,,,,,, ,,,,,, soldier that i

believe is true because i've got proof to back it up who said that was all a lie. that patton, on his own, decided to move his headquarters closer to the front. this guy's name was bob cone. and he was a jeep driver for the scout car for patton's entourage. and they said they all drove out into the desert near el guitar. they had all these wires coming out. they thought, boy, they were the perfect target. when they see antennas, they know it's somebody in charge. they set up near a ridge. patton orders this guy to go up the ridge and see if there's any germans. he starts to go up the ridge and enemy artillery starts falling. he comes running back. he goes, you i had not, they already saw you. he said no, i got up top. he said you're lying. about a half hour later a bunch of germans fly over, they let loose. this guy cohen gets in the scout car, fires, knocks one of them down. but they're bombed the whole time. and he says one of the bombs drops real close to jensen.

and patton is so shook up, they have to help him into the car. and this guy put him in another car and brought him back to bury him. and, you know, patton and bradley and the assistant's stories are all similar, but all have a new differences. and i picked that up quickly. and patton wrote a letter to his wife saying dick jensen was killed and i didn't have the heart to tell his parents why. there's another clue. then i came to realize -- i didn't know this when i wrote the book -- patton has a bunch of photographs of jensen on the day he died. he was 50 miles from headquarters and his watch stopped athe 10:15 when he was killed. so how did patton take this guy's picture if he was at the front and patton was back at his headquarters on the day he died. and this picture here is al stiller, one of his assistants, standing in the shell hole of the german bomb. and this is the trench that dick jensen was in when he was

killed. so it is my belief that patton was -- and what patton said was if eisenhower finds out i was this close to the enemy, he's going to send me home. and so cone who had shot down a german plane and patton said i'm going to give you a silver star for that, never gets a medal. the whole incident is forgotten about. and it is said that he was killed at benson force. and patton said, i sent him to benson force because they were short on staff officers. and bradley's assistant who went with him the next day after this incident talks about how he went to the rear and was buying flowers and candy. and i'm thinking, well, if they went to the front because they were separate on officers, why is this guy goofing around. that's the story of captain jensen. so from north africa, patton goes to sicily. lands in the southern part of it. it's very popular in the movie that he wanted to land at palermo on the top and british

land in the south and cut it off. but i was reading a british raf officer who was in charge of the code breaking. and he said they briefed patton about two months beforehand and said the germans have concentrated their troops in palermo. it's unwise to land there. and patton said you're right. it wasn't the great controversy that the movie makes. so here he is landing in gella is the way they pronounce it in southern sicily. and he said that this is not a posed photograph. i don't know if i believe him. but he said he could hear the machine gunfire in the distance and artillery. that's how close the front was. and this african-american soldier, it's not george meeks, he said this guy had gone awol from his unit because he knew patton in his younger years and wanted to serve with him in sicily. patton's 7th army starts pushing up the spine of sicily and is headed towards palermo. this is a dead german. patton in his photo albums called this a good german. and he took so many pictures of dead germans that he started writing "gg" underneath for good

german. he said germans would boony tbop the dead bodies. i think the american soldiers stopped risking anything at that point. this is a very interesting photograph that patton took. a lot of the stuff he takes is of ancient ruins or of the troops of different things. but look at this. the top here is an arrow. and at the bottom right about there is another arrow. and what he did is he looked at this german tank and said, you know what? the germans are adding more armor to the front and in front of the machine gun. we need to do the same. so he took these pictures, put the arrows on it and mailed this to aberdeen proving grounds in maryland and said guys, we need to do this. so not only is photography sort of a hobby of his, it has a practical aspect to it. this is his headquarters in palermo. it was previously occupied by some of mussolini's troops and

commanders. and patton said he slept on a stack of three mattresses on the bedroom, ate off saxony silverware and all the maids and butlers gave him the fascist salute. he loved that. with taking palermo, he splits sicily in half. the british and general montgomery are having trouble moving north. he cut the island in half. know he's going to start heading east to massena to cut it off. very experienced soldiers realize he's along a coast with one road. if they can keep blocking the road, they can stop him or slow him down. so to get around this, he starts landing amphibious attacks behind the lines. this is the commander of both of those amphibious attacks. and it's very famous in the movie that this shows patton sort of at its worst, pushing everybody, firing people to get to the beaches. and this was a reporter with this unit. and they make it out like, you

