Ex Libris: George Patton

General George S. Patton, a portrait by Boleslaw Jan Czedekowski. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public Domain

“No matter where we moved,” wrote Beatrice Patton of her husband seven years after his death in 1945, “there was never enough room for the books. We were indeed lucky that an army officer’s professional library is transported free.”

As a youngster, George Patton (1885–1945) wanted only to be a soldier. The history of his well-to-do family included a long legacy of military service, and his boyhood idols were figures like Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon. John Mosby, the famed Confederate cavalry commander, was a family acquaintance and often visited the Patton home, sharing stories of the war with the young Patton.

The greatest obstacle to pursuing this military ambition were Patton’s academic struggles. Today, he would likely be diagnosed as dyslexic and given help, but, from elementary school into college, the man who later gained a reputation for his book collection and knowledge of military history struggled with reading, writing, and mathematics. Mocked at times by classmates as backward, he nonetheless buckled down in his adolescence and slowly sharpened his ability to decode the written word.

A graduate of West Point who placed fifth in the 1912 Olympic pentathlon event and who displayed bravery and battlefield leadership in World War I, Patton went on to become a famed and controversial commander during the World War II.

And, always, he was reading.

Boyhood Books

G.A. Henty's body of historical works is still a favorite in many home libraries.

The Pattons were a family of bibliophiles. Despite his problems in school, Patton, his parents, and his sister Nita often read aloud to one another, and even acted out favorite scenes from literature. The boy reveled in stories of courage from Greco-Roman literature, the Bible, and modern authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and G.A. Henty.

An example: The Henty books, many of which are still in print and remain popular with homeschoolers today, feature drama and heroics that would have appealed to Patton, as these bestsellers did to tens of thousands of other boys at that time. Criticized today for their jingoism, views characteristic of the late 19th century, the books are nonetheless accurate depictions of historical events and celebrate courage and quick thinking—two signposts of leadership Patton esteemed.

As Patton’s biographer Martin Blumenson writes, these classics “imbued in him the importance of character. Those who made moral choices succeeded, he learned, while those who sacrificed honor for expediency failed and merited disgrace.”

A Lifelong Student of War

In recounting her husband’s reading habits, Beatrice Patton offered this invaluable insight: “History seasoned with imagination and applied to the problem in hand was his hobby.” That interplay between the past and his imagination would again and again give Patton the advantage on the battlefield. “On the voyage to Africa in 1942,” Beatrice wrote, “he read the Koran, better to understand the Moroccans, and during the Sicilian campaign, he bought and read every book he could find on the history of that island, sending them home to me when he had finished them.”

Patton’s lifelong reading of books about warfare and the great commanders was rarely casual. He annotated these books, typed out notes about their more important passages, diligently studied their lessons, and sometimes shared them with others. After reading J.F.C. Fuller’s “Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure,” he gave the book to 12 friends, colonels all, with the advice that prevention is better than a cure.

Originally published in 1938, this book was a must-read for Gen. George Patton.

His interest in the American Civil War was intense, in part because several of his forebears had fought in that conflict. He was a big fan of Douglas Southhall Freeman, noted for his biography of Robert E. Lee and for “Lee’s Lieutenants.” After Beatrice showed Freeman one of his books owned by Patton, with all its annotations and marked pages, she wrote that the author responded, “He REALLY read it, bless his heart.”

More Essentials of Literature

Of course, other books attracted Patton’s attention as well. He enjoyed “The Home Book of Verse,” particularly for its poems about heroes, Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and as Beatrice writes “anything by Winston Churchill.”

Gen. George S. Patton was a fixture of the mid-20th century U.S. military. Public Domain

Beatrice also reported: “During the campaigns of ’44 and ’45, he carried with him a Bible, prayer book, Caesar’s “Commentaries,” and a complete set of Kipling—for relaxation. A minister who interviewed him during that winter remarked that when he saw a Bible on his table, he thought it had been put there to impress the clergy, but had to admit later that the general was better acquainted with what lay between the covers than the minister himself.”

In North Africa, where Patton first led his troops against the Germans, his troops soon nicknamed him “Old Blood and Guts” for his flaming and sometimes obscene speeches. That’s not a bad moniker for a warrior, but in Patton’s case “Old Books and Brains” would be just as appropriate when it came to his military prowess and skill as a commander.

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