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Something About Commanders
There was wild applause. He had struck the right note; from now on we were on his side.
And having said he didn't have to tell us what to do, he proceeded to tell us what to do.
"I don't want you to die for your country; I want you to make that other son-of-a-bitch -
the one in the gray uniform - die for his country ....
"The average rifleman who goes into a battle fires four rounds. Sometimes he gets
excited and fires eight. Now, he starts out carrying a full cartridge belt and a couple of bandoliers
of extra ammunition - maybe a hundred rounds in all. That isn't issued to him to throwaway
because it gets too heavy to carry: that's issued to him to shoot!
"Now you go back and tell your men that General Patton wants each one of them to fire
at least 50 rounds next time he goes into an action!
"They'll tell you they don't see anything to fire at. Of course they don't! The damned
Jerries aren't stupid enough to stand up so you can shoot at 'em. You tell those men to think
where they would be if they were a Kraut and shoot there. And tell 'em to fire low. You've all
heard bullets whistle by over your head. They don't bother anybody. But when one ricochets off
the ground with that nasty screech - that puts the fear of God into a man and keeps his head
down. And a man with his head down can't fire back at you .... "
There was more, but those are the parts I remember. Maybe I lost track of the rest
because I was thinking about what he had just said. It seemed to make sense, but I didn't really
believe anyone would remember to do it in the excitement of combat.
As often happened, I was mistaken. Some liaison officer - I think it was Bill Becktold me
later about something that happened the morning after our first troops crossed the Moselle: "A
squad [12 men] was sent into a little patch of trees. I would have thought from the amount of
firing came out of those woods that it was a battalion [800-1,000 men]. And you know, they
flushed out 50 Germans!"
A commander can make a difference.
125, (126 blank)
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