though, patton was very heartless, and it was a stupid idea because it didn't work. but if you study the military records of it, what actually happened is they landed at night. they just missed him at santa goda. he said let's try this again and see if we can get a lot of germans between the forces. so they landed brolo at night. they climb this gigantic hill. i have no idea how they did this and set up artillery guns and started firing down on the germans as the germans are retreating in front of them. then the navy comes in with its big guns and start radioing fire from the navy. this is the effective part. the big naval guns. and they basically have the germans perfectly hammer and anvil. and in the middle of all this, the radio breaks down. they can't contact the navy. and the naval commander gets a little worried. here we're standing out here, the germans could be attacking us any second, and the navy leaves. the german as tack these guys up the hill. they just retreat further north. and the germans realize it's more in their interest to escape

east than to attack this group. they basically leave them alone. but patton eventually does break through. the sort of popular image was that this was an ill-fated attack. it was ill-advised. but in reality, if they had brought two radios, it may have been sort of another great patton victory. patton said he loved the attitude of his 7th army troops. he said they would be sitting by dead german bodies eating their lunch. here's a photograph. this guy is taking a picture of patton taking a picture of him. and you have a group of italian prisoners here on the side of the road. and he takes a great deal of photographs in sicily. at this point, he feels more at ease with command, you know, in orth africa, it was all thrust upon him. he's becoming more and moore comfortab more comfortable. early on he takes photographs of vehicles way off the battlefield. as he gets more comfortable as a commander, he's taking photographs closer and closer to combat. unfortunately, with his victory comes a visit to a hospital where he slaps two soldiers on

two separate occasions. i did find an account by an american who was wounded in one of the tents. and he said they all saw his vehicle pull up. and they were all sitting in there for about 15 minutes. and then a nurse ran into their wing and said my god, general patton just slapped a soldier. they all saw patton leaving and they all applauded. they said to them it was like he was slapping america in the face saying there's a war going on. wake up. there's one angle. every medic i've talked to from world war ii said it was a terrible thing. that they didn't understand posttraumatic stress. they didn't understand what combat would do to people. and what he did was an awful, awful, you are forgivable thing. there are definitely two sides to the slapping incident. so for that, patton loses command. he's still commander of 7th army, but they take all the units away and either bring them to england to fight for normandy or into italy. on his birthday, november 11th, veterans day, in sicily he visits a cemetery for the 2nd

armored division. here he is with his chief of staff. and he says one year ago, you know, i took morocco. and today i command a little more than my self-respect. now, this next series of photographs, this is three of my favorites. while he's in exile, he travels around the mediterranean visiting different places. and he goes over to italy to visit jeffrey keys who was a commander underneath him in sicily. and it's in january. so that's jeffrey keys, and that's patton. so jeffrey keys gives patton a tour of the battlefront. and they're walking along a ridge when patton turns to his right. and he sees down into this field artillery guns firing. now, i have tried and tried, i can't find the guns, but you can definitely see smoke coming from them. and so he turns to his right. takes this photograph. and he says, this photograph saved my life. because if i had not stopped to take this picture, i would have continued walking.

and a german artillery barrage lands 30 feet in front of him. he says a whole bunch of shrapnel came at him, one at his shoe, another guy with his entourage gets hit in the helmet. but he said that this photograph prevented him from being -- from standing right here where the german shells landed. and he said this is a sign from god that i am destined for greater things and i've got to keep the faith. don't get depressed. a few days later he gets notification from eisenhower to come up to england. he's going to be part of the next great offensive. while in england, he buys a dog named punch. and i really hope that's a little rabbit, not a rat. and bunch had been owned by an raf pilot who actually took him on a raid over berlin. patton renames him willie. the popular thing is that he named him after william the conqueror. he didn't. there was a popular song back in the '20s called "wee willie wompa," and that's what he really named him for. the other stereotype is he was a coward. i have not found any physical evidence of this in all the

documents. the only thing i found is that during an artillery barrage, he ducked underneath a chair. i think that's more of a sign of intelligence other than being a coward. patton would actually write letters to -- well, how do i phrase this -- willie would actually write letters to the pattons' other dog back in massachusetts. patton would translate. and beatrice would get these letters and read them to the grandkids. you know, i guess by 1940s standards, they were fine. but today, you know, he said, you know, hey, i've got a whole bunch of new nicknames for myself. jap killer, you know. and hun destroyer and all these really politically uncorrect terms that were really funny. and that letter was sent during the battle of the bulge. and i thought, how great that is, here he is fighting probably the greatest land war, you know, in american history, and he's, you know, writing letters from one dog to another at night, you know, in his free time. patton's headquarters up near a place called nutsford in northern england.

