The Day General Patton Came To Lunch

  It was one of those fortunes of war that brought me to KP duty in the officer’s mess the day that Gen. George Patton decided to come to lunch.

  We were in the battle scarred town of Saarlautern on the French/German border which we had just wrested from the hated enemy.  Our unit had completed a somewhat ingenious maneuver that had outfoxed the enemy and captured a bridge across the Saar River.

  The so-called “genius” behind it all was out regimental commander, Col. Robert Bacon, who looked every inch the part. A rugged, macho regular army type, whose adult life apparently had been dedicated to what we had just achieved.

  The word came down from Third Army headquarters that Gen. Patton had heard about our end around play and was mightily impressed.  He had decided to pay us a visit the next day.

Finding Leo Shore

How Two Jews and 24 Red Necks Agreed to Bury the Hatchet And Fight the Germans Instead

Through the years, my memory has often taken me back to the night in Normandy in 1944 when “Swede” Jensen held an M1 rifle on me, sputtering through a drunken haze;

“I’ve always wanted to kill a Jew. If you move you’re dead.”

I huddled in a corner paralyzed for perhaps 20 minutes (it seemed like hours) until Swede passed out in a stupor. I beat a hasty retreat to my tent in the compound where we were holed up in France as our unit was waiting to join Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, as he chased the Germans across Europe.