Read an Excerpt

Patton

The Pursuit of Destiny

Thomas Nelson

Bloodlines and Childhood

George S. Patton Jr. was born on November 11, 1885, on a large family estate just outside Los Angeles, California. By his own admission, Patton had a great childhood. At one point he proclaimed himself the happiest boy in America. Lake Vineyard Rancho was an idyllic setting for a boy to grow up in, and young Patton had everything he needed to have a good time—plus the freedom and security to enjoy it. Besides the fact that the estate was vast and scenic, the adobe house built by his grandfather was large and filled most of the time with members of a loving and supportive family. Relatives encouraged Patton's interest in his ancestors, many of whom were high achievers in the military, in business, and in politics. In many ways, Patton is proof of the effectiveness of a happy childhood guided by loving parents and family members who worked hard to instill in him a set of values on which to base his entire life. These values derived from the landowning families prominent in colonial Virginia. Through his own privileged upbringing, he considered himself the embodiment of aristocratic military values often associated with the upper classes of Europe. More than any other single factor, this Virginia aristocratic tradition of pursuing a professional military career ignited young George's imagination from his earliest childhood and inspired him to dedicate his life to becoming a great military leader.

Patton's family had great military bloodlines on his paternal side and good ones on his maternal side. Patton was extremely proud of his antecedents, as he was of his pronounced Scots heritage, and he knew by heart the names of not just his direct forebears who had distinguished themselves as soldiers, but also the names of distant cousins, especially those who had served in the Civil War. In all, thirteen Patton men served in the War between the States. Three of them perished, including Patton's much admired and honored grandfather, Colonel George Smith Patton, who was head of the 22nd Virginia Regiment and was mortally wounded at the third battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864.

The first Patton in the colonies, however, was Robert Patton, George S. Patton Jr.'s great-great-grandfather. Born in Ayr, Scotland, on September 24, 1750, Robert Patton emigrated twenty years later from Glasgow and wound up in Culpeper, Virginia, where he went to work for a Scottish trading company. He prospered over the years to the point where he became one of the town's leading citizens. He initiated a Patton family tradition of marrying well when he took as his bride Anne Gordon Mercer, the daughter of Revolutionary War hero Brigadier General Hugh Mercer. Eventually the prosperous couple settled in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where they raised seven children.

Their third child was John Mercer Patton, Patton's great-grandfather. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1818, he practiced law in Fredericksburg, which he represented as a state congressman from 1829 to 1838. He spoke his mind and became embroiled in many controversies, including the national banking controversy that erupted when President Andrew Jackson attempted to overhaul and recharter the Bank of the United States. In what became a family trait, he stood his ground and never flinched in the face of a fight. When the incumbent governor of Virginia resigned in 1841, for thirteen brief days John Mercer Patton served as acting governor of the Commonwealth.

John Mercer Patton married Margaret French Williams, a notoriously strong-willed woman from another upper-tier colonial Virginia family. They produced a dozen children, seven of whom would serve in the War between the States in the Confederate army. Among them was the first George Smith Patton, the grandfather hero of George S. Patton Jr. Colonel George Smith Patton set an indelible example of heroism when, wearing the Confederate gray, he was mortally wounded fighting for a cause he passionately believed in.

* * *

Patton's grandfather entered the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1849. Three years later, he graduated second in his class overall and first in French, mathematics, Latin, geology, chemistry, and tactics. The high mark in tactics was an inspiration for his grandson's subsequent tactical combat genius.

After graduating from VMI, he became a lawyer in his father's office. On November 8, 1855, he married Susan Thornton Glassell, the love of his life. She came from a family with a direct link to George Washington's great-grandfather, King Edward I of England. Her family could also point to such indirect forebears as King Philip III of France, and, even further back, to an affiliation with sixteen barons who signed the Magna Carta.

George Smith Patton settled his family in Charleston, Virginia. He practiced law until the Civil War broke out in 1861. In Charleston, he acquired the nickname "Frenchy" because he sported a goatee, dressed like a dandy, and acted in every way like a dashing cavalier, exhibiting classic chivalric behavior toward the opposite sex. Anecdotes of this behavior deeply affected his grandson, whose lifelong penchant for flamboyance would distinguish—and sometimes plague—him wherever he went.

George Smith Patton entered the war as a lieutenant colonel in charge of the 22nd Virginia Regiment, serving under Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson. The two men had an inauspicious start. Patton had studied under then-Professor Jackson at VMI, where the cadets dubbed the future Confederate general "Tom Fool" because he endeavored to teach artillery at the same time he was learning it, a circumstance that led to some awkward moments for the neophyte instructor. George Smith Patton nonetheless liked Professor Jackson and was later privileged to serve under him while head of the 22nd Virginia Regiment.

