Millions of people have seen the movie Patton, which begins with a view of the general standing before a giant American flag giving a speech to his troops. The actor George C. Scott gave a superb performance in this film; all who ever saw the general in action will agree that he came as close to being George S. Patton, Jr., as is humanly possible. The script for the movie speech itself was a fair representation of the talks to soldiers that Patton actually gave on several occasions.

But it was not exactly the speech I remember hearing as a member of the 65th Infantry Division, 3rd Army, as we were about to enter combat in the late winter of 1945, standing in the square of a little French town named Ennery. We were 30 or 40 miles west of Saarlautern, where the 65th was soon to attack the Siegfried Line. That speech was probably never reported, and the reason for that may be found on page 231 of Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s book A Soldier’s Story:

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