We will just have to kick the Germans in the pants so hard that even the British will notice when they see a lot of bare-assed Germans running for their lives, crying for their mothers and their goddamned Fuehrer!

Warned Lucian to get more sleep, since he'll be the senior ground commander for Operation Decatur. No problems likely with Clarence [Huebner, commanding 1^stInfantry Division] tomorrow. He's as tough as Black Jack [Pershing].

I haven't felt so good in months. The planning for Operation Decatur is going forward at a gallop. Lucian may not be getting the extra sleep he needs, though. I hope he won't wear himself down to the point of being cautious.L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace! [boldness, boldness, always boldness!] has to be our motto. Give the Germans five extra minutes and they'll counterattack. Give the Navy ten minutes, and they'll find excuses for not doing something.

Visited 1^stInfantry Division. Clarence is what they need, even though I suspect it will be a while before they know it and a long time before they like it. You could sum up his General Orders in two sentences: you will look like soldiers and you will stop feeling sorry for yourself. I still want to go over my indorsement to Terry's and Ted's [Terry Allen and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., former commander and assistant commander of the 1^stInfantry Division] relief, to make sure there's nothing in it that might prejudice their getting new commands. The Big Red One hit the Torch beaches ready to fight, and it is about the only goddamned division we had that you can say this about.

Went to a field hospital after lunch with Clarence. They had several new admissions, one with a leg just ampotated, another blinded. I pinned Purple Hearts on both of them. I added for the blind boy that he had one consolation-he didn't have to look at my ugly old mug while I was decorating him.

One of those "combat exhaustion" cases was sitting on the last cot. At least that's what he looked like. No wounds and when I asked him what he was here for, he said, "I guess I just can't take it."

I glared at him, and he started crying. I looked at him a second time, and it looked to me like he might be really sick. Malaria or cat fever or the runs can turn almost anybody into somebody who thinks he can't take it which is exactly what I told him. I also asked him if he'd been examined, loud enough so that all the medical people should have heard me.

Then I told Al to bring in the emergency supplies, because if an American soldier crying because he thinks he's a coward isn't an emergency then what the hell is? I apolegized to the nurses for the language and also for prescribing without a license but I told the combat exhausted boy (I never did get his name) that he shouldn't drink any of what I was giving him until he'd seen the doctors and had a good meal and maybe some sleep.

Then I told him that everything looks different after a night's sleep or a few. Even if it was something like seeing your buddy blown to pieces, after you sleep you remember that you have other buddies who might live if you go back and be there. It's not being a coward to be scared sometimes, when you're sick or hurt or you've really been in the shit (another apology) and in fact there aren't any cowards in the American Army. I ordered him to never think of himself as a coward and he stood up at attention and saluted.

Then he looked more like he was going to laugh than cry, and I thought I was going to get carried away and start crying, and that would have been a hell of a thing to happen to a general. I remembered all the boys I'd led in the Argonne, where just me and Joe Di Angelo came out alive. I handed over the whiskey and got out of there.

I felt almost all right by the time we got back to Palermo. I felt completely all right after I heard that the Navy was borrowing back some landing craft from the British for Operation Decatur. If the Germans do bomb Palermo or any of the other assembly ports, we still go on time and with everything we need.

Letter,

Lt. Col. Perrin H. Long, Medical Corps,

to the Surgeon, NATOUSA,

August 4, 1943

subject: Visit to Patients in Receiving Tent of the 15th Evacuation Hospital by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton:

Exhibit #1-Pvt. Joseph L. Shrieber, K Company, 26^thInfantry, 1^stDivision-… concluded visit by saying that there are no cowards in the American Army and that he ordered Pvt. Shrieber never to think of himself as one.

Subj. pvt. stood to attention and saluted Gen. Patton, and so did all other ambulatory patients and medical personnel. Gen. Patton appeared extremely moved by this and became inarticulate. 1^stLt. Gayle Hadley asked if he needed any help, but he smiled and shook his head, then left the tent.

Lt. Hadley immediately asked me if Gen. Patton might require medical attention.

Then she said that she had been trying to find something to say to combat fatigue cases, because very few of them seemed to be happy about getting out of the lines. Subj. pvt. had been ordered back three times with a diagnosis of combat fatigue and each time asked to return to unit. He had been in the Army eight months and with the 1^stDivision since June 1943.

Private Shrieber's diagnosis was acute dysentery, possibly amoebic, with a temperature of 102.5 degrees, frequent headaches and stools, and severe dehydration. His stool test was negative for malarial parasites. Bed rest and fluids were recommended.

I have advised all personnel present during Gen. Patton's visit to treat his words as entirely confidential. I also sincerely hope that it will be possible for Gen. Patton to grant permission for his words to be circulated, if not generally then at least among medical personnel. He may have found a much more effective way of telling combat fatigue cases that they are still soldiers than any the Medical Corps has yet developed.

Interview with Captain Gayle Hadley Jorgensen, U. S. Army Nurse Corps (Ret.), November 25, 1963:

I suppose you'd have to say I was the guilty party in letting what General Patton said get out. Many of us who heard him were almost in tears when he left, and some of us did break down afterwards. I think his aide, Major Stiller, knew that, because he left two bottles of whiskey, not one, even if the second was something from Texas and pretty awful.

But anyway, I wasn't quite myself when I got off duty, or when I got to my boyfriend for our date. He was married, so I won't tell you his name. It was just one of those things that happen in wartime, when you're both alone a long way from home. I was also thinking of how after one Luftwaffe raid it might have been me sitting on a cot shaking and crying, and nobody to tell me that being scared wasn't the same as being a coward.

So I told my friend, and he said he was glad to hear that some high brass understood what it could be like, when you had to fly straight and level on the last ten miles of a bombing run with fighters coming in from all sides except the one that the flak was using, and sometimes even that. He also promised not to tell.

That's why we broke up, incidentally. He really didn't keep the promise. Like a lot of Air Force officers, he knew a reporter. He talked to the reporter, the reporter decided that this was too good a story to sit on, and it wound up embarrassing General Patton, or so I've heard.

It's too late to apologize to Old Georgie. But I hope he'll understand that ever since that day, all of us who heard him are just a little prouder of having worn the same uniform as he did.