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His mind and his experience told him that the foes to be beaten in Europe were the Germans, that the way to defeat the Germans was to confront them with overwhelming force. He likes to say: "It makes no difference what part of Europe you kill Germans in." Sicily, for him, is a way station on the road to the battlefields where Germans can be killed in quantities. On the way he will see to it that, as in Sicily, he meets them when he has the superior forces necessary to kill and defeat them.
Last week, during his interlude in North Africa, Patton's eyes and stars were bright. Seated in a British command car, he slapped his leather-bound swagger stick into the palm of his hand and invited a correspondent to return to the action with him.
"You had better come now," he said, "or my men will have killed all the bastards." Then he was gone, back to the places where the fighting was.
<footnote> * In military usage, hills are designated by their height in meters. </footnote>