and they open a cantina so to speak for the soldiers to meet the locals and things like that. and it's in here that patton goes to give a speech. and according to popular accounts, he says that because the americans and the british and the russians are destined to rule the world, the post-war world, the better we get to know each other, the better for everything. one of the newspapers that publishes this speech fails to put the word "russians" in there. it causes a firestorm back at home. and not even because of failing to mention the russians, it's because here's a general talking politics. and he has no place talking about this. eisenhower's furious. he's basically thinking about firing patton. martin blummenson, the original patton historian, he was working on something before he died. i have not been able to verify it. but it was his belief because whenever patton spoke in england to the troops, that famous speech he gives, he would always start and end it by saying, i was not here. you did not see me. because patton was undercover in "operation fortitude" making the

germans think they were going to invade somewhere else and patton was going to lead it. when he would go around giving these talks, he'd say you didn't see me. i wasn't here. because it was supposed to be you shou under the rug. here he speaks off the record and it makes it into the newspapers. he's furious. you're supposed to keep a low profile and you and your big mouth, you're out there talking. blummenson started doing research in what he believed, his theory was that the british sas sas, the secret service, wanted to out patton because they knew he was there and might lead the invasion. how ironic would it be that the british are making the publicity, and eisenhower not realizing it and almost relieving patton of command. in the movie, he does that speech "outside" in front of a large red brick building. that's actually a furniture store. they say they do get a lot of american visitors asking about it. the actual building is about four blocks down. and it's now a law office. you can't go in.

they say they've gutted the whole thing so you really couldn't find the place where he gives this speech. i also thought it was odd that the speech that almost takes him down, he puts a picture of it in his photo albums. here's my worst moment, everybody. so eventually that, you know, controversy blows over. he makes it onto the continent a month later. spends a lot of his time in an apple orchard where he's set up a headquarters just waiting for 3rd army to be activated. he's waiting for the armored divisions to come in. he's going to take over on august 1st but spends a lot of his time planning and preparing for it. i think he did lose some weight between his time in exile and this because he does look a bit skinny and he does get a bit of a belly by '45. while he's waiting to take command, omar bradley orders an operation called cobra where american bombers are going to come and do what's called a tactical bombing instead of bombing factories in germany, they're going to bomb the line between the germans and the

americans and just wipe out the germans so we can sort of break out of this stalemate we're in. more than 100 americans are killed when the bombs fall short. but right after it, bradley and patton go airborne to go check out, you know, the effects. and so patton is taking a photograph of bradley from his plane. at one time patton did go airborne and crossed over onto german lines. you know, he freaked out to the pilot. he said we can never do that. eisenhower would relieve me immediately. but patton was a licensed pilot. and he would go up in airplanes. when 3rd army wasand,e would fl plane above them, the troops, so they would be able to look up and identify, okay, that's an american plane. we don't fire on that one. he takes a number of photographs of the troops down below. august 1st, 3rd army becomes operational. and it basically is going to sweep across the southern part of northern france, barrelling through a lot of nonresistance. and it's going to end up capturing, making a bag of germans what's called the fillet pocket.

so here is patton, eisenhower, bradley and then courtney hodges because when the invasion of normandy begins, omar bradley is commander of what's called 1st army. and the plan is once there are enough troops in normandy, then they would have a third army. and hodges would take over 1st from bradley. bradley would be promoted to army group commander. so you can sort of tell where we are in the war because hodges is here and he's got the 1st army patch on his shoulder. patton races to an area of france called lorraine. this is where he's going to run out of fuel. and here he is waiting for eisenhower to come to his headquarters. he's all spit and polished and everything. and that's his 20th corps commander walker who's going to later fight in korea and our good friend willie down here. several reasons. patton races across france and suddenly he slows and stops. and to him, it's because eisenhower likes montgomery more and is giving him all the fuel. that's not the fact. everybody's running out of fuel.

