Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

All I can say is that we'll have to win several more campaigns bigger and bloodier than this one before the Germans are beaten, and we'll need all the men and weapons we have and all the strength of our allies to win those victories. The war is a long way from over, and anybody who says otherwise is even crazier than I am!

Q: What about the Medal of Honor for General Gavin?

A: I can't comment on awards that haven't been officially recommended. I can say that he certainly did a heroic job completing the Anzio encirclement with his link up to the British. I can also say that if he doesn't receive it for the Anzio jump, he will have other chances. His wounds were serious, but they won't keep him off jump duty. Just as well, for the sake of the doctor who would be stuck with the job of telling him otherwise!

Q: What's next for you, General Patton?

A: That has the ultimate secret classification-nobody knows. There are going to be enough Germans to go around, though, so I'm not worried. (Looks at watch) Our time is just about up, so rather than take any more questions, I'd like to call for a minute of silence, in memory of the dead of the Italian campaign, starting with Lieutenant General Mark Clark.

(Silence)

Letter to Beatrice Patton, October 10, 1943:

… actually assigned me a plane and crew to start my trip home, so it's just possible I may be calling on you only a little while after this letter does. If they send me home by way of England, it may be quite a while, but they won't dare risk my using up all the parades and other goodies that Montgomery will want them to save for him. (Get right down to it-I think the little weasel deserves most of them. I think we puny piffling colonials taught him a few things about war.).

They have told Bradley that he can keep Fifth Army, which smells to me of his having an Army Group for routing the Germans out of the industrial North or doing some other things I can't talk about. That in turn implies something fairly imposing for your old cavalryman. You know what I want, but if the decision is to give me Army Ground Forces, it won't kill me.

One request-consider it an order, if you wish. Reserve a nice comfortable hotel suite, someplace hard for reporters to get to but with good room service. Don't pack a lot of clothes. Do pack some extra money, so we can bribe the staff to silence instead of my having to get out of bed and shoot them.

Your affectionate Georgie

P.S. I expect to be well-armed enough, even without a pistol.

More than fifty years have passed since the death of Lieutenant General George Armstrong Custer at the height of the Battle of the Bulge, yet the endless array of books and essays continue, analyzing his life, his flaws, and his downfall.

I think I've read them all, and find none exactly delineate the man the press sometimes called "Gloryhound George."

I think I can say that for I was Custer's chief aide from my discharge from an English hospital in early 1944 until his death, and spent many hours with him, both on and off duty.

Those who actually knew Custer seem to fall into one of two camps-those who think he was one of the great tactical geniuses of the Second World War, whose death was an almost-crippling blow to the postwar United States Army; and those who think he was as dangerous an egomaniac and cold-blooded politician as ever held an officer's commission, and his death was a great blessing that should have come years earlier.

So there is no misunderstanding, I will admit I fall into the latter group, even though I also remember Custer as one of the most charming and charismatic officers I've ever known, let alone served under.

His fatal flaws reach far back into the past, which is where, I'm afraid, most of our virtues and vices are rooted.

I can skip over Custer's early years as a small-town farmer's son, born in 1885, for these are all well known, and how he fought hard for an appointment to West Point, personally appealing to one of his state senators, even though the Custer family was staunchly Republican to the point of leafleting during campaigns, and the senator was a Democrat; and how his father sold their farm to give Custer money to attend the Academy.

Custer's grades in high school weren't particularly prepossessing, and his athletic performance was not that remarkable, although his football team was fairly successful. It's been noted that Custer's quarterbacking was frequently at direct odds from his coach's orders, so George's willingness to follow orders he found convenient and to disobey others came early.

Regardless of political affiliations, Custer was given the choice appointment to the class of 1909. Custer said later that he did very well in certain classes, chose to sleep through others, which gave him his standing near the bottom of his class. This is untrue- all of Custer's grades were uniformly low. He preferred his friends and pranks to his studies, and was generally popular.

At this point, he met what I consider the biggest influence in his life, the now utterly forgotten George Smith Patton, Jr.

Patton, four years older than Custer, was everything George was not. He was from an enormously rich California family, and seemed half centaur, with his string of polo ponies and race horses. He was also most reserved, again the opposite of Custer.

It was said that Patton already had the chill eye of a general, a man who could dispatch men to death without a qualm. Such might have been the case but, like many other officers who die young, that quality was never to be shown.

Custer and Patton made an ideal partnership, each having virtues the other did not, although book studies couldn't be considered a prime virtue for either of them. When they chose to work hard at something, they did very well. But mostly they did not, at least not in what the Academy considered productive. One such time-waster was their swearing competition, each trying to come up with the most colorful and obscene set of oaths. Custer told me that before that began, "I was one of the cleanest-mouthed boys in America. Afterwards… " He shook his head, then brightened. "But it surely stood me in good stead when I was dealing with those mule skinners when we were after Pancho Villa."

Patton had already been dropped a class for failing mathematics in his plebe year. But somehow the pair struggled through the Academy, and were given their lieutenants' bars in 1909. They were both commissioned into the glamorous cavalry, in spite of their low standings. Neither, in spite of accusations and sometimes boasts, was the lowest graduate, the so-called "goat."

They were posted to different regiments, but kept their correspondence fresh. Both men wrote long letters, to each other and, later, to their fiancees and then wives.

Custer took leave twice in Washington, seeking a better assignment than the dusty Western posts he was sent to.

Patton also took leaves, to play polo and, in 1912, to compete in the Stockholm Olympics, in the modern pentathlon, placing a very respectable fourth.

The beginning of the Great War found both of them, like most career soldiers, champing to see combat, worried that somehow the Allies would defeat Germany before they would have a chance at action.

But then revolutionary Mexico surprised everyone. General John J. Pershing, after assorted border outrages by the sometimes-bandit, sometimes-soldier Pancho Villa, took 10,000 men, mostly cavalry, across the border.

Patton's unit managed to trap one of Villa's main generals, General Julio Cardenas, and Patton supposedly killed Cardenas. Or so the story has it.