WWII GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON
The paternal ancestors of WWII hero, Gen. George S. Patton, were from Virginia, originally Fredericksburg and later Culpeper.
His grandfather, Virginia Military Institute graduate George Patton, became Colonel of the 22nd Virginia and served in the Shenandoah Valley and on the mountainous front between Virginia and West Virginia for Virginia and the Southern Confederacy.
George suffered a mortal wound on 19 September 1864 at the Third Battle of Winchester as his brigade was overwhelmed by Federal cavalry.
The Patton family gave others (a total of eight) to the Confederate Army, all serving with the Army of Northern Virginia. Four did not survive the war. Most famously, George Patton’s brother Waller Tazewell Patton died at the head of the 7th Virginia during Pickett’s Charge.
The war and its aftermath ruined the Pattons, and in 1866 Col. Patton’s widow (the grandmother of Gen. George S. Patton) packed up the family to join cousins in California.
But for the War Between the States, General Patton would have been born in Virginia.
George S. Patton in 1919 (with his father) visiting the grave his grandfather, George S. Patton Sr. in Winchester, VA
Waller T. Patton
Patton's patriotic history influenced him greatly. Growing up playing with his grandfather’s sword from Third Winchester and his meeting with John S. Mosby with is tales of fighting in Virginia inspired the young George Patton to become a soldier.
A lifelong horseman, Patton learned to ride on the saddle that his grandfather had been using when mortally wounded and so it was fitting that Patton followed his father and grandfather to VMI for a year before transferring to West Point.
Patton’s gray ghosts touched him as he lay wounded in the Argonne on 26 September 1918 (a few weeks before his 33rd birthday). Then Col. commanding a tank battalion and while leading his tanks into battle on foot, German machine-gun fire clipped him in the leg and he fell wounded in a shell hole where he lay for several hours before evacuation.
His thoughts turned to his grandfather, who died at 33.
Patton later recalled also seeing visions of his ancestors looking down in approval of his gallantry, also saying “Not yet” – as if he had more to do before dying.
“I would never have gone forward when I got hit had I not thought of you and my ancestors,” he later told his wife.
From that moment on, Patton was ever more conscious of having a destiny and a duty to uphold the tradition of his Confederate forbearers – a feeling that guided his actions for the rest of his life.
Patton is not alone. There is a long list of modern military heroes with Confederate blood running through their veins.
This Memorial Day, let us remember the contribution of our Southern heroes to the victories fighting the real Nazis in WWII...not the imagined ones the Social Justice Warriors pronounce with their Cancel Culture today.
Let us never forget the contribution the Southern people
have given to America and for liberty. Though outmanned and out spent, the South has nothing to regret in the honorable defense she gave for her homeland.
The Brave Beget the Brave
LEST WE FORGET
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