George Smith Patton was often accused of being arrogant but had the foresight and political moxie to see the clouds of war gathering early on. As a result, he had formed a militia group in Charleston known as the Kanawha Riflemen, named for the home county in which Charleston is located. The Riflemen attracted likeminded young aristocrats and, once the conflict began, evolved into the 22nd Virginia Regiment that George Smith Patton led into battle under Stonewall Jackson.

The two VMI men distinguished themselves at VMI's finest moment of the entire conflict, the battle of New Market. Two hundred forty-seven young cadets were pressed into action at that battle where Professor Jackson famously exclaimed, "Today the Institute will be heard from!" It was heard from indeed, and the heavily outnumbered Confederates won a fierce battle that entered VMI lore and legend. Any visitor to VMI today can see the rolling cannons used by the VMI cadets at New Market standing proudly on the edge of the main parade ground against the backdrop of the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains.

The victory at New Market was also the high-water mark for the Patton family during that all-out internecine war. George Smith Patton distinguished himself as a gifted battle leader with outstanding tactical instincts. With uncanny anticipation of an enemy move, he made a defensive adjustment early in the battle that completely thwarted a Union cavalry charge meant to roll up the Confederates' left flank. The men under Patton were full of admiration for his ability and his bravery. George Smith Patton was wounded in several battles throughout the war before he suffered a fatal gunshot wound at the Third Battle of Winchester in September 1864.

* * *

George Smith Patton's younger brother, Waller Tazewell Patton, also graduated from VMI in 1856. He, too, distinguished himself in the War between the States. "Taz" had been badly wounded at Second Bull Run, but managed to recuperate and return to his unit. There, as commander of the Seventh Virginia Infantry, he met his end as part of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, one of the seven thousand men—included in that fourteen-thousand-man charge—who perished within minutes of the horn sounding. Taz was mortally shot in the mouth as he leaped a stone wall leading the charge. In addition, two other brothers, Hugh Mercer Patton and James French Patton, enrolled while still in their teens and both went on to become lieutenants wounded in battle. Both were fortunate enough to survive the war.

The heroism of George Smith Patton and Uncle Waller Tazewell loomed large in the affections of the former's son, born George William Patton before the outbreak of the war in 1856. He, in turn, passed this affection on to his son, the famous grandson and great-nephew of these two fallen Civil War heroes. Interestingly enough, in Old English the name Patton means "from the warrior's manor."

* * *

Although Patton's father's original name was George William Patton, with his mother's permission he later changed it to George Smith Patton II, to honor both his heroic father and his stepfather, George Hugh Smith. The name change on the part of her firstborn is how George Smith Patton Jr., hero of the Bulge and Bastogne, came to be known as "Junior."

Like George Smith Patton, George Hugh Smith was also a genuine Civil War hero. After the conflict, he fled to Mexico rather than pledge allegiance to the federal government in Washington DC. He stayed in Mexico until passions cooled and then drifted north into Southern California, where he married George Smith Patton's widow, who had moved west with the financial aid of her brother.

After growing up in Los Angeles with his mother and stepfather, Patton's father enrolled at VMI, like his father and his uncles before him. He excelled both as a student and as an officer within the student corps. He was the highest-ranking cadet officer in his senior class and was nominated as first captain. He was also exceptionally debonair, handsome, and a spellbinding public speaker, a trait he would pass along to his son.

His student years at VMI, however, were financially trying, and he was often embarrassed by his poverty. His stepfather earned a decent living as a lawyer, but he and his wife had two additional children of their own, making six children for whom they had to provide. This did not leave much money to expend on their son back east at VMI.

After he graduated in 1877, Patton's father spent another year at VMI as an instructor in French and tactics. Like the majority of Pattons, he felt himself most at home in Virginia and would have preferred to remain there. But his sense of duty to his mother and family forced him to return to Los Angeles, where he took up the study of law under the tutelage of his uncle and his stepfather. In 1880, after passing the bar, he joined the family firm and started to practice law.

At that time Los Angeles was a boomtown. Fortunes were being made, especially through the railroads. The Southern Pacific Railroad was the chief power in town, a strong monopoly in a young city that sprouted many powerful monopolies. Along with boom times and monopolies came corruption and power politics. With his great gift for oratory, Patton's father stepped right into this maelstrom. In 1884, he went on the stump for presidential candidate Grover Cleveland, who won the election and became the first Democratic president since the outbreak of the Civil War.

