replaced General Courtney Hodges as an army com-
mander in the planned Normandy landings in northern
France. Once the landings occurred, Patton joined his
men on 1 August 1944 and led them through western
France. After his forces overran Le Mans (8 August
1944), he told his superiors that he believed a resolute
tank attack on a narrow front would end the war quickly.
However, General Bradley ordered him into Brittany to
eliminate the last German forces there. Finishing this,
Patton’s forces crossed the Meuse River on 30 August
1944 and headed toward Metz. He found the city well-
defended by Nazi forces, and his Third Army took heavy
casualties. He was unprepared for the German offensive
of 16 December 1944 through the Ardennes; this be-
came known as the Battle of the Bulge. Although the
Germans inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans, it
was their last major battle on the western front. On 22
March 1945, Patton’s forces crossed the Rhine River and
pushed through Germany, moving south into Austria
and Czechoslovakia before the Soviet Union demanded
that he withdraw. Once the Germans had surrendered,
he was promoted to the rank of four-star general and
named as the governor of Bavaria. He was then given
command of the Fifteenth Army.
On 9 December 1945, one day before he was to
return to the United States, Patton was involved in a
jeep accident in which he suffered horrific injuries. Para-
lyzed from the neck down, he lingered for nearly two
weeks in a hospital near Heidelberg. On 21 December,
he died of an embolism that went to his brain. Following
a state funeral in Luxembourg Cathedral, he was laid to
rest in the U.S. Military Cemetery in Hamm, outside
of Luxembourg, Belgium, where some 30,000 American
soldiers killed in the Second World War were buried.
George Patton, known as “Old Blood and Guts,”
kept a diary of his exploits in wartime from July 1942
until 5 December 1945, just four days before he was
killed. Later published as War as I Knew It in 1947, it
contains a letter Patton wrote about what he thought of
his own role in the war:
I can say this, that throughout the campaign in
Europe I know of no error I made except that
of failing to send a Combat Command to take
Hammelburg. Otherwise, my operations were, to
me, strictly satisfactory. In every case, practically
throughout the campaign, I was under wraps
from the Higher Command. This may havebeen a good thing, as perhaps I am too impetu-
ous. However, I do not believe I was, and feel
that had I been permitted to go all out, the war
would have ended sooner and more lives would
have been saved. Particularly I think this state-
ment applies to the time when, in the early days
of September [1944], we were halted, owing to
the desire, or necessity, on the part of General
Eisenhower in backing montgomery’s move to
the north. At that time there were no question of
doubt but that we could have gone through and
on across the Rhine within ten days. This would
have saved a great many thousand men.References: Wellard, James Howard, The Man in a Hel-
met: The Life of General Patton (London: Eyre & Spottis-
woode, 1947); Mellor, William Bancroft, Patton: Fighting
Man (New York: Putnam, 1946); Army Times editors,
Warrior: The Story of General George S. Patton (New York:
Putnam, 1967); Ayer, Frederick, Before the Colors Fade:
Portrait of a Soldier, George S. Patton (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1964); Allen, Robert S., Lucky Forward: The His-
tory of Patton’s Third U.S. Army (New York: Vanguard
Press, 1947); Farago, Ladislas, The Last Days of Patton
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); Patton, George S., War
as I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947).Paullus Macedonicus, Lucius Aemilius
(Lucius Aemilius Paulus) (ca. 229–160 b.c.)
Roman general
Lucius Aemilius Paullus was born about 229 b.c., the
son and namesake of a military leader and Roman con-
sul who was killed fighting the Carthaginians at the
Battle of Cannæ (216 b.c.), the key clash in the Second
Punic War (218–202 b.c.). He was a member of the
Aemilii Paullii, a noted Roman family of great wealth
and influence in Roman affairs. Paullus served in the
Roman military as a tribune before being elected as a
curule aedile (a civil office similar to mayor) in 193 b.c.
Two years later, he was elected as praetor and subse-
quently went to what is now Spain, where he fought
for two years against the Lusitanians, a nomadic tribe.
He was elected as a consul for the first time in 182 b.c.,
and the following year he fought the Ingauni in Liguria
in northeast Italy.
In 171 b.c., King Perseus of Macedon defeated the
Romans at Callicinus, setting off the Third Macedo-pAulluS mAceDonicuS, luciuS AemiliuS