Part II   The Speech

 Somewhere in England

 June 5th, 1944

 "Be seated."

 Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting

 out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit.  Americans

 love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of

 battle. You are here today for three reasons.

 First, because you are here  to defend your homes and your loved ones.

 Second, you are here for your  own self respect, because you would not

 want to be anywhere else.

 Third,  you are here because you are real men and all real men

 like to fight. When  you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired

 the champion marble  player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the

 big league ball  players, and the All-American football players. Americans

 love a winner.  Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise

 cowards. Americans  play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot

 in hell for a man who  lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never

 lost nor will ever lose  a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an

 American.

 You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here

 today  would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death,

 in time,  comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle.

 If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the

 same as the  brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching

 men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who

 fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute

 under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a

 real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his

 sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most

 magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings

 out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride

 themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men.

 Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and

 probably  more so. They are not supermen. All through your Army

 careers, you men have bitched about what you call  "chicken shit

 drilling". That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite

 purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into

 every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on

 his toes.  You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are

 ready for what's to  come. A man must be alert at all times if he

 expects to stay alive. If  you're not alert, sometime, a

 German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to  sneak up behind you and

 beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly

 marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all  because one man went to sleep

 on the job. But they are German graves,  because we caught the bastard

 asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and

 fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The

 bilious bastards who write  that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening

 Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know

 about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best

 spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity

 those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do.

 My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier

 under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you

 are hit, you  can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either.

 The kind of man  that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant

 in Libya, who, with  a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet,

 swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the

 Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and

 killed another German before they knew  what the hell was coming off.

 And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There

 was a real man! All of the real heroes are not storybook combat

 fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role.

 Don't ever let up.  Don't ever think that your job is unimportant.

 Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital

 link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided

 that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow,

 and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say,

 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.'

 But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be

 now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world,

 be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does

 his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is

 important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed

 to supply the  guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The

 Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where

 we are going there isn't a hell  of a lot to steal. Every last man

 on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep

 us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'. Each man must not think only of

 himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want

 yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats.

 If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards.

 The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned

 cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest

 men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in

 the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked

 what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered,

 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right

 about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be

 fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?'

 And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a

 real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his

 duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at

 the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those

 trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day

 and all night they rolled  over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never

 stopping, never faltering from  their course, with shells bursting all

 around them all of the time. We got  through on good old American guts.

 Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men

 weren't combat men, but they were soldiers  with a job to do. They did

 it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They  were part of a team.

 Without team effort, without them, the fight would  have been lost.

 All of the links in the chain pulled together and the  chain became

 unbreakable. Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No

 mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not

 supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to

 be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England.

 Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I

 want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl,

 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that

 son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'. We want to get the hell over there."

 The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take

 a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their

 nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

 Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest

 way to  get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The

 quicker  they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way

 home is  through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am

 personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.

 Just like I'd shoot a  snake! When a man is lying in a shell hole,

 if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually.

 The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig

 foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive.

 Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll

 win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the

 Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will  have.

 We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to

 rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the

 treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers

 by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business.

 You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them

 up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around

 you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt

 it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you,

 you'll know what to do! I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am

 holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the

 Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested

 in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist

 his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our

 basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing

 regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy.

 We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit

 through a tin horn!

 From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our

 people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I

 believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a

 gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill.

 The  more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing

 means  fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

 There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say

 after this  war is over and you are home once again. You may be

 thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace

 with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great

 World War II, you  WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and

 say, 'Well, your  Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you

 can look him straight  in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode

 with the Great Third Army  and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named

 Georgie Patton!'

 "That is all."

About Mr. Doyle: Last year (2006) we lost a man by the name of Mr. Doyle. He lived next door to me and the fellow soldiers who share my Ft Bragg lake house. In his last months, we were called upon many times to help him in the middle of the night when his wife needed us to. She and he were always SO apologetic about it, but we were honored to be there to help "one of our own" and we said so.

Mr. Doyle retired as a Master Sergeant in 1972. I used to go over to his house and listen to him talk. He was awarded medals pinned on personally by Patton, under whom he served in WWII. I have always heard it said that those who served with Patton always answered simply that "I was with Patton" when asked what they did during the War. That says it all, and that's exactly what Mr. Doyle said too. God bless him.