"I have a hell of a memory for poetry and war."
—Major George S. Patton, Jr. to his wife,
March 20, 1918.

Next to war, poetry was one of the great passions of George S. Patton, Jr. He was a diligent student of military history, an accomplished horseman and polo player, a skilled sailor and swordsman. Above all, of course, he was a soldier but he also saw himself as a poet, and he seized upon the most dramatic aspects of each profession in ways calculated to astonish his critics, delight his troops, and mystify his country's enemies. He saw nothing in the nature of the profession of arms that would prevent him from becoming a poet in the most ancient sense, as a master of great powers of vision and memory, as one able to transcend human limitations and, like the sages of Greece and Rome, to chart the course of destiny.

The thousands who served under him and the millions who have come to know him through films and biographies have a vague notion that Patton wrote poetry of some kind. It is true that he could spin out a satirical verse or song in minutes, but the General was more than an occasional versifier. His manuscripts show that he labored over his poems and at one time—between wars—was assembling a volume that he intended to publish anonymously. Although he was not a great poet, his revisions indicate that he was a serious one, experimenting with dialogue and colloquial speech, with different forms such as the lyric, ballad, blank verse and mock epic. While acknowledging the inadequacies of his poems and his own limitations, Patton often revised for clarity and directness, striving to articulate what he called his "prevailing idea."¹

Delivered with oratorical gusto or tongue-in-cheek wit, poetry was Patton's vehicle for entertainment, for establishing comradeship with rhymed profanity and coarse, barracks-bred humor. "Vulgar and smutty" were the adjectives Patton's father used to describe one of his son's poems (probably "The Song of the Turds of Langres") in 1919.² But poetry was also an outlet for artistic expression, for immortalizing the General's innermost thoughts, and for memorializing the sacrifices of heroic men. And poetry was Patton's tonic, keeping him more or less on balance when he was deeply hurt or depressed. After being severely reprimanded by Eisenhower for making some indiscreet public comments in 1944 (comments that nearly cost him command of the Third Army), Patton noted in his diary that he felt like he had "just been killed" and then added: "All the way home, 5 hours, I recited poetry. . . ."³

What poems did the General toll out during those dejected hours? He left no indication, but his power of recall was great enough to enable him to draw upon the epics of Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson's Arthurian romances and the verses of Kipling, among others which he knew by heart. And, of course, he had his own substantial body of poems, written over a lifetime of military service.

So, the practice of poetry was not just an incidental pastime for Patton: It was one aspect of a literary consciousness nurtured in early adolescence and encouraged by his father, also named George Smith Patton. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, a successful lawyer and businessman, the elder Patton was an avid student of literature who cultivated an appreciation for letters in his son by reciting to him, catering to the younger Patton's early and voracious appetite for the exploits of ancient warriors and medieval knights. Then followed his son's eager recitations, backyard performances and, later, literary efforts of his own.

One of Patton's first attempts—and his first literary rejection—came in 1905 when, as a plebe at West Point, he tried unsuccessfully to have a verse description of cadet life published in The Howitzer, the academy's student magazine. At about the same time, his fiancee, Beatrice Banning Ayer, requested a sampling of his poems, and he responded with "A Toast," eight thumping lines in praise of old-fashioned carnage "In the days when war was war." He was his own severest critic, judging the piece as "worthless," but added: "you asked for it."⁴

Later, as graduation and marriage approached, Cadet Patton again summoned his muse and regaled his sweetheart with a devotional poem: