HARD-FIGHTING AMERICAN COMMANDER IN TUNISIA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 106, 6 May 1943, Page 4

HARD-FIGHTING AMERICAN COMMANDER IN TUNISIA

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, April 24. For thirty years his ear has been tuned to the thunder of war. He is as much at home within the nerveshattering confines of a tank on the battlefield as he is on the back of a spirited pony on the polo ground or behind the mast of a schooner deadreckoning his way in the Pacific. Poetry as well as purple profanity rolls from his tongue with equal facility. According to his men, the nickname "Old Blood-and-Guts" is appropriate, but the wife of LieutenantGeneral George S. Patton, com-i mander of American troops on the Western Tunisian front, while she does not mind it, says she just wishes everyone "wouldn't make him so blood-and-gutsy." Mrs. Patton, who has seen her husband through three wars and has changed the family's home address 25 times in her 32 years of marriage, during a visit to her sister in Washington, had the headliner phrase of the general's career again brought into the open. The general, as Mrs. Patton describes him, is not all fire and purple profanity, as his admiring soldiers depict him. He likes to' sing in church at his home in California, and he knows the whole Anglican Protestant order of morning prayer by heart. He has written two books of poetry, which he hopes to have published after the war. He likes to sail a boat and play squash. He writes such interesting letters that his children call them "daddy's communiques." All the same, he has a reputation for being a hard-working, hard-fighting man. He leads his troops into action. His tank is always well up in front. This he calls his spaghetti theory of leading men into battle. Many commanders take charge of their forces by following, so they can see the formations spread out before them. "This is like trying to push a string of spaghetti; it won't work," says Patton. "It is much better if you pull. That is why I like to go into the first line of battle." Has What It Takes General Patton, now commander of American troops on the Western Tunisian front, has a belief that it takes "guts, not machines," to win wars. His men say he has plenty of what it takes. On a recent trip to the command post unit of frontline forces east of El Guettar, he rode through German artillery fire and was forced to dismount from his command car as shells blasted the road ahead of him. He finished his journey afoot, and, despite further shelling by German batteries, the general refused to hurry his pace. His spirit is expressed in his statement when his force invaded North Africa last November: "We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack again."

He has expressed a desire to meet Rommel in individual tank combat: "The two armies could watch. I'd be-in one tank, Rommel in another. I'd shoot at him. He'd shoot at me. If I killed him I'd be champ. If he killed me—well, he won't."

"That's like him," Mrs. Patton says. "He never liked to watch any athletic competition. He always wanted to be right in it. Even when he isn't champion, he likes to be in there." The general got interested in tanks in the first World War. He knows they are effective, yet, after training an American tank corps in the Californian desert last summer, he said: "We unquestionably have the best tanks in the world. But this talk that we are going to win the war because we have them is bunk.

You win wars with guts, not machines, although they are necessary." General Patton possesses one of the world's finest military libraries. He is extremely fond of poetry, especially Kipling and the historical ballads, and has memorised dozens of them. Incidentally, Mrs. Patton is the authoress of a historical novel, "Blood of the Sharks." Towering, Spare Figure General Patton, tough, towering and spare of figure, is 57. He grew up at San Gabriel in Southern California, but has lived since at army camps all over the U.S.A. His brief leaves have been spent usually at Green Meadows, the Patton's beautiful old farm house, built in 1710, at Hamilton, in Massachusetts. At West Point, Patton was a track star, and he broke the inter-collegiate record for the 220-yard dash. His favourite sports are riding, polo, skeet shooting and squash, but he is well-known also as a deep-sea game fisherman. He and Mrs. Patton are members of a club which has for its motto, "More sport and less fish." After the first World War General Patton attended advanced army schools and learned to fly. He formerly owned his own plane and often went up for a glimpse of his troops on manoeuvres. Several years ago, when he was ordered to Hawaii, he went in his own sailing boat, most of the way by dead reckoning, instead of going on a regular army transport. Mrs. Patton did the cooking. The Pattons own and sail together a 47-foot schooner called When and If, in which they, hope some day to sail around the world. Through the years, marked' by many changes and long separations, Mrs. Patton has developed a witty philosophy and drawn up a code of advice for other wives of men fighting overseas. "One of the hardest things women have to bear in wartime is waiting, she says. "I took the other two wars pretty hard," she adds, referring to the Mexican campaign and the first World War. "When the general, having been grievously wounded and left for dead, was decorated for extraordinary heroism on the field of battle, he was in fine shape, but I was not. I try to keep up on the latest details, but all I actually know is what 1 read in the papers. He writes interestingly and tells us nothing," Mrs. patton relates. A sample of "daddy's communiques : "If you ever go to the movies you might see me in high company. . ." This was his only reference to the Casablanca Roosevelt-Churchill cont'erence. Patton holds the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart and the Treasury Medal lor life-saving. ,