Army officer George S. Patton Jr. was pinned down by German machine gun fire. His tanks were scattered, and many of his men had been hit. Armed only with his revolver, he was afraid to go forward but knew he couldn\u2019t go back.<\/p>\n
Trembling, and fighting the urge to run, he looked up and seemed to see his warrior ancestors watching from the clouds. Suddenly calm, he realized he was about to give his life, like his Patton kin in the Civil War.<\/p>\n
He rose, made for the enemy lines and was felled by a machine gun bullet.<\/p>\n
It was Sept. 26, 1918. And the future World War II hero was then a 32-year-old lieutenant colonel, his fame and notoriety years ahead. Yet it was in that fall, near the end of World War I, in northeastern France, that scholars say the combat legend of George Patton was born.<\/p>\n
Next month, the Library of Congress will open a major exhibit on World War I that touches on the role the war played in the life of Patton, who is best known as a brilliant but controversial general in the Second World War.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is surprising,\u201d said Sahr \u00adConway-Lanz, a manuscript historian at the library. \u201cMost people think of George Patton as a figure of World War II and don\u2019t remember that Patton also fought in World War I.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where he gets his first experience .\u2009.\u2009. commanding tanks, which is what he\u2019s known for in World War II,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was during World War I that Patton became the first U.S. soldier assigned to the new tank corps, which he helped create. He built the Army\u2019s first tank school from scratch. He helped come up with the tank corps\u2019 original triangular, tricolor shoulder patch.<\/p>\n
And it was during World War I that he was wounded in what remains the biggest battle in U.S. military history \u2014 the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which claimed the lives of 26,000 U.S. soldiers.<\/p>\n
It may have been the only time that \u201cOld Blood and Guts,\u201d as he came to be known, shed blood on a battlefield. The bullet struck him in the upper left thigh and came out through his buttocks, just missing a crucial nerve and artery.<\/p>\n
What was he trying to accomplish by charging the machine guns, biographer Martin Blumenson wondered. \u201cWas he inviting the glory of death .\u2009.\u2009. on the field of battle? Was he fulfilling his destiny?\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow biographer Carlo D\u2019Este said Patton was defining himself in the \u201cGreat War.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was the basis for what he did later,\u201d D\u2019Este said in a telephone interview. \u201cI\u2019ve always thought, personally, that his accomplishments in World War I were more significant than almost what he did in World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legend of .\u2009.\u2009. Patton the warrior was born\u201d in 1918, D\u2019Este wrote.<\/p>\n
The First World War was also where Patton showed some of the grim tendencies that would stain his image in World War II. During the latter war, he was condemned for striking and cursing soldiers suffering from battle fatigue.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years earlier, Patton bragged that he had struck a soldier over the head with a shovel because the man \u201cwould not work\u201d during a trench-digging operation under fire.<\/p>\n
He told his wife that he thought the blow might have killed the man.<\/p>\n
A few days earlier, he wrote his father, he had spotted a soldier malingering in a shell hole and went to \u201ccuss him out,\u201d according to D\u2019Este\u2019s biography. When he reached the man, he discovered that the soldier had a bullet wound in his head and was dead.<\/p>\n
The library\u2019s exhibit, titled \u201cEchoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I,\u201d opens April\u00a04, two days before the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into the war.<\/p>\n
Planned for a gallery in the library\u2019s Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the U.S. Capitol, it will feature hundreds of rotating items \u2014 letters, music, film, posters, photographs and scrapbooks.<\/p>\n
Artifacts related to, among others, Army Gen. John J. Pershing, African American soldier and future civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston and Red Cross volunteer Dorothy Kitchen O\u2019Neill, who survived the influenza pandemic, will be included.<\/p>\n
Two Patton items, from 100 boxes of his papers at the library, will be on exhibit: his pocket diary and a bleak poem called \u201cPeace \u2014 November 11, 1918,\u201d which he wrote lamenting the end of the war that day.<\/p>\n
We can but hope that e\u2019re we drown<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2018Neath treacle floods of grace<\/i><\/p>\n
The tuneless horns of mighty Mars<\/i><\/p>\n
Once more shall rouse the Race<\/i><\/p>\n
When such times come, Oh! God of War<\/i><\/p>\n
Grant that we pass midst strife<\/i><\/p>\n
Knowing once more the \u00adwhitehot joy<\/i><\/p>\n
Of taking human life.<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n