General George Patton on June 5th, 1944

"Be seated."

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting
out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit.

Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the
sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons.
First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones.
Second, you are here for your own self-respect, because you would not
want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men
and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were
kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner,
the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American
football players.

Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser.
Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I
wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's
why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very
idea of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today
would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time,
comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he
says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the
same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them
watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero
is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over
their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For
some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death
overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate
manhood.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can
indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

Americans pride themselves on being "He Men" and they ARE "He Men."
Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably
more so. Because they are not supermen!

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you
call "chicken shit drilling." That, like everything else in this Army,
has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be
bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not
always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You
are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he
expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German
son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you
to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked
graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the
job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep
before they did!

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This
individual heroic stuff is pure horseshit. The bilious bastards who
write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any
more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We
have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the
best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor
sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do!

My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under
my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit,
you can still fight back. That's not just bullshit either. The kind of
man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya,
who, with a Nazi Kraut poking a Luger against his chest, jerked off
his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out
of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out
and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming
off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung.
There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either.
Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up.
Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to
do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain.

What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the
whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong
into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, 'Hell, they won't miss
me, just one man in thousands.' But, what if every man thought that
way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our
loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like?

No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his
job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is
important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed
to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The
Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we
are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P.
has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from
getting the 'G.I. Shits.'

Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy
fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They
should be killed off like rats! If not, they will go home after this
war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men.
Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a
telegraph pole in the midst of a furious firefight in Tunisia. I
stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like
that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a
little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the
Goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing
the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell
do!' Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who
devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant
his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.

And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those
drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those
son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their
course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got
through on good old American guts!

Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men
weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did
it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team.
Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All
of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.

Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that
fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know
what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this
Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first
bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans! Someday I want to see
them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ,
it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch
Patton.' We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up
this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against
the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the
Goddamned Marines get all of the credit!

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way
to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it! The
quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way
home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am
personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.
Just like I'd shoot a snake!

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a
German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell
with just sitting back and taking it! My men don't dig foxholes. I
don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving.
And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war,
but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that
we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going
to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living
Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're
going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket!

War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or
they will spill yours! Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts.
When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your
face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what
once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!

I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position."
We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that! We are
advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto
anything, except the enemy's balls! We are going to twist his balls
and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of
operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether
we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go
through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing
our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such
complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat
will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we
will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed.

Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after
this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that
twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your
grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World
War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say,
'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.'

No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your
Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a
Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!'

"That is all."