impression that Patton was against ever being in defense that has had severe and fatal repercussions in U. S. military practice and thought. Americans – impatient and lazy by nature – want a quick victory by an offensive drive on a Berlin or a Baghdad to collapse a nation-state war foe. Afterwards, however, we have to hold what we have for it to be of any value, be it a Germany, an Iraq or an Afghanistan. If we are not willing to hold the enemy – regardless if he is outside or inside – by fortified lines, walls or security fences at the border, or we will end up chasing the devil all over the bush trying to kick him in the pants. The Mannerheim line saved Finland from the Soviet army; the Morice line gave the French a chance for victory in Algeria and keeps Israel safe today. A sensor-security line – backed by quick-reaction forces and composed of Patton’s son’s armored cavalry regiment-like light armor – is what we need to secure Vietnams by holding the enemy by the nose and kicking him in the pants. Coppola is fired – then wins an Academy Award. Another interesting feature of the Patton special-edition DVD is Coppola tells us in an interview that he was fired from the film and was about to be fired from The Godfather when the film based on his script won several academy awards for best picture, best actor and – you guessed it – best screen play. He received vindication! Coppola kindly tells young people not to take to heart rejection by a bureaucracy for what you know is right. Stick to your guns. Stick to what you know is true. He wanted to show all the sides he could of Patton – and he did a brilliant job since its layers are thick and we are still decoding it today. It’s not his fault we fail to properly decode the film. Coppola says he wanted to show Patton as a military rebel to appeal to the “droves” at the time. Just what is he rebelling against? Bureaucracies – not just military ones – want to homogenize everyone to conform and be like everyone else. Yet this only creates a main body, a herd that can only do so much since it offers no other direction. Patton in his writings warned constantly against being a “yes-man” in military bureaucracies, yet his admonitions were ignored. Nobody wants to die, and when confronted with death daily in war, the natural tendency is to bunch up, herd together and try to force the issue with numbers alone. Quantity, not quality. Stick the nose to the grindstone. Yet, with precision-guided munitions increasingly dominating land warfare, there is no safety in large numbers. Each target presents risks for destruction, for real, just as the first battle in Patton – except every tank is destroyed unless protected by a smokescreen and/or countermeasures. We are not helping the Soldier by sending him to his death if he is going in a predictable direction in increasingly wheeled trucks that are stuck to roads/trails where the enemy awaits with ever-bigger land mines and missiles. We must be able to “do a Patton” and land by sea or air at an unexpected place and time, and drive cross-country into the enemy with a cavalry in lighter tanks – like the variants of the M113 Gavin that COL Patton’s ACR used in Vietnam. Cavalry must think dozens of miles ahead – not just the grid square or two in front of a walking infantryman. The infantry or “dragoons” we need must ride swiftly, stealthily and with armor protection in their own light tanks, not be walking bunched up by their tanks, or they will destroyed as “a waste of fine infantry,” as Scott’s Patton laments in the film. Fast-forward to Lebanon in 2006 and see “fine Israeli Defense Force infantry” chopped up following tanks on foot straight into the dug-in enemy. Hezbollah read the IDF’s “playbook” and was ready and waiting. The “Ghost Corps” documentary on the DVD set illustrates what happens when infantry lacks tanks. It further demands that our current tank-less light-infantry brigade combat teams have their own high-technology M113 Gavins to ensure they always have their own tank fire support and armored transport. If we want to win wars – and not suffer stalemates in places like Caen, Beirut, Mogadishu, Iraq and Afghanistan – we must not duel our enemies, be they in other tanks or on foot. The object in war is to make the other guy die; if he resists you, outmaneuver him by using the terrain and situation against him so his goals are defeated. That is the message of Patton. Patton was not a tanker; he was a maneuverist. Mike Sparks is a former U. S. Marine Corps and Army infantry noncommissioned officer and officer. He currently directs the non-profit 1st Tactical Studies Group (Airborne). He edits the electronic publication, Air-Mech-Strike: Asymmetric Maneuver Warfare for the 21st Century: combatreform.org/AIR_MECH_STRIKE. Mr. Sparks’ previous assignments include special project officer for Air-Mech-Strike Study Group, which restored the last surviving YCH-47A Chinook helicopter; platoon leader for a U. S. Army Reserve unit mobilized for Operation Enduring Freedom/Iraqi Freedom; and operations officer for airborne headquarters and training units. His military education includes Infantry Officer Advanced Course Phase I, U. S. Army and Israeli airborne schools, Combat LifeSaver Course, Retention NCO/ Career Counselor Course, USMC Officer Basic Course, Infantry Officer course, Platoon Leader Course Junior and Senior (Officer Candidate School), Enlisted Reserve Communications, Fleet Security Force Cadre Weapons Instructor Course and Infantryman 0311 military-occupation specialty school. He holds a bachelor’s of science degree in history from Liberty University. He is the author of James Bond is Real: the Untold Story of the Political-Military Threats Ian Fleming Warned Us About (jamesbondisforreal.com). Acronym Quick-Scan ACR – armored cavalry regiment DVD – digital versatile disc IDF – Israeli Defense Force MTL – maneuver-terrain-leverage NCO – noncommissioned officer USMC – U. S. Marine Corps 10