Patton, the piece of paper v. Patton, the person

As we read the printed words of Patton’s speech, the validity of his argument is in flux with every sentence. We weigh the opening paragraph: “See how he speaks to these men who are about to go to war—that appalling, grotesque human phenomenon, through which countless lives have been destroyed—as if he was a baseball coach, giving a pep talk before the big game.” Does the vulgarity in his language undercut his rhetoric; or does he insert obscenities into his terse, Hemingway-esque prose with calculation, so as to make himself “one of the men”? Etc. When we watch General Patton give the same speech, we realize just how incomplete, in rhetorical terms, the textual reproduction of this speech really is. That is not just to say that we miss the full effect when we read the speech, that the words are brought into sharp relief when they are delivered by a living, breathing human being and accompanied by body language. The substantive content of the printed and video versions of the speech actually differs greatly. In fact, Patton has already made half of his argument before he even utters a word.

Four stars (though incidentally, Patton would still have been a Lieutenant General in Spring 1944) tacked onto a combat helmet, worn with a dress uniform; four more stars atop each shoulder. Silver star around his neck; rows of large full-dress medals adorn one breast, shiny foreign decorations on the other. Riding crop in his left hand; shiny knee-high cavalry boots; colt 45 pistol holstered against his right hip. This is his the greatest part of Patton’s argument—that is, he is his own argument. His image says, “I may be an ‘officer,’ but I am one tough mother*&^er- tougher than any of you out there. I have seen combat; I have stared down death with my handy revolver. I am disciplined, even fastidious, where it counts; yet I am blatantly indecorous so far as concerns all those politicians and squabbling-over-meaningless-crap sissies over in headquarters.” Patton’s image is preposterous. Downright ridiculous. Yet if I was preparing to enter into a combat theater, unimaginably bloody by contemporary standards, I would much sooner be led by a tyrannical, homicidal warmonger with lots of killing experience than a well-polished bureaucrat who could type one helluva TPS report. And it is precisely this assurance which Patton conveys to the Third Army through his personal image, alongside which the outrageous verbal content of his speech seems believable, perhaps even natural.