The
Speech Somewhere in England June 5th,
1944
"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, every one 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, and 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 bull shit 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 rode 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. Someday 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 cock suckers 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!'
"That
is all."