Courtesy of a post and link on MeWe, I found these gems. Click the image for a larger view.
Good advice under many circumstances. I'm not sure about all circumstances, though . . . as a military man, General Patton would have been familiar with Helmuth von Moltke the Elder's famous dictum: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy". Sometimes that may apply to wise sayings, too!
Peter
9 comments:
There's actually a whole book written by one of the guys who served under Patton in WW2.
https://www.amazon.com/Pattons-Principles-Handbook-Williamson-1982-12-17/dp/B01FKUUW8Y
Good point... sigh
My Dad and my two Uncles were in WW2 all in different branches. My oldest Uncle was with Patton and never got hurt. My other Uncle was on the USS Missouri in the Navy and was never hurt.
My Dad was the youngest and went in the Marines at 17 in 43 and was in the Pacific doing Island Hopping, he got badly injured on Okinawa and spent a year in a Naval Hospital and got a Medical Discharge. None of them would talk of their times in WW2.
Hey Peter;
I have quoted "A good Plan violently executed..." more time than I can count.
My father in law was a forward observer in Patrons Third Army. He only saw him once but wasn't impressed.
Most people's impressions of Patton today are taken from the movie with George C Scott. I found a youtube video that has a clip from the move, and then the actual film and audio of Patton.
Search for "Actual Voice of General Patton starting at 1:15 vs. Hollywood"
I can't count the number of times a plan submitted to the admiral required 3 Courses of Action. We would sit there at the conference table and rack our brains to think of two other COA to go with the only possible course of action available to us. It was never pretty.
I think Patton was acutely aware of von Moltke's dictum as evidenced by the 3rd's disengagement and move into positions at The Bulge.
I see an interesting thread of similarity of personal contrasts between Patton and Trump. In my opinion each was/is an utter jerk (I'm trying hard to keep this clean) on a personal communication/personality level as a result of oak tree egos. On the other hand, again in my opinion, each was greatly effective because they knew how to make things happen, despite criticism of methodology.
He has that Southern diction that makes men wary. Rightly so!
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