[Milsurplus] Blood n Guts ( OT a little longer )

[Hue Miller]

Glad I could stir up some controversy here.
I have mixed undecided feelings about Geo. Patton.  I decided I would read
everything about him that I could get my hands on, but this project, like so
many others, will have to wait until I don't have to work for a living.
Patton was an extreme stickler for uniform discipline. He felt that a 
soldier
had to be correctly uniformed or he could not be a good fighter. ( The Viet
Nam war, I just thought, would have driven him mad. )
My father's battalion was inspected by Patton in Corsica, 1943. I previously
identified the island as Sicily, but this was incorrect. Many of the men had
gotten rid of their leggings and just bloused their trousers into their 
boots.
In addition, due to the heat,  many had cut off the "gas tab" on their shirt
collars, which was supposedly to seal out poison gas. Patton went down
the lines handing out $50 fines for out-of-uniform. After a number of fines
assigned, Patton gave up in disgust and told the unit commander his unit
was not ready for inspection. Additionally, the two guards on the road had
been sitting on their helmets when Patton's car with pennants flying sailed
past. Patton instructed the commander, "Get rid of those two SOB's  up
on  your guard".  The two slackers did disappear, probably exiled
off to the infantry.
I saw a photo in a book, captioned "Patton walks away after berating
tankers for sandbags added to their tank." Unfortunately, the text did not
explain this interesting incident. For a different take on Patton than you
maybe have been exposed to, I recommend a book, "Death Traps", memoirs
of a tank recovery-maintenance unit officer. He blames Patton for the
decision to go with mass production of the Sherman M4 tank. Patton's
early conclusion: "Tanks don't fight tanks".
Book is "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper. If you like this kind of thing,
this will be one of the best $8 you ever spent. (paperback.)
He recounts one incident Jan. '45. A bunch of replacements just off
the boat at Antwerp were being trained for tank crews. Due to heavy
tank casualties, this unit's tanks were to be crewed by three instead of
the standard five. Most of this group of trainees had never even been
close to a tank. Training was most of a day, and then their training
ended at 15:00.  Then...."going down to the 33rd Armored Regiment at 19:00,
it was discovered that of 17 tanks issued, 15 had been knocked out and
destroyed along the side of the road."
Given the inferiority of the M4 on a frontal attack against German armor
or antitank guns, tankers took to stacking sandbags, concrete blocks,
metal plates, even wood on the glacis of their tanks. Thus my puzzlement
over the caption of the Patton with the tank photo.
This same book DOES have some radio connection. Mentions one instance
of tanks not able to communicate because of different (crystal) frequency
setup. Meeting a Allied spy equipped with a radio I can't identify, 
excepting
it sounds like the "Briefcase Radio" of a Radio News article; Keith Melton
had the only existing copy I ever heard of. Also mentions the proximity
fuse and how powerful it was in disrupting infantry
-Hue Miller