George S. Patton
“We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours."
Since I've started this website, I've received hundreds of requests where people tell me who they think deserves a spot in the Hall of Badassitude and why. It should stand as a testament to this man's reputation as being an unstoppable face-smashing motherfucker that over the past four years I have, far and away, received more requests for him than anyone else. The name Patton is synonymous with a punch in the face and a karate chop to the testicles, and with Memorial Day right around the corner it's time to give this American hero his due.
As a young man growing up in San Gabriel, California, George Smith Patton Jr. cultivated a love for all things awesome and asskicking-related. He studied the greatest works of Classical badassery, read any military history book he could get his hands on, and spent long evenings listening to his father's buddies swap tales about shooting peoples' faces off in the American Civil War. Basically, Georgie pretty much knew he wanted to be the second coming of Hannibal before he even knew how to write a capital letter "Z" in cursive.
Patton spent one year at the Virginia Military Institute before transferring to West Point, where he graduated and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Cavalry. At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Patton represented the U.S. in an event known as the Modern Pentathalon. This event basically was a combination of all the major Badass Food Groups: Fencing, shooting, horseback riding, swimming, and running. Shit, if they threw in a "scoring with hot chicks" component, it would be the ultimate test of all the skills required to be completely fucking awesome. Plus, adding a sixth event would make it a "sextathalon" which is fitting because HUH HUH HUH HUH.
Anyways, Patton performed well in every single event and ended up finishing fifth in the final standings. However there is some controversy regarding this final score, because during the handgun accuracy portion of the competition Patton was ruled by the official scorers as having completely missed the target on his final shot. Patton argued that the bullet didn't miss the target, but instead passed through the bullet hole from the shot before - the modern-day equivalent of Robin Hood splitting the arrow at the archery competition, but instead of being hailed as the greatest and most accurate shooter in history, Patton was completely hosed out of a chance at winning the Gold Medal in Badassitude. Patton also receives further badass points in my book because while the Olympic standard for the shooting competition was a .22 caliber round, Patton rejected that pussy ass shit and used his .38 instead, because what good is handgun accuracy if your bullets are too puny to inflict a half-decent kill shot?
After the Olympics Patton continued his study of cavalry tactics, horsemanship, and fencing, and eventually was certified as a Master of the Sword. Now, I'm not really sure what that is, but I picture it having something to do with raising your saber over your head, shouting, "BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!", and transforming your cat into a bloodthirsty tiger, all of which is pretty fucking balls-out. He was such a badass swordfighter that the Army asked him to help design the Model 1913 Cavalry Saber, a design known today as the "Patton Saber."
But even though he knew he was totally rad, George was still dying to test out his skills on the battlefield. He finally got the opportunity to do so while serving under the famous General "Black Jack" Pershing. Patton went into Mexico as part of the Punitive Expedition to try and hunt downPancho Villa, and while the expedition itself was pretty much a complete bungling clusterfuck of a mission, Patton did manage to track down and kill two high-ranking bodyguards in Villa's army, capping them in the head with his custom-made badass matching pair of ivory-handled, nickel-plated Colt .45 Peacemaker revolvers, probably during an epic John Woo-esque shootout in an old abandoned Spanish Mission complete with white doves and guys getting their heads blown off in super-slow motion while sad violin music plays in the background.
"I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!"
Pershing was duly impressed with Patton's pistol skills and his no-bullshit attitude, so he took Patton with him to France to fight in World War I as the commander of the newly-commissioned United States Tank Corps. Patton quickly rose through the ranks, earning a battlefield promotion to Colonel, winning a Distinguished Service Cross, and getting shot in the thigh by a machine gun during the Battle of Saint Mihiel. After the war, he would often times get drunk, drop his pants, and tell everyone he was the, "half-assed General," which is kind of awesome.
Between the World Wars, Patton became an advocate for armored warfare, and went to work designing, organizing, and training the next generation of American tankers. By the time the Germans needed their butts kicked once again in 1942, Patton was already a Major General in command of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division.
It wasn't long before "Old Blood and Guts" would get his chance to prove his over-the-top Generaling skillz. Early in the North Africa Campaign, the U.S. II Corps was under the command of some dude named Lloyd Fredenhall. For the first couple months of Operation Torch, Fredenhall was getting his ass kicked up and down the northern coast of Africa by the notorious German General Erwin Fucking Rommell. Rommel was pretty much in the business of making the Allies his bitch all over the place, and eventually General Dwight D. Eisenhower got sick of hearing about how the Allies were getting kicked in the sack every day so he yanked command away from Fredenhall and gave it to Patton. Together with the British 8th Army under General Bernard Montgomery, the Allies were able to push the Nazis out of Africa once and for all. After Africa, Patton invaded Sicily in 1943, where the rapid assault of his men helped the Americans capture the strategic stronghold of Palermo. After that, it was back to France to gear up for D-Day: The Big Ass Allied Invasion of Normandy.
By this time, Patton's epic, profanity-riddled, blood-and-guts speeches and his no-fucking-around attitude had already earned him quite a colorful reputation among his soldiers and the American public, but it was Patton's success at the helm of the U.S. 3rd Army in Europe that would cement his legend as one of the 20th Century's most badass military commanders.
During the Normandy Campaign, Patton burned rubber through the French countryside like a wild ass-kicking maniac, covering nearly sixty miles in the span of about two weeks, encircling and outflanking numerous German defenders and liberating most of northern France from Nazi control. He knew that his armor wasn't going to be able to slug it out with the German Tigers and Panthers, so he preferred to use the Allied forces' superior mobility and speed to its fullest extent. He outmaneuvered the enemy, surrounded them, and then pretty much disregarded all classical and traditional military tactics in favor of full-on balls-out attacks. The only thing that was able to slow down the 3rd Army in Normandy was when they ran out of gas, and even that was a temporary problem.
Patton's full-throttle, "kick them in the crotch repeatedly until they die from it and then continue kicking them a couple more times just for good measure" leadership strategy was a good representation of the man himself. He was headstrong, cocky, stubborn and ambitious, and he didn't tolerate anything less than the best from his men. He did his best to drill a sense of discipline and toughness among his soldiers through strict rules of conduct and rousing speeches, and he once got in deep shit for slapping a man right in the face because he was being a pussy and bitching about being shell-shocked. For the most part, he was largely unpopular with his soldiers, but even so, his confidence rubbed off on them and deep down they all trusted him to get the job done and get them home alive. He didn't let them down.
"Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then son-of-a-bitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don't agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I'll be cutting the bastard's throat."
While he pounded the Huns up and down the hedgerows of Normandy, Patton is perhaps best known for his actions in the Ardennes Forest during the "Battle of the Bulge" in 1944. Hitler's elite SS Panzer units made a last-ditch mad dash towards Antwerp in an effort to break through the Allied lines, and a large portion of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division was besieged in the town of Bastogne. Patton's 3rd Army disengaged the enemy they were fighting and blitzed north at top speed several hundred miles in the middle of a goddamned snowstorm to break the German lines and end the offensive. Afterwards, they marched east, liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and captured more Germans than any other unit in the war. When Hitler finally capped himself in the head and the rest of Germany was like, "fuck it you guys win just stop hitting us already", Patton wanted to just keep marching east and fight the Soviet Union while, "the bayonets were still sharpened," but luckily for the Russkies he never had the chance to stick it to those Commie bastards - he died on 21 December 1945 as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident a few days earlier.
George S. Patton is one of the most hardass motherfuckers the United States has to offer and one of the most widely-recognized badasses to ever live. No legitimate discussion of badassitude is complete without him.
"There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won't have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton! "