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The
Speech Somewhere
in England 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. 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 horse shit. 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 bull shit either. The
kind of man that I want in my command is just like the
lieutenant in Libya, who, with 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 fire fight 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 road
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 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 cock
suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
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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."
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