August 3rd, 1943, Lieutenant General George S. Patton was having the best day of his career. He had just learned that General Dwight D. Eisenhower was going to award him the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism. Three weeks earlier, during the invasion of Sicily, Patton had personally commanded troops on the beaches at Jella when a German counterattack threatened to push American forces back into the sea.
Patton had stood in the open under enemy fire, directing naval gunfire and rallying his men. He had saved the invasion, and now Eisenhower was going to pin a metal on his chest. That afternoon, Patton decided to visit his wounded soldiers at the 15th Evacuation Hospital near Nicicoia. He wanted to shake hands with the men who had bled for victory.
He wanted to thank them personally. What happened in that hospital tent would nearly destroy everything Patton had built. It would trigger a cover up involving 60 reporters. It would bring politicians in Washington howling for his scalp. And it would take Eisenhower risking his own career to save America’s most aggressive general from the men who wanted him gone forever.
Patton arrived at the 15th evacuation hospital around noon. The commander, Colonel Donald Courier, walked him through the recovery ward. Patton moved from bed to bed, shaking hands with wounded soldiers. He praised each man. He patted heads. He told them what a fine job they had done. The nurses watched as the famous general with the pearl-handled revolvers brought tears to the eyes of boys who had faced German tanks and artillery.
Then Patton came to a soldier sitting on a stool in the middle of the ward. Private Charles HQ, 27 years old from Mishawaka, Indiana. He was wearing the lining of a steel helmet and appeared to have no visible wounds. Patton asked what was wrong with him. Cool said he was nervous.
He said he guessed he just couldn’t take it. Something snapped in Patton. He called Cool a coward. He called him a yellow-bellied bastard. He slapped the soldier across the face with his gloves. Then he grabbed Koul by the collar, dragged him to the entrance of the tent, and kicked him out into the Sicilian sun.
Don’t admit this son of a Patton bellowed at the doctor staring at him in shock. I don’t want yellow-bellied bastards like him hiding their cowardice around here, stinking up this place of honor. Then Patton walked out and continued his tour of the front lines. One week later, on August 10th, Patton visited another evacuation hospital near Santaphano.
His seventh army was closing in on Msina. Victory was within reach. In the ward, Patton encountered Private Paul G. Bennett, a field artillery gunner from North Carolina. Bennett was shaking. He was dehydrated and feverish. He had watched his best friend get torn apart by enemy fire. Bennett had been in combat since the North Africa campaign.
He had never sherked his duty, but something had broken inside him that he couldn’t explain. Patton asked what was wrong. Bennett said it was his nerves. He said he couldn’t stand the shelling anymore. This time, Patton didn’t just slap him. He pulled his pistol. He shoved the weapon in Bennett’s face. He screamed that Bennett was a godamn coward and a disgrace to the army.
Then he slapped Bennett across the face so hard the sound echoed through the tent. When Bennett started crying, Patton slapped him again. Doctors and nurses rushed toward them. The hospital commander physically stepped between Patton and Bennett to stop the assault. Patton stormed out, still screaming about cowards and mingers.
That night, Patton wrote in his diary. He said companies should deal with such men, and if they sherk their duty, they should be tried for cowardice and shot. Word spread fast. The nurse who witnessed the second incident told her boyfriend, a captain in public affairs. He told reporters. Within days, every American and British correspondent covering the Seventh Army knew what Patton had done.
60 journalists, all of them had the story. All of them knew that striking a subordinate was a court marshal offense. All of them understood that this could destroy Patton’s career. Not one of them wrote a word. Demory Bess of the Saturday Evening Post took the lead. He gathered the correspondents together and organized an informal investigation.
They interviewed the doctors. They interviewed the nurses. They interviewed soldiers who had witnessed both incidents. Then Bess went to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Alers and presented his findings. He told Eisenhower that the reporters had agreed to kill the story. We’re Americans first and correspondents second, Best said.
But every mother in America would figure her son is next to be slapped. This cannot come out. Eisenhower was already aware of the incidents. The hospital commanders had filed official reports that worked their way up the chain. Now he had to decide what to do about his most aggressive general. Eisenhower understood exactly what was at stake.
If he relieved Patton, he would lose the most feared combat commander in the American army. The Germans respected Patton more than any other Allied general. They tracked his movements. They feared his aggression. Removing him would hand the enemy a psychological victory. But if Eisenhower protected Patton, and the story came out later, it would look like a coverup.
