THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GEN. PATTON

...And what could be more small-boyish than his packing of a pearl-handled pistol—or is it a brace of them...

...This story goes that Patton momentarily "lost control," "lost his head," because he too—tired, worn, and edgy from a hard campaign—suffered a touch of the same type of neurotic injury which he refused to believe the young private had suffered...

...For according to Patton's own friends, as reported by the Associated Press, he has always had "a blind spot toward warfare's psychological or nervous casualties...

...I am told that he liked, instead of resenting, the rather sissy-sounding diminutive and that those who know him well enough still call him "Georgie" today...

...More significantly, Patton's whole life and his whole record fit perfectly—except perhaps for the violation of Army rules—with the incident in the Sicilian hospital...

...But you would expect to find them in a child...

...But the thing that has thrown the press off the seemingly obvious explanation of the hospital incident —that Patton is simply a natural-born tyrant—is that he is not always nor constantly the tyrant...

...But whereas "little savages" may be cute, big savages are not...

...Yet the really shocking thing about the incident in' the Sicilian hospital is not that Patton, being what he is, should have done what he did...

...But not concerning George Patton...

...He has long been known as a ruthless and bullying commander of his troops, a man given to frequent fits of rage, a driving disciplinarian who cannot understand and will not tolerate whatever he, with his warped view, rates as weakness in any subordinate...

...What then is the true explanation of Gen...

...It is because, as even the rankest amateur psychologist knows, every bully is at heart a coward...

...What small boy would not delight to "keep for personal use," as the United Press tells it of Patton, "a Douglas transport plane, a Piper cub plane, a tank, a scout car, a command car, a jeep, and of course his big sedan with his huge flags—American and 7th Army—flying at the front...

...Certainly not in an adult...

...wherever he goes...

...If, as is said in Patton's defense, he gets results by his ruthless methods, it strikes me as a rather easy accomplishment...

...he remains unconvinced by medical evidence that all wounds are not necessarily visible to the naked eye...

...His fits of anger are usually followed in short order by fits of remorse...

...A welter of words lias flowed in the press about the surface aspects of the hospital incident—its stark and abrupt brutality, the utter violation of the "officer and gentleman" code, the violation too of every tenet of human dignity and decency...

...Concerning another man the tale might carry the ring of truth...

...He has been known to cry not infrequently...

...He writes tender poetry, of a sort, to his wife...

...I have not yet seen it said point-blank, and it needs to be said, that the "yellow-bellied" heel—one of the milder epithets used by Patton—was not the mind-sick soldier...

...he has his softer moments...

...All his outstanding traits are childish traits—his impulsive softness no less than his cruelty, his bravado, his worship of athletic prowess, his insensitivity to civilized values...

...Unfortunately, Patton is no longer playing exclusively with small boys' toys...

...A pitiless man with the power to command might just as well be holding a gun at the back of every soldier under him...

...He is always escorted by several M.P.s on motorcycles...

...He is still "Georgie" quite a lot of the time...

...To explain General Patton as a man with the emotional immaturity of a child is not to justify his behavior...

...A Natural-Born Tyrant His associates, ever since his early days in Army posts around the country, have admired rather than liked him—and the admiration has been more for his tough and athletically coordinated body than for his mind...

...Bullies Are Cowards This is not merely because Patton was protected and knew he was protected by his three stars when he struck the young private—so that the private, being a better soldier than the general, could not defend himself as he might have, had they both been wearing mufti...

...Or maybe not so strange...

...His apology for the hospital episode was probably quite genuine and in no sense hypocritical...

...Strange, perhaps, that the General should enjoy both the gushy affection of "Georgie" and the overdone hard-boiledness of "Old Blood and Guts...

...It may sound amusing that "Old Blood and Guts" used to call his daughter, Beatrice, "Baby B." But the sentimental streak is still in him...

...For it seems to me that the key to the entire Patton affair, the key to the Patton personality, is neatly symbolized by the apparent paradox whereby "Georgie" and "Old Blood and Guts" are one man...

...He himself claims to have "patted five soldiers on the back for every one I have spoken a harsh word to...

...a swaggering and self-assertive streak of cruelty invariably masks a streak of another color...

...What sort of human being is it who is naturally ruthless one moment and gentle the next, who changes abruptly from anger to tenderness, or even tears, with no sufficient provocation for either...

...The Shocking Thing Yes, Georgie Patton, for all his years and his honors, is still a small boy...

...PATTON was a young sprout, fresh out of West Point, living the gay social and sporting life of a peacetime Army officer with independent means—polo, steeple-chasing, dancing, dining, playing to the hilt the old cavalry tradition of the hard riding, hard-fighting, hard-drinking man his friends used to call him "Georgie...

...it was Patton himself...

...The brave man feels no need to prove it...

...Patton, despite his physical maturity, has retained the restricted emotional equipment of an adolescent...

...Quite probably the blame—if "blame" is the word—for Patton's failure to develop any but his physical attributes lies in large part with Patton himself...

...Such respect as his troops used to have for him, before the Sicilian incident made him the subject of common and contemptuous gossip among them, was born of fear, not affection...

...What the newspapers call him, with obvious relish, is "Old Blood and Guts" to his obvious relish...

...He is playing with the lives and the minds of thousands upon thousands of American soldiers and, in a larger sense, with the repute of the U. S. Army and hence of this nation...

...The really shocking thing is that the U. S. Army should need, want, or use in an important command a soldier whose whole record, whose whole life, whose whole personality, has long reeked with proof that he is an emotional adolescent who never grew up to become, in any true sense of the word, a man...

...In whom might you expect such mercurial moods and the contradictory conduct that goes with them...

...The fact is, as I see it, that Gen...

...What could be more small-boyish than his reported offer to take on Marshal Rommel in a tank duel in the middle of the desert...

...I lay no claim to being a psychologist but the answer strikes me as painfully plain...