World War II

Full name: George Smith Patton, Jr
Born November 11, 1885 – Died December 21, 1945
Attended Virginia Military Institute for one year before transferring to the United States Military Academy
Was required to repeat his plebe year after doing poorly in mathematics
Commissioned into the army as a cavalry officer in 1909
Competed in the pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics and finished in fifth place.
Was named the Army’s youngest-ever “Master of the Sword”
Served as an aide to Brigadier General John J. Persing in the attempt to capture Pancho Villa in 1916-1917
The first Army officer to be assigned to the United States Tank Corp.
Earned the nickname “Old Blood and Guts”. Those serving under him joked the it was “his guts and our blood.”
Rebuked and sidelined after slapping two soldiers suffering from malaria and battle fatigue during the campaign to take Sicily
Patton awarded Army Chaplain Colonel James O’Neill the Bronze Star when the weather cleared after his prayer for good weather during the Battle of the Bulge
When Patton’s Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, he ordered that approximately two thousand local Germans be rounded up and forced to march through the camp to see the atrocities firsthand.
Patton died of an embolism on December 21, 1945 after being involved in a freak automobile accident on December 9, 1945.