dynamic of what's going on. eisenhower realizes his core commander at the time just doesn't have it anymore. he's got ar cave as a headquarters, about 40 miles behind the front lines. he's ineffective. when they send a tank commander, ernie harmon to check on the situation, he said, harmon, you're in charge, take it over for me. no initiative. eisenhower offers harmon the job of second corps. he said i can't take the job of a guy i think should be relieved. they next offer it to mark clark who says, i'm the commander of the fifth army. that would be a demotion, i couldn't do it. they hand it to patton, and he says, where do i sign. let me at them. it's at that point that eisenhower reminds him, listen, you're very important to this war effort, george. don't be going up to the front all the time. we need you to stay in your place and win this war.

i'm going to back track for just a second. right before this happens, patton was actually driving in the desert and he comes across this soldier who is his son-in-law, john waters. his oldest daughter married john waters in massachusetts. he was a battalion commander with the first armored division. when patton saw him, he said he had a bullet hole in his jacket and he looked tired, but good. if you notice, there are some spots here at the top. that's the actual glue patton was using to put it into the photo album. this is the last photograph taken of john waters before he is captured a few days later. he's going to spend the rest of the war in p.o.w. camps in germany. she said, i'm about to go see the waters family. they have pictures that they haven't even seen. they weren't aware this photograph existed. patton takes command of the

second corps. he tightens up the discipline really fast, within ten days he's got second corps moving forward again. just like in the movie. he was very big on the shoe polishing and everything like that. but man, he could be severe. he comes across a group of soldiers walking back from the front and one of them is wearing a british jacket because he said it was warmer than an american one. patton has his driver pull over, calls the guy over, says, take the jacket off. the guy takes it off. he said, give it to me. takes it and patton starts slapping him in the face back and forth with the jacket. he then throws the jacket at the guy. orders his lieutenant to give him a shovel and bury it. and he says if he doesn't have an american jacket on tomorrow, i'll demote him. and i'll be back tomorrow. now, every time he disciplines somebody, he would always finish by saying, i'll be back tomorrow. i don't know if he was. but i think it was the last seed he planted in their brains like,

yeah, we better do this. so his discipline was quite draconian. in a lot of ways, second corps needed this. they got a bloody nose from the germans. they were very demoralized. different commanders have different methods. this was patton's. he was proud of it. and a lot of the soldiers were proud of it. to be hit by patton is a badge of honor. he slaps a navy guy on the first day of operation torch. and the guy got back on the boat and bragged, i got hit by general patton. nobody's saying, this might lead somewhere bad, you know. this is accepted behavior by george s. patton. in the movie "patton," you might be familiar with the fact that his assistant, not charles, but dick jensen gets killed when a german bomb drops and the concussion kills, in both patton's letters, bradley's memoir, and bradley's assistant's letters, they all

say dick jensen had been ordered by patton to go off to something called ben sen force, and while he was there, the germans attacked, bradley was there, the assistant was there, they saw him get killed by the bomb that gets dropped. about a year ago, i found an account by a 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 cohn. he was a jeep driver for patton's entourage. they said they all drove out in the desert. they had all the wires coming from the cars. they said we're perfect targets. when they see antennas, they know it's somebody in charge. and they set up near a ridge, and patton orders this guy to go up the ridge and see if there's any germans. he starts to go up the ridge and the enemy artillery starts falling. he runs back. patton said, you idiot, you got on top of that ridge and the germans saw you, and he said,

no, i got halfway up there and they were already there. a half an hour later german bombers fire. they knock one of them down. but they're bombed the whole time. one of the bomb drops close to nick jensen and kills him. patton is so shook up, they have to help him get into his car. this guy cohn and bradley's assistant put jensen in another bacanto bury him. and patton and bradley and the assistant's stories are all very similar, but they all have a few differences in all of them. and patton wrote a letter to his wife saying, dick jensen was killed today and i didn't have the heart to tell his parents why. there's another clue. what i've come to realize, i didn't know this when i wrote the book, patton has a number of photographs of dick jensen. he says on the day he died. now, jensen was about 50 miles from patton's headquarters and his watch stopped at 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, standing in the shell hole of the german bomb. 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 that i was this close to the enemy, he's going to send me home. so cohn, who had shot down a german plane and patton said i'll give you a sill vary star for that, never gets a medal. the whole incident is forgotten about. and he said he was killed at bensen force. patton said i sent them to bensen force because they were short on officers. the next day after this incident he talks about how he went to the rear, and was buying flowers and candy. if he went to the front because they were desperate on officers, why is the guy back the next day