they're outrunning their supply lines. it's really a combination of not just that but also the fact that the terrain which has been basically flat is now going to turn hilly and forestry, more rivers, harder to cross. the rains start coming in, turning the road to mud. and lastly, the army kind of splits as it breaks out of normandy because bradley and eisenhower really want to open up the ports and get more supplies in. so they dedicate a lot of the air power to attacking these isolated pockets along the french coast. so patton, as he moves across france, by the time he gets into the lorraine area, has a lot less air support going along with the bad terrain and a lack of fuel. he crosses the mozel river in september and climbs into this trench with the troops in the mud. and he said that across the river, he watched three american tanks take on two germans. they knocked the two german tanks out. he said the two german tanks were on fire. and he said you could tell when the germans and the americans were firing because of the different rates of fire of the

machine guns. so this is how close to the battle patton gets. he can actually hear the rates of machine gunfire between the americans and the enemy. with the army kind of stopped, he does spend a lot of time going behind the line, making sure the men are getting the proper equipment, food, trying to cover all the details. there's not a day -- his morning started around 5:00 a.m. with a briefing. and they said that the briefing -- everyone was so nervous because patton was so cognizant of what was going on that if you made mistakes, he'd know it. and he would spend part of the morning at his headquarters planning the day's events and then head into the field. what he would do is take his command car and sometimes stand up in the front and drive to the front because he always wanted the men to see him driving forward. and then when he finished examining the front, he would have a plane either take him back or he would, you know, put a blanket over him for the ride back behind like he did not want the men to see him retreating, ever. this i thought was a great example of patton's humor. george marshall comes to visit

him in october. and someone took this photograph. i think patton kind of improved on it. november 11th, patton's birthday. 1944. he said he got up where the bodies were still warm. 3rd army was having a hard time crossing the mozel river. they created three bridges. they all get washed out. this is more weather than the germans, you know, stopping him. but they do cross at a place, and patton -- you know, this is his shadow right here taking this photograph. and the germans attacked leading off with an sp gun. and the american 90th infantry division stops him. and the officer in charge, they rolled up a cannon to a street intersection and knocked this thing off the road. and the one time i was there, my assistant tour guide is a retired one had of star general named raymond bell whose father fought right here and rolled up that gun. and there's a plaque to his dad. and while we were talking about it, i had my book with me.

and i said, you know, ray, is it possible that this is the gun your dad knocked out? and so we walked out of the town and walked up the street and turned to the left, and the terrain looked almost identical. can't prove it, but kind of cool. this is patton during the bulge. he actually went blind one day because he spent so much time outside in the cold and the snow was blowing left and right that his eyes swelled up. and so he did have to spend one day off the battlefield. it's a very famous scene on december 19th. the germans attack on the 16th. and eisenhower calls a meeting on the 19th. and before patton goes, he reviews three plans with his troops. and i just found this out. they were called cent, dime and nickel. and cent was the drive to bastone. dime was to knock it out at the nose. and nickel was to cut it off at the base. and so when the meeting was over, he said, well, what will happen is i'll go to this meeting and all i have to do is pick up the phone and say dime,

cent or nickel and the whole thing will start happening. he has this meeting at 10:00 a.m., goes to the meeting at 12:00. and about 12:30 makes the call. and his staff had been working on all three plans the whole time. and that's what started the entire 3rd army turn north to relieve bastone. eisenhower had just gotten word that he was going to get a fifth star, you know, the day before. and so they go to this meeting and he kind of goes around the chairs and says what's going on. we'll give you great details. he says i can turn north and 7 # ho 72 hours i can start attacking north. and eisenhower says don't be fascist. don't kid with me. patton says no, i've got three divisions ready to go. eisenhower says that's good. what else you got? i can turn more three divisions and attack north. he said what about your southern

