'All right you sons of bitches' — military inspiration before D-Day
Did General Patton deliver his famous speech? He certainly did, but it was more a series of four to six speeches, and it wasn't identical each time — he was a brilliant ad libber.
It’s D-Day tomorrow, a day of sombre remembrance, but also a day for celebrating one of the greatest and most significant military achievements in all of history.
I’ve pointed to General Eisenhower’s D-Day Order before, which I think is beautifully written:
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
One that is equally well known, and has a movie like quality (if only for the fact that well known audio version is actually from a movie!) is General George Patton’s Speech to the Third Army. It’s full of bravado and expletives, and is inspiring and funny and fluent and, in places, gruesome. I read it and imagine that a lot of pre-battle speeches have possessed this sort of machismo over the centuries but from all reports, Patton was an unbelievable orator, and the words in the reported transcript are enduring for a reason. They weren’t aimed at D-Day combatants. We also can’t be exactly sure that the speech was delivered as below, because Patton spent April-May 1944 touring different units and the speech was in fact 4-6 motivational speeches. The YouTube video below contains George C. Scott’s audio from the Oscar winning movie of the early 70s (Best Picture, Scott also won for Best Actor) which has been stripped of a lot of the swearing. The transcript is a better indication, constructed from notes and troop reports. Patton’s most famous line from the series of speeches apparently occurred on 31st May 1944 while addressing the 6th Armored Division:
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
There’s been a lot of misplaced American triumphalism over the last two months. On the day before D-Day, I thought it was worth thinking of these speeches, the men who gave them, the soldiers who fought, the thousands who died, and the gift of freedom that US troops, and other Allied forces, gave to Europe and the world.
Best wishes
Tony
General Patton: ‘I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler’ Speech to Third Army - 1944
April-May 1944, delivered 4-6 time to 3rd Army, pre Normanby invasion, United Kingdom
Now I want you to remember, that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country
Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. 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. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. 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. And we have the best team—we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we’re going up against.
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. 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 gut 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.
An unrelated, non speechy note from Tony
I have a picture book coming out called The Elephant in the Room.
If you commit to buying two or more copies of Laura Wood’s and my new picture book ‘The Elephant in the Room’ I’ll add your name (or your child or grandchild’s) to a thank you page.
If you’re a bookshop, I’ll salute you if you commit to four or more copies on consignment at normal trade terms. The book will likely retail at approximately $30. Laura and I want to have it out in 2026! Final illustrations are complete. We are up to book designing and printing. It’s going to be a beautiful hardback.
It’s called ‘The Elephant in the Room’ and it’s about an elephant being ignored in each room of the house, until she isn’t!
It’s also about idioms, and there is an idiom drawn into each illustration for readers to try and spot.
Younger kids will love the story (2-6 years). Older kids will enjoy finding the idioms. My daughter Alice learned about idioms in Grade 5 when she was 10 years old. I think English teachers and librarians will find it a useful teaching aid.
I love this rhyming text, and I think you will too! Laura and I had previous successes with ‘The Cow Tripped Over the Moon’ and ‘Hickory Dickory Dash’. Each sold more than 50,000 copies and were National Simultaneous Storytime titles. We also did ‘Baa Baa Blue Sheep’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide’ together, all through Scholastic.
I have decided to release this one myself, because I’m tired of the structure of picture book contracts. Authors and Illustrators are lucky to get 5% of RRP, and often get as little as 2% when the title is discounted. We received less than 30c per paperback copy for many of the above mentioned 100,000 sales. This is my attempt at trying something different.
You don’t have to pay now. I’m collecting pre-commitments on the form attached. When the book with your name (or your kids’) printed in it is ready to post, I’ll contact you for payment.
Many thanks!
Tony
(The idiom in this picture is ‘put your foot in your mouth’)