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Upstarts
So by the time Eric Peach took command, we had learned pride in our capacity to
do our jobs, individually and as members of teams, with little supervision and less
prodding. He had an outfit that operated well, and he was smart enough to stand back and
watch us do it. Not that we didn't still have a lot to learn about combat, but by the time
we reached Gravelotte, we were used to it.
The 359th Infantry Regiment got a new commander too. Col Bacon, the one who wanted
to have our CP with his, was transferred to the 95th Division, where I understand he did
well. He was replaced by a Lt Col Raymond Bell, whom Van Fleet brought with him.
"Fireball" Pond, the commander of the 1st Bn, had known Bell before - probably Bell
was an ROTC instructor when Pond was a college student. At any rate, I noticed that
Pond, who was now a Lt Col himself, spoke very deferentially to the newcomer.
Bell soon won the respect of almost everyone except his second-in-command, Lt
Col Don Gorton. Gorton thought that Bell made too many trips back to higher
headquarters. "Politicking," he called it. What I noticed was that when Gorton was left in
command, the regiment always slowed to a standstill, and that when Bell returned, it
immediately forged ahead.
Sometime in late October, we got to see a couple of other commanders. All the
officers in the Division down through the rank of captain attended a meeting in a big hall,
which I think must have been the auditorium of a school building in an abandoned
village. The speaker of the day was General George S. Patton, commander of Third
Army, a man of enormous reputation. And with him on the stage was Lt Gen Walker,
commander of the XX Corps, to which the 90th Division was currently assigned.
I was anxious to hear and see Patton. I had been gone somewhere when he came
and spoke to the division in England before the invasion, but I gathered he had made a
poor impression then. Some people thought a general officer should be able to speak
three words without one of them being an obscenity. In addition, he was then notorious
for having slapped a soldier who was hospitalized for combat fatigue.
But that was ancient history. What we remembered now was that while we had
been in Gen Bradley's First Army we were hopelessly and helplessly bogged down in the
hedgerows of Normandy, and that as soon as we were switched into Patton's Third Army
we had suddenly become unstoppable. I kept an open mind, but I was ready to like him.
Patton was a big, imposing man - looked like George C. Scott - with a shiny
helmet bearing three silver stars [or four, but I don't think he had been promoted to full
General yet], and he wore a wide leather belt with two pistols in their holsters. But his
voice almost ruined the effect: it was weak, high-pitched, and strained.
He started out, "I don't know just why I came to see you gentlemen. I happened to
be in the area, and I thought you might be hurt if I didn't drop over. I came because I
wanted to tell another outfit what to do. But I don't have to tell the 90th Infantry Division
what to do. You sons-of-bitches know what to do!"
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