Educated at West Point, George S. Patton (1885-1945) began his military career leading cavalry troops against Mexican forces. He became the first officer assigned to the new U.S. Army Tank Corps during World War I. Promoted through the ranks over the next several decades, he reached the high point of his career during World War II, when he led the U.S. 7th Army in its invasion of Sicily and swept across northern France at the head of the 3rd Army in the summer of 1944. Late that same year, Patton’s forces played a crucial role in defeating the German counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge, after which he led them across the Rhine River and into Germany, capturing 10,000 miles of territory and liberating the country from the Nazi regime. Patton died in Germany in December 1945 of pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure following an automobile accident.

Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Patton was given command of the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions and organized a training center in the California desert. Patton headed to North Africa late in 1942 at the head of an American force; before the initial landings on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, he presented his troops with an expression of his now-legendary philosophy of battle: “We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack again.” Patton’s lust for battle would earn him the colorful nickname “Old Blood and Guts” among his troops, whom he ruled with an iron fist. With this formidable aggression and unrelenting discipline, the general put U.S. forces back on the offensive after a series of defeats and won the war’s first major American victory against Nazi-led troops in the Battle of El Guettar in March 1943.

A month later, Patton turned over his command in North Africa to Gen. Omar Bradley to prepare the U.S. 7th Army for its planned invasion of Sicily. The operation was a smashing success, but Patton’s reputation suffered immensely after an incident in an Italian field hospital in which he slapped a soldier suffering from shell shock and accused him of cowardice. He was forced to issue a public apology and earned a sharp reprimand from General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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