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Lot 180
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Captain George S. Patton Writes to His Mother from France during World War I
Captain George S. Patton Writes to His Mother from France during World War I
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Description:

Patton Jr. George



Captain George S. Patton Writes to His Mother from France during World War I



Autograph Letter Signed, to his mother, Ruth Wilson Patton, [August 22, 1917, Paris, France]. 1 p., 8.25" x 10.625". Expected folds; very good.

Complete Transcript


Dear Mama: I am so sorry to hear that your feet and hands are hurting you again but it was probably well before I heard from you. Things here go on much as usual and it is a bore. I am still in the office and it is now seven o’clock but I have just finished. Every one in the world has to see me about something. My job has the only merit of being diverse but I don’t see that it gets me any where.


I am in fine health and enjoying my self more than in Mexico.


Give my love to all

George S Patton Jr


Historical Background


By 1917, George S. Patton had graduated from West Point, competed in the Olympics in Sweden, redesigned U.S. cavalry combat, designed a new sword for those tactics, and battled Mexican bandits. In 1910, he had married Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953), the accomplished and highly educated daughter of a Boston industrialist, and they had two daughters by 1917. In the summer of that year, he was in Europe as an aide to General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force. In Paris, Patton oversaw the training of American troops but also helped coordinate the schedules and transportation of various visiting military officers and other dignitaries.

 

Despite these accomplishments, this letter to his mother reveals Patton’s restlessness and drive, attributes that made him a pioneer in mechanized warfare and a driving force in defeating Germany in 1944 and 1945. Apparently, he was so busy during this time that he did not write in his diary between August 4 and September 1, 1917.

 

From the summer of 1915 to February 1917, Patton had served with the army in Texas and Mexico. When forces loyal to Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, and killed several Americans in March 1916, the United States launched the Pancho Villa Expedition into Mexico. Patton served as a personal aide to commander John J. Pershing, and his efforts impressed Pershing. On May 14, 1916, in the first motorized attack in U.S. warfare, Patton led ten soldiers and two civilians in three Dodge touring cars in an attack on Julio Cárdenas, Villa’s second-in-command. Patton and his small contingent killed Cárdenas and two of his guards. Patton remained in Mexico until the end of the year, but President Woodrow Wilson prohibited raids deeper into Mexico.

 

 

George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945) was born in California and educated at the Virginia Military Institute and United States Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1909. An avid horseback rider, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the cavalry. In 1910, he married Beatrice Banning Ayer (1886-1953), the daughter of a wealthy Boston businessman. He competed in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, in the modern pentathlon, where he finished fifth behind four Swedes. He then traveled to France, where he learned fencing techniques. Returning to the United States, he redesigned cavalry saber combat doctrine and designed a new sword. In 1915 and 1916, Patton participated in the Pancho Villa Expedition in Mexico as Commander John J. Pershing’s aide. In the spring of 1917, he accompanied Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, to Europe. Patton took an interest in tanks and was soon training crews to operate them. By 1918, he was in command of a tank brigade. After World War I, he served in various army posts and began to develop the methods of mechanized warfare. At the beginning of World War II, Patton worked to develop and train armored divisions in the army. In the summer of 1942, he commanded the Western Task Force in the Allied invasion of French North Africa. He commanded the Seventh U.S. Army in the successful invasion of Sicily in July 1943. After the Normandy invasion of June 1944, Patton’s Third Army sailed to France and formed on the extreme right of Allied land forces. Through speed and aggressive offensive action, the Third Army continuously pressed retreating German forces until it ran out of fuel near Metz in northeastern France at the end of August. When the German army counterattacked in the battle of the Bulge in mid-December 1944, Patton’s ability to reposition six full divisions to relieve besieged Allied forces in Bastogne was one of the most remarkable achievements of the war. As the Germans retreated, Patton’s Third Army advanced, killing, wounding, or capturing 240,000 German soldiers in seven weeks before crossing the Rhine on March 22. After the end of the war in Europe, Patton hoped for a command in the Pacific but after a visit to the United States returned to Europe for occupation duty in Bavaria. In December 1945, the car in which he was riding collided with an American army truck at low speed, but Patton hit his head on a glass partition, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. He died twelve days later at a hospital in Germany. He was buried among some of his men of the Third Army in an American cemetery in Luxembourg.

Ruth Wilson Patton (1861-1928) was born in California. Her father was a pioneer and real estate developer in southern California, serving as mayor of Pueblo de Los Angeles around 1850. She married George William Patton (1856-1927), the son of a Confederate colonel and graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, in 1884. They settled at Lake Vineyard, California, where they raised produce and operated a winery. In 1902, he began working for Henry E. Huntington’s real estate development company, and he served as the first mayor of San Marino from 1913 to April 1922 and again from October 1922 to 1924. They had two children, George S. Patton Jr. and Anne Wilson Patton (1887-1971).



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