behind the lines goofing around. so that's the story of captain jensen. so from north africa patton goes to sicily. it's popular in the movie he wanted to have the british land in the south and cut it off. i was reaching of a british officer who talked about the code breaking. they briefed patton two months before hand and said they concentrated troops in po lermo. it wasn't the great controversy that the movie makes. so here he is landing in the gela, is the way they pronounce it over there, in southern sicily. he said this is not a posed photograph. i don't know if i believe him. he said he could hear the machine gunfire in the distance and artillery. that's how close to the front it was. this african-american soldier 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 seventh army at this point starts pushing up the spine of sicily, and is headed toward polermo. patton in his photo albums called this a good german. he started writing gg underneath for good german. he said the germans would booby trap the dead bodies, and the result was less german prisoners taken. 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. but this, look at this. the top here is an arrow, and at the bottom, right about there is another arrow. what he did is 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 it to the aberdeen proving grounds

in maryland and said, guys, we need to do this. not only is photography a hobby of his, it has a practical aspect to it. this is his headquarters in polermo. it was previously occupied by some of mouse lynny's troops and commanders. patton said he slept on a stack of three bedrooms in the bedroom, and all the maids and butlers gave him the fascist salute everywhere he went. he said he loved this. the british are having trouble pushing north. he's actually traveled north, cut the island in half. now he geeing to start heading east to mesina to cut it off. the germans know what they're doing and realize he's along the coast with one road. so to get around this, he started landing amphibious

attacks along the line. this is the commander of both of those amphibious attacks. in the movie, this shows patton at his worst, pushing everybody, firing people to get to the beaches. there was a reporter with this unit, and they make it out like patton was very heartless and it was a stupid idea, because it didn't work. but what actually happened is they landed at night. they just missed him at santa gada. patton said let's try this again and see if we can get a lot of germans between the two forces. they land at brolo at night. they climb up 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 were retreating in front of them. the navy comes in with its big guns and they start radioing in fire. they basically have the germans perfectly hammer and anvil. 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 with the german luftwaffe attacking at any second and the navy leaves. they just retreat further north. 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. but the sort of popular image was that this was an ill-fated attack, ill-advised. but in reality, if they had bought two radios, it may have been another great patton victory. patton said he loved the attitude of the seventh army troops. he said they would be sitting by dead german bodies eating their lunch. this guy's actually taking a picture of patton taking a picture of him. you have a group of italian prisoners on the side of the road. he takes a great deal of photographs in sicily. i think at this point he feels more at ease with command. he's becoming more and more

comfortable. early on he takes photographs of destroyed german 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 separate soldiers on two separate occasions. i came across an account of an american wounded in one of the tents and they said they all saw his vehicle pull up. they were all sitting in there for about 15 minutes, then a nurse ran into their wing and said, my god, general patton just slapped a soldier. and they all applauded. they said, to them, it was like he was slapping everyone in the face saying, there's a war going on, wake up. that's one angle of it. every medic i've talked to, from world war ii, said it was a terrible thing. they didn't understand post-traumatic stress, they didn't understand what combat would do to people. and what he did was an awful, awful unforgivable thing. so there are definitely two

sides to the slapping incidents. for that, patton loses command. he's still the commander of the seventh army, but they take all the units away, take him to england or italy. and so on his birthday, november 11th, veterans day, in sicily he visits a cemetery for a second armored division. his chief of staff is here, and he says one year ago, you know, i took morocco. and today i command a little more than my self-respect. eow, this next 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. it's in january. that's jeffrey keys and patton. jeffrey keys gives patton a tour of the battlefront. they're wacking along a ridge when patton turns to his right and he sees down into this field artillery guns firing. i've tried and tried and i can't find the guns. but you can definitely see smoke

