Patton

General George Patton almost lost his career over an incident which he slapped a solder. The General was visiting a hospital where he encountered a soldier sitting on a hospital bed with no visible wounds. When Patton asked a hospital attendant about the situation, he was told that the soldier just "couldn't take it anymore" and was in the hospital for evaluation and to recuperate. The General became enraged, slapped the soldier across the head with his leather gloves that he always wore, and screamed at the soldier. This became known as the famous “Patton Slap.” This incident actually resulted in further investigation of such happenings as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and shell shock. The incident almost cost Patton his career, and he had to stand and publicly apologize to the hospital staff, the soldier, his command, and anybody else that his military uppers advised him to apologize to.

I think there is a vague line that a person such as Patton has to walk. On one hand, if you are in the military you have to be brave and have a thick skin. If you can’t take the heat from your own side, how can you handle it from your enemies? On the contrary, there is only so much Patton should be allowed to “toughen” his troops up by. I think Patton’s head was in the right direction, but he just stepped over the line.

Soldiers, colonels, generals, and generally anyone in the military has to be tough in order to have a better chance in surviving when they join in the battle. These people need to have impenetrable focus in what they have to do. If they blink or lose focus for one second, that is one second more of a chance that they will get killed, or be one of the causes of their comrades being killed. Patton was right at the time to call out this particular soldier. He was in a room full of seriously wounded people and Patton could not believe he could have the nerve to join the other soldiers who shed blood. Patton could not have had any idea of this particular