George S. Patton

Thus in a flash one cavalry general sized up George S. Patton - as Pershing had already done - as a young officer after his own heart who would go far.

It would be flattering to modern popular sentiment in the Western World, the USSR and China to be able to record that the future commander of America's most glamorous army was born amidst the dregs of society and raised himself by his own efforts on sheer merit to high command. This is not possible. George S. Patton Jr was in fact born, on Wednesday 11 November 1885, in affluent circumstances to a wealthy Californian rancher and lawyer who owned the 1,000-acre Wilson-Patton ranch in San Marino, just outside Pasadena, and whose family originally came from Scotland as Jacobite refugees. Neither was he, like Wellington and Montgomery, deprived of his ration of mother love and feminine affection in his tender years. In fact he may well have had an overdose of the latter from his aunt. Slick comment in accordance with current concepts of psychology and pediatrics is thus ruled out. Neither was he like Churchill condemned to the society of servants. The boy in fact adored his father who on his part was only too happy to give up his own time to teach him the basic male accomplishments: how to ride, swim, shoot, hunt and fish. Although living in California, the elder Patton had remained at heart a Virginian landowner. His own father had been killed in action as a colonel at the battle of Cedar Creek. Seven uncles had served as officers in the Confederate Army.

Owing to his poor performance in mathematics this took five years instead of the normal four. From start to finish however he was top in military discipline and deportment. Military historians being students by nature have tended to depict their heroes as endowed with the intellectual aptitudes they think they themselves possess. Unfortunately the theory that great commanders must be high-level intellectuals is not borne out by the records of Patton at West Point and Montgomery and Alexander at Sandhurst. Their academic performance in fact never rose above the level of mediocrity. The secret of success in high command in World War Two would therefore appear to lie elsewhere.

All three however had this in common: they were ardent players of violent games. George S. Patton in particular drove himself hard to excel in individual sports - swimming, riding, pistol shooting, cross-country running and track events. He had less interest in team games: it is doubtful whether he ever visualised himself as a 100 per cent cooperative member of a team. In 1909 he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the 15th Cavalry. He was over six feet in height, well developed, self-confident and good to look at. A year later he married Beatrice Ayer, the daughter of a rich and influential industrialist and financier.

There is a striking similarity in their relationship to that between Mountbatten and his wife Edwina. No woman other than his wife ever cut any ice with George S. Patton. By virtue of their wealth and influential connections the two from the first were able to move socially in more affluent and sophisticated circles than most of their contemporaries in the United States Army. They entertained lavishly and maintained a fine stable of polo ponies and racehorses. In 1912 George S. Patton almost inevitably was appointed ADC to General Leonard Wood, the Chief of Staff and thus gained an early insight into the inner workings of the Army hierarchy. It was at this time that he made a friend of Secretary of War Stimson, with whom he used regularly to go riding in the early morning.

On return to United States he was posted to the Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas and was soon selected for a second-year advanced equitation course. France and her Army's' long history had caught George S. Patton's imagination.