Portal:World War II/Selected biography/3
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a leading U.S. Army general in World War II. In his 36-year Army career, he was Cadet Adjutant at West Point, finished in Fifth Place in the Modern Pentathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden; Graduate Student at the Cavalry School at Saumur, France in 1912 and 1913; the designated military member of The American Committee for the Sixth Olympiad, which was scheduled to be held in Berlin, Germany in 1916[1], advocate of armored warfare and commanded major units of North Africa, Sicily, and the European Theater of Operations. Many have viewed Patton as a pure, ruthless and ferocious warrior, known by the nickname "Old Blood and Guts", a name given to him after a reporter misquoted his statement that it takes blood and brains to win a war. But history has left the image of a brilliant military leader whose record was also marred by insubordination and some periods of apparent instability. Patton was also a member of Kappa Alpha Order.
