Category: Soldiering
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So where is the Party?
Harry Heth’s was a military family. When he came of age, the young man entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In 1846, he was inadvertently stabbed in the leg during bayonet training. At a time before antibiotics when even mild wounds could lead to sepsis and gory death, Heth somehow pulled through. The following year, Heth graduated as the goat (not GOAT)—the cadet at the very bottom of his academic class.
Harry Heth led a company during the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow, killing a great many Lakota women and children, among other things.
Three years later, Heth penned the Army’s very first marksmanship manual titled “A System of Target Practice.” For the next several years, the young lieutenant did lieutenant things leading troops around the American West. Then there was a bit of a dustup at Fort Sumter, and everybody’s world went all pear-shaped.
Harry Heth Does Proper War
The 1860s were a fruitful time for a West Point grad, even one with sub optimal grades. America faced off against itself, and trained military men were in short supply. That meant meteoric promotions and command time aplenty.
Among other things, Heth logged a stint as Robert E. Lee’s Quartermaster. An Army runs on its stomach, and this was a terribly important job. Lee and Heth subsequently developed a friendship. Heth was one of the few subordinates that the notoriously professional General Lee referred by his first name. In May of 1863, Heth was promoted to major general and given a division in A.P. Hill’s Corps.
Criticality
Now some 162 years distant, it is easy for us modern folk to lose sight of just what an iffy thing the American Civil War actually was.
More adroit commentators than I have spilt rivers of ink on the details. A few quite-talented novelists have penned some compelling alternative histories as well. Suffice to say, had the Confederacy prevailed and the United States advanced as something not quite so united, our modern world would be quite different today.
The particulars of two world wars, social evolution, and the Information Age would be unrecognizable from what our history books currently depict. All that really turned on a single battle that unfolded in and around the Pennsylvania community of Gettysburg in July of 1863.
Lee was in overall command. He directed his subordinate commanders to avoid a decisive engagement with Union forces until he had his reserves positioned.
However, Harry Heth was an impetuous man. While marching east from Cashtown on July 1, Heth deployed two full infantry brigades forward in a reconnaissance in force. He later claimed to have been looking for fresh shoes for his men. Historians have since disputed this. Regardless, when Heth’s two brigades met the Union cavalry under General John Buford, it was game on.
Inflection Points
Any amateur student of Civil War history knows the rest. Pickett’s Charge petered out under withering fire, and Joshua Chamberlain’s audacious bayonet charge ultimately turned the tide of the fight. Before Gettysburg, the Confederate Army was within striking distance of the White House. Afterwards, it was a long, bloody slog all the way to Appomattox. All that kind-of hinged upon Harry Heth.
Prior to the unpleasantness at Gettysburg, Harry Heth had invested in a new campaign hat. Hats were ubiquitous back then and meant more than just comfort on a sunny day. This one arrived just a bit oversized for Heth’s head. To compensate, the good general liberally lined his new chapeau with newspaper.
While fighting at Gettysburg, Heth and Rebel Major General Robert Rodes prosecuted a combined attack against a Union Corps, putting the Yankees to flight.
Amidst the chaos of battle, Heth caught a Minie ball to the nugget. That big, fat .58-caliber round penetrated his hat, tracked around his ersatz newspaper lining, and exited the far side without debraining him in the process. The fortunate general spent the next 30 hours unconscious but eventually recovered.
Denouement
Heth fought honorably later at places like the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. He stood alongside his friend Bob Lee when it was time to pack it in at Appomattox Court House.
After the war, Heth sold insurance and later took a government job as a surveyor. He died in 1899 at the age of 73, the unkillable Confederate general who quite possibly lost the American Civil War.
Crassus’s defeat by the Parthian’s
Its a pity that they were not given to West Point or the US Army Museum. But that’s just me! Grumpy
Now the real speech below:
Be seated.
Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans love to fight.
All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost, and laughed.
That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to America. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he’s not, he’s a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he’s scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call ‘this chicken-shit drilling.’ That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit.
There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job—but they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.
An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. Now we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. You know, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we’re going up against, by God I do.
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn’t like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don’t say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important.
The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we’ll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, sir.’ ‘Isn’t it a little unhealthy up there right now?’ I asked. ‘Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got 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 soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.
And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Gabès. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old American guts. These were not combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.
Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can’t win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Japs.[a]
The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. So keep moving. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don’t dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, 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 cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
Some of you men are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you’ll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business.
The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it’s not dirt, it’s the blood and guts of what was once your best friend, you’ll know what to do.
I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding a goddamned thing. We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy’s balls. We’re going to hold him by his balls and we’re going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We’re going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
There will be some complaints that we’re pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties.
I want you all to remember that. My men don’t surrender. I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That’s not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another German. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That’s a man for you!
Don’t forget, you don’t know I’m here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this army. I’m not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl ‘Ach! It’s the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!’
Then there’s one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, ‘What did you do in the great World War Two?’ You won’t have to cough 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 George Patton!’
All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I’ll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That’s all