coming from them. so he turns to his right, takes this photograph, and he says, this photograph saved my life. because had i not stopped to take this picture i would have continued walking and a german artillery barrage lands 30 feet in front of him. a whole bunch of shrapnel came at him. one hit him in the shoe. hit another one in the helmet. he said this photograph prevented him 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. i really hope that's a little rabbit, not a rat. and punch 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, or something like that. it's been said he was a coward. i've not found any evidence of this in any documents. the only thing found during an artillery barrage, willie ducked under a chair. and i think that's more a sign of intelligence 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. beatrice would get these letters and read them to the grandkids. and i guess by 1940s standards they were fine. but today, he said, you know, a, i've got a whole bunch of new nicknames for myself. jap killer, and hundred destroyer and all these politically incorrect terms. that letter was sent during the battle of the bulge. how great that is, fighting

probably the greatest land war in american history. and he's writing letters from one dog to another at night in his free time. patton's headquarters up near a place called nutsford in northern england, they open a can tina, 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 a lot of the popular accounts, he says because the americans and the british and 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 fewer uurious. eisenhower is thinking of firing

patton. i've not been able to verify this, that whenever patton spoke in england to the troops, he would always start it and end it saying, i was not here, you did not see me. because patton was undercover as part of something called operation fortitude. patton was going to lead this operation. he would go around giving me these talks, you didn't see me, i wasn't here. it was supposed to be under the rug. here he goes to speak off the record and it makes it into the newspapers. so eisenhower's doubly furious. he said you're supposed to keep a low profile. and you with your big mouth, you're out there talking. and the theory is that the british sas, the british secret service basically, decided to out patton. because they wanted the germans to know he was there and might lead the invasion. how ironic would it be that the british are pulling this thing, 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. and they do get a lot of american visitors asking about it. about four blocks down, it's now a law office. they've gutted the whole thing so you couldn't really find the place where he gives the speech. i thought it was odd that the speech that almost takes him down, he puts a picture of it in his photo albums. like, here's my worst moment, everybody. so eventually that controversy blows over. he makes it onto the continent a month later, spends a lot of his time in an apple orchard where he set up a headquarters, just waiting for third 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. he does look a bit skinny here

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 do what's called a tactical bombing, instead of bombing factories in germany, they'll bomb the line between germans and americans and wipe out the germans so we can break out of this stalemate we're in. a number of -- more than 100 americans are killed and the bombs fall short. but right after it, bradley and patton go airborne to go check out 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 and he freaked out to the pilot, he said, we can never do that. eisenhower will relieve me immediately. but patton was a licensed pilot. in fact, when third army was training in england, he would fly a fighter plane above the troops so they would be able to look up and identify, that is an american airplane and we don't fire on that one.

and he takes photographs of the troops down below. basically they're going to sweep across the southern part of northern france. barreling through a lot of nonresistance. it's going to end up making a bag of germans called a fillet pocket. here is patton, eisenhower, bradley and courtney hodges. when the invasion of normandy begins, omar bradley is commander of what's called first army. the plan is once there are enough troops in normandy, then they would have a third army. and hodges would take over first from bradley, bradley would be promoted to army group commander. you can sort of tell where we are in the war. because hodges is here. and he's got the first army patch on his shoulder. patton races to an area of france called lorraine close to the german border. this is where he'll run out of fuel. here he is waiting for eisenhower to come to his headquarters. he's all spit and polished and everything. walker is later going to fight

in korea, and good friend willie down here. several reasons, patton races across france and suddenly slows and stops. and to him, it's because eisenhower liked 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 a combination of not just that, but also the fact that the terrain, which has basically been flat is going to turn hilly, more rivers, harder to cross. the rains start coming in, turning the roads to mud. and lastly, the army kind of splits as it breaks out of normandy. 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. patton as he moves across france, he has a lot less air support going along with the bad terrain and 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, they -- he watched three american tanks take on two german. they knock the two german tanks out. he said they were on fire. he said you could tell when the germans and americans were firing because of the different rates of firing of the machine guns. this is how close to the battle patton gets. he can rate the machine gunfire between the americans and enemy. with the army stopped, he spends a lot of time going behind the line, making sure the men are getting proper equipment, food. trying to cover all the details. there's not a day -- his morning started around 5:00 a.m. with the briefing. everybody was so nervous because patton was so cognizant of what was going on, if you made mistakes, he would know it. then he would head into the field. he would take his command car and sometimes stand up in the front, and drive to the front. because he wanted the men seeing

