27. George Patton and the “Abandoned Rear”
After the D-Day landings and the breakout from the Normandy beachhead, George S. Patton led the US Third Army on a great sweep in the summer of 1944, that liberated a huge chunk of France. It was Patton’s second go-around in France, having fought there once before during WWI. In that earlier conflict, Patton had received a visit from a local village mayor, who tearfully asked why he had not been told a Doughboy had died nearby.
As Patton described it: “Being unaware of this sad fact and not liking to admit it to a stranger, I stalled until I found out that no one was dead. However, he insisted that we visit the ‘grave’“. When they got there, Patton and his subordinate officers found a freshly covered pit with sticks forming a cross and holding a plaque that read “Abandoned Rear”. It was the start of a weird comedy of errors.
