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Last week SHAEF correspondents were telling another anecdote about unpredictable Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr. An Allied officer had asked Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower where in Germany Patton might be. "Ike's" reply: "Hell. I don't know. I haven't heard from him for three hours."
George Patton was sitting in his headquarters van, his high-polished cavalry boots cocked on the glass top of his desk, his long-fingered hands relaxed in his lap. He listened now & then over his command radio to battle reports. They were good. His tankmen were rampaging around, deep in Germany, on the loose and on the prowl, raiding and rolling on. Patton could turn off the radio and turn on one of his favorite topics of conversation: the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg. Willie, the General's white bull terrier, snuffed sleepily on the rug.
Where General Patton might be in the next three hours he himself did not know. If Patton got a hunch—and Ike Eisenhower gave him the green light—he might peel off with a tank column for Berlin, or Leipzig or Berchtesgaden, at a moment's notice. If Patton's wildest dream came true, he would find Adolf Hitler in a German tank and slug it out with him. But for the moment, dreams aside, Patton had reason for calm and happy reflection. He was having the time of his action-choked, 40-year Army career.
His armor-heavy Third Army was performing brilliantly all the tricks he had worked hard to teach it. Some of Patton's men were fighting in Kassel, the important road-junction point of central Germany. They were less than 180 miles from Berlin. Patton had already come that many miles, in less than seven weeks—through thick fighting and across the Rhine. His 4th Armored Division was busily engaged in its specialty: spearheading a typical Patton flanking movement. One of its miles-long columns was only 152 miles from Berlin.
Fire and Movement. Patton's tankmen were carrying out his prime rule of battle: fire and movement. If they were stopped they did not dig in. They moved around the obstacle and kept firing. Back of them Patton's armored infantry units were sweeping up cities such as Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden, gathering a rich bag of prisoners—one day more than 8,000, another probably 10,000. That pleased Patton: he is proud that his Third Army has captured more Germans than any other U.S. outfit in this drive. Casualty reports were coming, and they were low; Patton is proud of his Army's small percentage of killed and wounded. The reports on ground taken and held came in—one day: 950 square miles of Germany. That made the total 8,790 square miles, more than any other U.S. Army had fenced in.
The Germans seemed to be scattering before Patton's attacks. They had reason to fear him. He had consistently out-slicked them, mauled them, beaten them. The Germans had always put more men and guns opposite Patton's outfits. Now there were fewer German men and guns. One reason: Patton's Third and Lieut. General Alexander M. Patch's Seventh Army had rung up one of the big victories of the war in the Saar-Palatinate cleanup, had removed more than 150,000 Germans who might now be blocking Patton's path.