Politicians would demand answers. The public would be outraged. Eisenhower’s own career could be destroyed. Eisenhower dictated a letter to Patton that walked a careful line. I clearly understand that firm and drastic measures are at times necessary in order to secure the desired objectives, Eisenhower wrote. But this does not excuse brutality, abuse of the sick, nor exhibition of uncontrollable temper in front of subordinates.
Eisenhower said he was not opening a formal investigation, but his warning was sharp. I must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness. Privately, Eisenhower told his staff what he really believed. If this thing ever gets out, they’ll be howling for Patton’s scalp.
That will be the end of Georgie’s service in this war. I simply cannot let that happen. Patton is indispensable to the war effort. He’s one of the guarantors of our victory. Eisenhower ordered Patton to apologize. Not just to the two soldiers, to everyone who had witnessed the incidents, to every division in the seventh army. Patton resisted.
He thought he had done nothing wrong. But Eisenhower was not asking. He was ordering. On August 21st, Patton went to Paul Bennett’s bedside and shook his hand. He apologized. That night, he wrote in his diary that it was rather a commentary on justice when an army commander has to soft soap a skullker to plate public opinion.
Then Patton went on a tour of his divisions. At each stop, he gathered as many men as possible and gave a speech. He explained that he had conducted himself in a way unbecoming to an American officer. He apologized. Patton finished his apology tour and waited to see if his career would survive.
For 3 months, the story stayed buried. 60 reporters kept their word. Then on November 21st, 1943, at 700 p.m. Eastern time, a radio commentator named Drew Pearson opened his weekly broadcast with a sensational story. Pearson reported that Lieutenant General George S. Patton had struck a soldier in a field hospital in Sicily.
He said Patton had been severely reprimanded by General Eisenhower. He added that he didn’t expect Patton to be used in important combat again. The story exploded across America. Pearson was known for breaking stories that other journalists wouldn’t touch. He had sources everywhere. He had no loyalty to gentleman’s agreements he hadn’t been part of.
The next day, Eisenhower’s headquarters released a statement saying Patton had never been reprimanded at any time by General Eisenhower or by anybody else in this theater. It was technically true. Eisenhower had written a letter of censure, not a formal reprimand. But the denial fooled no one. Congress erupted. Representative Jed Johnson of Oklahoma called Patton’s conduct despicable.
He demanded that Patton be removed from command immediately. Representative Charles Hovind of Iowa, himself a combat veteran of the First World War, said that tyrants like Patton had no place in the army. Senator Robert Reynolds of North Carolina declared that Patton should be brought home and forced to apologize to the American people.
Newspapers across the country ran editorials demanding Patton scalp. Letters poured into the War Department. Some defended Patton. Many more condemned him. The 60 reporters who had kept the story quiet now had to explain themselves. Some admitted they had made a deal with Eisenhower. The question now was simple.
Would Eisenhower sacrifice Patton to satisfy the politicians? Or would he stand by his general? Eisenhower refused to break. He sent a message to the War Department defending his decision to retain Patton. He explained that Patton was too valuable to lose. He cited the Sicily campaign success. He argued that Patton’s abilities as a combat commander outweighed his failures as a human being.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson backed Eisenhower publicly. He told Congress that the decision to retain Patton was a military judgment that should be left to the commander in the field. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall also supported Eisenhower’s decision. He sent a private message reminding people of what President Lincoln had said when critics demanded he fire Ulissiz Grant.
I can’t spare this man. He fights. The comparison was deliberate. Grant had been called a drunk. Grant had been called a butcher. Grant had won the Civil War. Patton had slapped two soldiers. Patton might win this war. In the middle of the firestorm, something unexpected happened. Private Charles Coul, the first soldier Patton had slapped, spoke to reporters.
He didn’t condemn Patton. He said he thought the general was suffering a little battle fatigue himself. Koul had returned to combat after his time in the hospital. He would later land at Normandy on D-Day with his unit. He had no desire to destroy the career of the general who had humiliated him. Paul Bennett, the second soldier, also returned to duty.
He served throughout the rest of the war. He never publicly attacked Patton. The men Patton had called cowards proved they weren’t cowards. They went back to fighting, and they showed more grace toward Patton than Patton had shown toward them. The public controversy eventually faded. But Patton’s punishment continued.
