Details
PATTON, George S. Jr. Typed letter signed ("G S Patton Jr.") as Commander, Third U.S. Army, to Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman (Patton's former aide-de-camp) in Boston, Headquarters, 3rd U.S. Army [in southern Germany], 21 September 1945. 1 full page, 4to, on Patton's 3rd Army stationery, slight yellowing at edges.
KEEPING "THE DARK AND DEADLY SECRET" OF "WAR AS I KNEW IT"
"I just had a letter from the Secretary of War, Mr. Patterson, in which he expressed the hope that I would notify all the people who had received copies of 'War As I Knew It' that it must be kept a dark and deadly secret. I know, of course, that your natural secretiveness makes such a letter to you unnecessary, but I feel that in justice to the Secretary I should write. This thing is exactly like a decomposing corpse and as Kipling says in his poem 'Gentlemen Ranks,' 'We are dropping down the laddar rung by rung.' I think you were very lucky not to see our magnificent army sloughing away."
"War As I Knew It" comprised the war diaries of General Patton, circulated at the end of the war and published after his death (1947). Although the memoir became a best-seller, it somehow did not capture the vividness of Patton's own speech.
KEEPING "THE DARK AND DEADLY SECRET" OF "WAR AS I KNEW IT"
"I just had a letter from the Secretary of War, Mr. Patterson, in which he expressed the hope that I would notify all the people who had received copies of 'War As I Knew It' that it must be kept a dark and deadly secret. I know, of course, that your natural secretiveness makes such a letter to you unnecessary, but I feel that in justice to the Secretary I should write. This thing is exactly like a decomposing corpse and as Kipling says in his poem 'Gentlemen Ranks,' 'We are dropping down the laddar rung by rung.' I think you were very lucky not to see our magnificent army sloughing away."
"War As I Knew It" comprised the war diaries of General Patton, circulated at the end of the war and published after his death (1947). Although the memoir became a best-seller, it somehow did not capture the vividness of Patton's own speech.