flank? i already talked to the commander. he'll take it over. this is patton's glory moment, you know, with eisenhower. when the whole meeting is over, eisenhower turns to him and says george, every time i get promoted, i get attacked. and patton says yeah, and every time you get attacked, i bail you out. and when the meeting was over with, and patton begins his charge north into bastone, now, this is patton -- patton switched headquarters after that meeting. he did not go back to his regular one. eisenhower said go to luxembourg city, coordinate with bradley. this is now an old folks home. and there is a little black plaque right about the door that tells you this is patton's headquarters during the battle of the bulge. i talked to one officer that told me all the floors were hardwood, and there was nothing more terrifying than hearing this click, click, click on the wooden floors because it meant willie, the dog, was coming down the hall which meant patton was coming down the hall to chew you

out for something. everybody lived in terror of the approach. patton took this photograph on january 22nd. and you can see his finger is in front of the lens. i originally thought that was his thumb, but the people at the patton museum let me told the camera. he said that he took a number of pictures of dead this day. and his only regret was that he didn't have his color camera because this dead german's face was such an interesting claret pale color. something that would give you recoil and is relishing would give you an idea where his head's at. this picture took me a while to understand because it's obviously taken during the summer and not wartime. they're not really wearing helmets but helmet liners which you put on underneath your helmet. patton sent this to his bif and said during the battle of the bulge, i crossed a bridge similar to this stepping over dead bodies along the way in the river sur. i don't know why he would use --

because usually he would send pictures of what he's doing. obviously this is summertime and probably the united states. well, a humor had broken out about patton that he had actually swum the sur river under fire. and patton never mentions it in his diaries or letters or anything. but i found three eyewitness accounts that said the 4th infantry division was trying to cross the sur river, i think it was -- the town was like betindoff. the engineers came to him and said sir, there's too much enemy fire. we can't begin building a bridge across. and they said he took off his guns, his coat, he stripped down, swam the river, swam back and said, okay, what's your excuse now? 64 years old, george is, when he does this. talking to 20 and 19-year-olds. i actually brought this information to the director of the museum close by in a place called dekirk. and he said january 22nd, there would have been ice floes in the

river, kevin. he said i can't believe he did it because he never spoke about it, and i showed him the three eyewitness accounts. one was an a.p. news article that beatrice had cut out when it came out. the guy said he witnessed it. he later -- bob hope found this out and said they were going to start putting ice cubes in the west point pool to start training the cadets to swim in the cold. the second was a letter left at patton's grave that someone had opened and published in a paper, and beatrice found that and put it in a scrapbook. and then the third account i found at the library of congress under a veterans history program where they interviewed vets. and all of the stories were similar. something that was a bit of a rumor is now fact. i think the reason he did this, because he didn't want his wife to worry, so he sends her a picture. nice calm, we could have been fishing, you know. patton gets into germany, and he says, this is the worst destruction he saw driving along the road here. i think it was four miles of destroyed vehicles. and what happened was, elements of the 12th armored division

basically came up on a german retreating column and just turned their guns sideways and basically blew them off the road. patton said by the time he got there, there were no dead bodies, but unfortunately there were a lot of dead horses which made him upset. i believe this was the commander of his air forces right here. his name escapes me right now, but he's taking a nice photo. oh, the fun one. this is patton crossing the rhine river. he's about to do something here. but he has his assistant take a clean photograph that he can send to his wife. and in about five seconds, he's going to relieve himself in the river. i know this for a fact. it's in my book. because the photograph of him actually doing it, this photograph was taken by charles codman, his assistant. so what happened was codman snaps this picture and then turns to walk away when someone behind codman snaps a picture. you see patton doing his thing

and codman holding the camera. i know the exact sequence were taken. he called it the pause that refreshes. when he gets to the other side of the river, he gets out of his vehicle and kind of -- i don't know if he pretends to fall down or if he really falls down, but he falls down. and he comes up with two handfuls of dirt and says, hence william of orange. and what he's doing there is kind of reenacting what william of orange did when he took a ship and went to invade england. he went to get out of his boat and fell and came up with two handfuls of sand and said thus i have taken england with both hands. so i think that is nicely reflective of patton's appreciation of history. i had mentioned john waters before who had been captured. john spends the rest of the war at a p.o.w. camp on march 23rd after crossing the rhine, patton realizes that the 3rd army is right in line where the p.o.w. camp where they believe he is, but 3rd army gets orders to move northeast. and he realizes he's not going to be able toli