Quote of the Day (Hutton and Rooney, on G.I. Joe’s Paper)

“The Stars and Stripes, from the day it began publication as an eight-page weekly in London, was mad, unreasonable, implausible of behavior in the midst of an army's orderliness, a refuge for eccentrics.

“But at the same time it was a well-written, well-edited, colorful, accurate, professional newspaper with (whether or no you wanted to admit it) higher editorial and moral standards than a great many civilian papers.

“It was, on the authority of the army's high command, ‘the most important single factor’ affecting the morale of the men who smashed and conquered Axis Europe.”—Bud Hutton and Andy Rooney, The Story of the Stars and Stripes (1946)

The armed-forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had actually been around, in other incarnations, dating back to the Civil War. But when it was revived on this date in 1942, its reappearance was stunning. The tabloid was announcing to Europe—many of whose countries still fell under the dark shadow of totalitarianism—that one of the freedoms for which the American soldier was fighting was embodied in the product they read.

In many ways, working on Stars and Stripes was the formative experience of future CBS veteran Andy Rooney. It wasn’t only that, as a 22-year-old sergeant assigned to this unit, he learned his trade in proximity to pros such as Homer Bigart, Ernie Pyle and Walter Cronkite, but that he came by attitudes that informed much of the rest of his life. He found Ernest Hemingway and General George Patton, for instance, to be poseurs—and resented the latter, in particular, for trying to make the newspaper into a mere mouthpiece of the military. The future 60 Minutes curmudgeon-at-large was in embryo.

On the other hand, while many American intellectuals of the Fifties unfavorably compared Dwight Eisenhower to their favorite, Adlai Stevenson, as an out-of-touch figurehead addicted to wandering prose, Rooney remembered gratefully the commander who allowed him and his compatriots to report honestly and largely without censorship on the conflict that broke the backs of Fascism and liberated a continent.

Quote of the Day (General Patton, on Being “Born a Fighter”)

“So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.”—General George S. Patton Jr., “Through a Glass Darkly” (1918)

On this date, in 1945, General George S. Patton Jr., died in Germany from injuries sustained earlier in the month in an auto accident.

“Old Blood and Guts” was not made for the peacetime world, as evidenced by his removal as head of the occupation of Bavaria for typically impolitic remarks regarding de-nazification policies and relations with the Soviets.

What’s extraordinary about the larger poem from which the above quote comes--written while the future legend was serving in World War I, where he became the U.S. Army’s foremost master of the tank--is his belief in reincarnation, a near-mystical belief that he had fought in other battlefields--and would do so again.

You might say, then, that he not only felt “born a fighter,” but reborn a fighter.

Quote of the Day (Benjamin Patton, Descendant of Heroes, on Preserving Family History)

“Every family has a story, and every member's story is worth preserving—certainly for the living family, but even more so for future generations. Experiencing history through the lens of another person's life can offer unexpected insight into your own. It gets you to think: What sort of mark will I make? How will I be remembered?”—Benjamin W. Patton, “Recovered Ground: Gen. George S. Patton’s Grandson Finds His Calling in the Ashes of His Father’s Journals,” Smithsonian, June 2009

Before I go any further, a word about the photo.

It’s not who you expected, was it? But George S. Patton Jr.—“Old Blood and Guts”—has been so endlessly discussed—everything from celebrated to dissected—that there’s not much I could say about him that many of you don’t already know.

His namesake and only son, rather—the father of the man who wrote the words above—is, however, another matter. He was every bit the proud warrior that his father was, but, because he fought in one war that is largely forgotten and another that so many wish could be because of its resulting anguish and futility, the great bulk of the American public know little if anything about him.

Anyone interested not only in military but family history should hunt down Benjamin Patton’s essay in the new issue of Smithsonian. It seamlessly weaves the story of perhaps the most glorious family in American military history with the author’s own journey of self-discovery—and it lays out, simply but eloquently, the importance of preserving memories, even if your own family as not as celebrated as the Pattons.

In case you’re wondering: yes, the article does have a few glimpses of the great WWII hero (e.g., building a motorboat with his son in the family garage), as well as the author’s great-great-grandfather, a Confederate colonel whose gold coin deflected a bullet and saved him to fight another day.

But the surprise here—for many of us, anyway—is Benjamin’s father, a hero of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. This Patton won the Purple Heart and saw more frontline combat action than his father. This Patton, not his father, possessed a gravely voice that reminded many of the Oscar-winning actor George C. Scott. This Patton had a daughter who embarked on a career as unmartial as you could get: a Benedictine nun.

A post of mine last week advocated oral histories for aging soldiers. Much of Benjamin Patton’s work is designed to accomplish much the same purpose, though he arrived at this career in a circuitous fashion.

By his own admission a bit at sea growing up, with no wish to join the family trade, Benjamin took up taping interviews to raise his father’s spirits following a disastrous fire in the family basement that consumed precious journals. When that project was finished, other people—many the children of veterans—conducted him about preserving their relatives’ memories, launching him on his current career as a producer and film educator.

The most fascinating story I ever heard about Patton the WWII hero was that, as a young man, he spent hours walking around the French countryside, learning every detail of the terrain, convinced that in a future campaign this would come in handy. It took more than a quarter-century, but he was proved correct.

It’s a story about the unusual paths we take to our destinies—something that his grandson has reenacted, in captivating detail, in this short, affectionate and moving memoir.