For 11 months, George S. Patton held no combat command. He sat in his palace in Polmo while the war raged on without him. His seventh army was stripped away. Units were transferred to prepare for the invasion of Italy and the eventual assault on France. He watched Omar Bradley, his former subordinate, get promoted.
In September 1943, Bradley was selected to command the first United States Army forming in England to prepare for the invasion of France. It was the command Patton had wanted. It was the command Patton believed he deserved. Eisenhower said the decision had been made before the slapping incidents became public. Patton didn’t believe it.
The hardest thing for Patton wasn’t the criticism. It wasn’t the newspapers calling him a brute. It was sitting idle while other men fought the war he had trained his whole life to fight. Then Eisenhower found a way to use Patton’s disgrace. In early 1944, the Allies were planning the invasion of France.
They needed to convince the Germans that the main attack would come at Padle rather than at Normandy. where it would actually land. They created a phantom army called the first United States Army Group. It existed only on paper, made of inflatable tanks, wooden aircraft, and fake radio traffic. But a phantom army needed a believable commander.
It needed someone the Germans feared. It needed George S. Patton. Eisenhower summoned Patton to England and put him in command of the fake army. German intelligence was convinced Patton would lead the main invasion. They respected him too much to believe the Allies would waste him on a secondary attack. On June 6th, 1944, the real invasion hit Normandy.
The Germans were caught off guard. Even after D-Day, they believed Normandy was a faint. They kept divisions waiting at Cala that could have crushed the beach head. By the time they realized the truth, it was too late. The slapping scandal had kept Patton out of the D-Day command, but it had also made him the perfect decoy.
On August 1st, 1944, George S. Patton finally returned to combat. He took command of the Third Army as it activated in France. Within weeks, his tanks were racing across the countryside at speeds no one had thought possible. He broke out of Normandy and swept through Britany. He turned east and drove toward Paris.
The Germans who had waited for him at Klay now faced him in the field. They discovered that the reality was worse than the legend. Patton pushed his men harder than any American general. He demanded speed, aggression, constant attack. His third army’s advance was one of the fastest in military history. The Battle of the Bulge, the crossing of the Rine, the drive into Germany.
Every major operation in the final year of the war featured Patton’s third army at the point of attack. When Germany surrendered in May 1945, Patton’s third army had advanced farther and faster than any Allied force. They had captured more enemy territory. They had taken more prisoners. They had killed more Germans. The politicians who had demanded Patton’s head now celebrated him as a hero.
The newspapers that had called him a brute now called him a genius. 11 months of exile, a national scandal, his career nearly destroyed. And in the end, Patton proved that Eisenhower had been right to save him. The slapping incidents were not forgotten. They remain part of his complicated legacy. But they did not define him. His victories defined him.
Eisenhower had made a choice. Protect his general or sacrifice him to satisfy the politicians. He chose to protect Patton because he believed America needed its most aggressive commander to win the war. The 60 reporters who sat on the story for 3 months made the same choice. They decided that defeating Hitler mattered more than breaking the story.
They decided that American soldiers lives mattered more than journalistic glory. Drew Pearson thought he was exposing a scandal. He was actually exposing a choice that the military and the press had already made together. The choice to put victory ahead of everything else. George S. Patton died in December 1945 from injuries sustained in a car accident in Germany.
He never faced a court marshal for the slapping incidents. He never paid any official price beyond those 11 months of exile. Private Charles Koul returned to Indiana after the war. He worked in a factory in South Bend until he died of a heart attack in 1971. He never sued. He never wrote a tell all book. He just went on with his life.
Paul Bennett also survived the war. He lived quietly with his memories of what Patton had done to him in that hospital tent. The slapping incidents revealed something true about George S. Patton. He was capable of cruelty. He was capable of losing control. He was capable of treating vulnerable men with contempt.
He was also capable of winning battles that other generals could not win. He was capable of pushing his army to achieve what no one thought possible. History doesn’t judge men by their worst moments alone. It judges them by the sum of what they did. George S. Patton slapped two soldiers in Sicily. He also helped win the Second World War.
Both things are true. Both things matter. For Eisenhower, for Marshall, for the 60 reporters who kept the secret, the answer was clear. They saved Patton because they needed him. They saved Patton because victory required men who would fight. And when the war was won, no one remembered the politicians who demanded Patton’s scalp.
They remembered the general who delivered victory.