him driving forward. when he finished examining the front he would have a plane take him back or put a blanket over him for the ride back. he did not want the men 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. and i think patton kind of improved on it. november 11th, patton's birthday, 1944, he said he got up when the bodies were still warm. third army was having a hard time crossing the mozel river. the bridges get washed out. this is more weather than the germans stopping him. but they do cross at one place, and patton -- this is his shadow right here taking this photograph. and the germans attacked, and leading off with an sp gun. and the american 90th infantry division stops him. and the officer in charge, they rolled up a cannon and knocked

this thing off the road. and one time when i was there, my assistant tour guide, retired one-star jenld named raymond ll 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 sort of 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. so he did have to spend one day off the battlefield. there's a famous scene on december 19th, the germans attack on the 16th. eisenhower calls a meeting at a place called verdun on the 19th. before patton goes, he reveals three plans with his troop thise

called cent diamond nickel. cent was to drive forward, diamond was to cut it off at the nose and nickel was to cut it off at the base. all i have to do is pick up the phone and say dime, cent or nickel and the whole thing starts happening. he goes to the meeting in verdun at 12:00. his staff had been working on it all the time. that's what started the entire third army turned north to relief baston. eisenhower had just gotten word he was going to get a fifth star. you know, the day before. and so they go to verdun for this meeting. he kind of goes around the chairs and says, okay, what's going on. and everybody says, as soon as this snow clears, we can send up reconnaissance aircraft and we'll give you great details. and when he gets to patton, he says, george, what can you do? he said i can turn north and in 72 hours i can turn north and

attacking north. eisenhower says, george, don't be fascist. don't kid with me. patton said, no, i've got three divisions ready to go. eisenhower goes, that's good. what else have you got? well, in another 48 i can attack north. what about your southern flank? i already talked to the southern flank, they'll take it over. this is patton's glory moment with eisenhower. and when the whole meeting is over, eisenhower turns to him and says, george, you know, every time i get promoted i get attacked. when he got his third story he got attacked. and patton said every time you get attacked i bail you out. with that, the verdun meeting was over with. patton begins his charge north into baston. patton switched headquarters after that meeting. eisenhower said go to luxembourg city, coordinate with bradley. this is now an old folks' home. there is a little black plaque right by the door that tells you, this is patton's headquarters during the entire battle of the bulge.

and i talked to one officer who told me that all the floors in there were hardwood. and there was nothing more terrifying than hearing this click, 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. so everybody lived in terror of willie's approach. patton took this photograph on january 22nd. you can see his finger is in front of the lens. i originally thought that was his thumb. but people at the patton museum let me hold 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 subject an interesting clarette pale color. something that would make us recoil, patton is relishing in. it kind of gives you an idea of where his head is at. this picture took me a while to understand. it's obviously taken in the summer. it's not taken during wartime. they're not really wearing helmets, they're wearing helmet

liners. patton sent this photograph to his wife and said, during the battle of the bulge, i crossed a bridge similar to this stepping over dead bodies along the way. this is the river sur. and i don't know why he would use -- usually he would send pictures of what he was doing. this is obviously summertime and probably in the united states. well, a rumor had broken out about patton that he had actually swum the sur river under fire. and patton never mentioned it in his diaries or letters or anything. but i found three eyewitness accounts that said the fourth infantry division was trying to cross the sur river, i think it was in a town like bettingston, or something like that, bettendove, and the engineer came to him and said, sir, there's too much enemy fire, we can't build a bridge across. they said he took off his guns, coat, 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 dekirk, he said january 22nd there would have been ice floes in the river, kevin. and he said, i can't believe he did it. but i showed him the three eyewitness accounts. one of them was a newspaper article, a.p. news article that beatrice had cut out when it came out. the guy said he witnessed it. he later said 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 somebody opened and published in a paper. and the third account i found at the library of congress in a veterans history program where they interviewed vets, all the stories were similar. so something that was a bit of a rumor is now fact. so i think the reason he did this, he didn't want his wife