However, the II Corps surgeon felt no such qualms and took matters into his own hands by sending the report through medical channels to Eisenhower’s surgeon general in Algiers, Brig. Gen. Frederick A. Blessé.

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Patton finally began to discern just how much trouble he was in when a cable arrived from Algiers ordering him to meet Eisenhower’s liaison officer to Seventh Army, his long-time friend and confidant, Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas, at Palermo airfield the afternoon of August 20. Lucas would be carrying a personal message from Eisenhower and Patton was to listen closely to what Lucas had to tell him.

In addition to a blistering letter of reprimand from Eisenhower, Patton was ordered to apologize to the two soldiers and the medical staff of the two field hospitals. Lucas, however, suggested that Patton apologize to every unit in Seventh Army. In the weeks that followed Patton made his official apology at the two hospitals and toured his divisions and regiments where he offered a muted regret for his actions. Although others would have been humiliated by such a series of public acts, Patton accepted it with equanimity. However, the price was exceptionally high. The war went on without him and in the months following the slapping incidents, Patton was left behind to reside in isolated splendor in the great palace of Palermo, much as Napoleon had done during his exile on the nearby island of Elba. Gradually, his Seventh Army was stripped away to meet new Allied commitments in Italy and in England for Operation Overlord preparations. It was only in January 1944 that Patton’s Sicilian exile finally ended when he was summoned to England by Eisenhower and appointed to command the Third Army. 

The immediate consequences of the slapping incidents went well beyond the damage to Patton’s military career and his virtual exile in Palermo during the remainder of 1943. It was the denial, first, of the command of U.S. forces for the invasion of Normandy and later the command of the 12th Army Group in the decisive campaigns of World War II. Instead, that command went to Patton’s one-time subordinate in Tunisia and Sicily, Omar Bradley.

Had Patton been a lesser general his career most certainly would have ended after Sicily. The reason that his superiors elected to retain him was best summarized by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy who told Eisenhower: "Lincoln’s remark when they got after Grant comes to mind when I think of Patton – ‘I can’t spare this man – he fights.’"

Postscript. As a direct result of the slapping incidents Patton was not appointed to command U.S. ground forces for the cross-Channel invasion and the campaigns in Northwest Europe. Future articles will examine in greater detail the slapping incidents and its historic consequences both to Patton’s career and upon the outcome of the war.

Further Reading

Carlo D’Este, Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily (New York, Dutton, 1988)

______. Patton: A Genius For War (New York, HarperCollins, 1995)

______. "The Slaps Heard Round the World," Military History Quarterly, Winter 1996

Carlo D’Este, the best-selling historian and author of numerous critically-acclaimed books on World War II, is Consulting Historian for Armchair General.

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