* * *

George S. Patton Jr.'s maternal bloodlines were equally illustrious. The exposure Patton's father won in campaigning for President Grover Cleveland brought him continued publicity and raised his civic profile. He was a young man about town, a desirable bachelor. His exposure won him the attention of Ruth Wilson, whom he married shortly after the election in 1884. Ruth was the daughter of Benjamin Wilson—a powerful landowner and businessman, a former frontiersman, fur trapper, bear hunter, Indian fighter, explorer, adventurer, and real estate speculator—who was one of the founders of Los Angeles. Wilson was the owner of the vast estate called Lake Vineyard Rancho on which his famous World War II hero of a grandson would be born a year after the marriage.

Benjamin Wilson was the son of a Revolutionary War hero and early pioneer who had moved west after that war ended. In California, his power earned him the title "Don Benito" from the prosperous Mexican families prominent in the area. He was elected the first mayor of Los Angeles, a position he used to help establish the seaport of Wilmington, south of the city, and to found the city of Pasadena. He also served two terms in the California state legislature.

Benjamin Wilson was a truly larger-than-life character, and many aspects of his life read like tall tales. He became entangled with the Apaches in New Mexico, with whom he traded on friendly terms until that relationship turned sour and they condemned him to death. Only with the help of an Apache chief was he able to escape, half-naked and pursued by Apache braves, back to Santa Fe. He was also nearly killed in a fight with a grizzly bear that was preying on his cattle. He would not give up on killing this bear, despite being mauled badly in their first encounter. He stalked it through two more encounters before finally killing it. So wild was his temper, and so intense his inability to brook nonsense and suffer fools, that he refused to carry a sidearm for fear of using it rashly.

* * *

Ruth Wilson was the younger of Wilson's two daughters. When she married George Patton, it was a major social event in the City of Angels and captured local newspaper headlines. A year later, on November 11, 1885, she and her husband became the proud parents of a young son, christened George Smith Patton Jr. The boy was named in honor of his grandfather and father and, through the use of Smith as a middle name, in honor of the newborn's step-grandfather, George Hugh Smith. Throughout the boy's childhood, Smith would regale him with tales of his grandfather George S. Patton's Civil War heroism. The child was steeped in military lore from his earliest days.

* * *

Lake Vineyard Rancho provided a fertile setting for Patton's lifelong military passion. His father was determined to raise his son as a Virginia gentleman and cavalier, even though he was some twenty-five hundred miles west of the Old Dominion. Patton learned to ride as a toddler, and he had his own pony when he was scarcely old enough to sit on it. Weapons, too, were introduced early on, with the gift from his father of a .22-caliber rifle. From an early age Patton would prowl the large estate, shooting at small game. Young Patton was a good marksman, and he pleased and astonished his family by knocking an orange off a fence with his .22 when still a stripling.

Patton's childhood love of guns and rifles accounts for his signature characteristic as a general of carrying his greatly loved twin ivory-handled pistols with him at all times when in uniform. He spent his boyhood in America, right before the turn of the twentieth century, at a time when the stories of Rudyard Kipling were all the rage for young boys, when Captain Marryat's tales of adventure similarly held sway, and, slightly later, when Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders would make headlines in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. The lore of the modern man of action extolled by Kipling, Marryat, and the example of Teddy Roosevelt would coalesce with the traditions of the Southern cavalier to mold Patton's personality, passions, aspirations, and dreams.

Patton's hunger for tales of heroes and warfare was fed by his father's habit of reading aloud to him from the novels of Sir Walter Scott, a staple of the Southern gentry, which featured intrepid and noble knights. His father also read to him from Shakespeare's great tragedies and from classics of strife and triumph, like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. These tales of great adventure and of stirring leaders would impact Patton the rest of his life, influencing his adult habit of reading history, especially military history.

Two visitors to the Patton household also enthralled young George with tales of bravery and derring-do. One was his step-grandfather, George Hugh Smith. The other was an even more celebrated hero of the Civil War, John Singleton Mosby, who after the war practiced law on the staff of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Los Angeles. Mosby, like the Pattons and like Smith, was one of many disenchanted Southerners who migrated west to Southern California after the South's bitter defeat, unable to abide conditions at home and the dominance of the victorious federal government in nearby Washington DC. Known as the "Gray Ghost" for his feats as a guerrilla cavalry officer, Colonel Mosby mesmerized young George with tales of daring cavalry raids carried out during the war.

---

Excerpted from Patton by Agostino Von Hassell, Ed Breslin. Copyright © 2010 Agostino Von Hassell and Ed Breslin. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---