Louis,
Maybe its a topic for another thread entirely but I would be interested to hear your opinion on Patton.
Well, (a) begin with the information about his massacre of U.S. WWI veterans in that Shanty Town in Washington, D.C., (b) then go to the slapping of three (3) separate soldiers, one of whom had a head wound and was not merely suffering from battle fatigue (not that the ones with battle fatigue should have been slapped) and his drawing his pistol on the third of these occasions and having to be restrained by an army doctor who reported the incident, (c) then his dispatch of an entire combat command of an armored division several miles behind enemy lines in an aborted attempt to free his son-in-law from a P.O.W camp, resulting in all but about a dozen men in the combat command being killed or captured and the loss of all vehicles, and (d) finish up with his decision at Tidesworth Downs, against all other advice of both American and British officers to hold off on production of the Pershing Tank (which finally reached armored divisions in February, 2005) but according to Belton Cooper, an Ordinance Officer from the 3rd (Spearhead) Armored Division, could have been ready for D-Day (Gary Binder has given a detailed explanation as to why this was not possible, which I don't buy - he is a very knowledgeable gentleman, but is a blind admirer of the Sherman) and certainly would have been in service prior to the Battle of the Bulge, thereby, in the opinion of Mr. Cooper and several other veterans of both the United States and Commonwealth forces, costing the lives of thousands of tankers because of his blind adherence to the doctrine that "tanks don't fight tanks, tank destroyers fight tanks" and his failure to comprehand that while heavier, because of wider tracks and much higher horsepower engine, the Pershing was faster and better off road than the Sherman. I was friendly with General Mike Kokinos, who served on Patton's staff, who told me most of the troops said of Patton "Old Blood and Guts . . . yeah, our blood, his guts." I put him on equal terms with Montgomery, whom I also see as a highly overrated media hound, both of whom put their quest for personal glory ahead of all other goals. In fact, I should mention that during their "race to Messina" in Sicily, Patton and Monty were so caught up in capturing the city itself, that they both took several actions which allowed the escape of thousands of German Troops to mainland Italy, thereby causing many many Allied deaths during the Italian Campaign.
