Lucky Forward

NOT through excessive modesty but because of his devotion to his chief. Colonel Allen would probably be the first to admit that his Lucky Forward is of small consequence compared with General Patton’s lately published War As I Knew It. And he would be right.

Nevertheless Allen’s hook does give a vivid picture of the man he calls “the greatest battle commander produced in this country since the Civil War.” Allen’s heroworship is so marked that one wonders why he excludes that war. Even Stonewall Jackson had his eclipses; Patton had none. Allen brings out the great breadth of military knowledge that underlay Patton’s flashing genius. “To Patton, war was a passionate pursuit ... he lived it, thought it, and worked at it, ardently and unceasingly, every day of his life.”Allen might have added that America has produced at least one soldier, passionate, profound, and wholly devoted to his profession in each of our three great wars: Jackson, Summerall, and Patton. Whatever one may think of their philosophy of life, such rare men are invaluable in a crisis.

Allen rightly ignores the petty carping about Patton, on the slapping incident, and so forth. But he does bring out Patton’s aggressive truculence and flamboyant selfassertion, dominant characteristics which explain to some extent why his superiors and colleagues sometimes withheld their complete confidence.

In dealing with military operations and various incidents of the campaigns. Allen has apparently taken much from Patton’s book. In doing so he has become plus royaliste que le roi. For Eisenhower, Montgomery. Hodges, Devers, and Lee he has few if any good words and many hard ones. Even Marshall and Bradley appear none too well. Patton and his army need no such violent and unsupported advocacy, nor does Patton’s book support it. Allen would have been better advised to have heeded Douglas Freeman’s comment: “The picture of the leaders will be clear enough in two or three decades for the biographer to understand his task. It is to be hoped that General Patton will be among the first to attract a competent biographer, and that others will leave him alone.”

SHERMAN MILES