Patton

Is it only me, or does the fact that both sides in the movie are using post-WW II American tanks* make that movie completely unwatchable?

*M47s and M48s - Pattons, actually. Which is guess is kind of ironic in itself.

I'll see your hedge and raise you a Sherman . . .



Bocage? I don't give a @#$#$ for your bocage . . .

(A month after the Normandy landings, Bradley's armies were slowed by the German defenses in the bocage or hedgerow area away from the beaches. The popular myth is that they were saved by the invention (and others like it) on the front of the tank seen here, which gave the tanks a way to get through the mounded dirt and foliage. Actually, the reality was considerably more complicated. But it's still a heck of a story.)

Madame Curie

Another random Bradley story:

One night in 1945, a British journalist visiting Bradley told of having had dinner with Madame Cure during the first war. The journalist -- Henry Wales, if the name means anything to you -- had been hired by MGM later to write a treatment based on the incident.

He never did, he told Bradley's staff. Radiation didn't have a pay off for the story. "Now with Pasteur, there was rabies and pasteurized milk," he said. "You see, there's a payoff. But with radium: You can see your watch at night. So what?"

Bradley, who knew the atomic bomb was on the way, said nothing.

Annotating books




I took Donald Burgett's Seven Roads to Hell out from the library the other day. (It's an excellent first-person account from the Battle of the Bulge; highly recommended.) I took it home and started to read. After a few pages I noticed someone had written in the book.

How could they do that, I thought, write in a library book? That's pretty terrible.

Then as I looked at the notes I realized that they were adding to the account - that some reader had put his own experiences in the margins and between the lines. (From what he saw and what he commented on, I'm guessing he served in CCB of the 10th Armored, probably as part of a scout unit.)

And instantly my feelings changed.

I do kind of wonder how I'd cite the notes, though.

Random Omar


One of the things that happens when you're working on a big-topic non-fiction book like a biography is that you end up with all sorts or random facts that just don't fit anywhere.

But they feel like they ought to.

Kinda.

Such as: on D Day-plus three or four, Bradley's headquarters was overrun by OSS members presumably looking for a helping hand. It became so chaotic that he eventually banned all OSS operations except for those run by one officer whom he had dealt with before.

Which means that problems between the army and the CIA basically date back to the CIA's inception. And that Bradley didn't find the OSS people directly useful. (There are some references to human spies in A Soldier's Story, but it's generally interpreted as a cover for Ultra, still top secret when the book was published.)

Can't find a good place for it in the bio, though.

Patton and Bradley - Bradley is on the right.


General controversies . . .

The controversy over the Rolling Stone story about General McChrystal happened to resonate with a bit from the book I've been working on about Omar Bradley.

Not about Bradley - it's hard to imagine a more discreet subject, military or otherwise - but Patton, whose career during the war intertwined with Bradley's.

In the months before D Day, Patton was brought into England to prepare to lead an army in Normandy under Bradley. (Until the invasion the chain of command had him under Eisenhower, not Bradley, which was probably a relief for Bradley.) Eisenhower had Patton on a fairly short leash, not just because of the infamous slapping incident, but because of an investigation into whether he had incited men to kill prisoners. (He hadn't.)

As part of his keep-up-the-morale-of-the-people-whose-homes-we're-overrunning duty, Patton accepted an invitation to speak at a small gathering of the British equivalent of a local USO. He gave a brief, off-the-cuff speech. For Patton, he was pretty dialed back, but dialed-back Patton is shock jock brash for everyone else. At some point, he joked that after the war the U.S. and UK would run the world. And Russia, too.

Patton thought he was talking mostly to housewives and at worst slightly scandalizing them. But it turned out there was a reporter in the audience, and within days the story that Patton was figuring on ruling the world was all over Great Britain, and the States.

General Marshall was not pleased. Eisenhower, who had stuck his neck out insisting that he get Patton for an army command, was even less enthused. He almost fired Patton. But Patton stayed.

Why? For one thing, he hadn't dissed the President, Vice President, or his boss.

And he had Eisenhower. Beyond their friendship - severely tested in the war - Eisenhower felt Patton would be extremely useful in the push across the continent. He also thought he could keep Patton on a short enough leash to avoid catastrophes large enough to negate his value. Bradley was critical in that arrangement, though that part of the story isn't ordinarily told.

Why not? Because the only one who could tell it was Bradley - and Bradley was the last person in the world who would.

Especially to a reporter.