Patton slapped a soldier in Sicily on August 3, 1943, and Eisenhower kept him anyway. One letter, dated August 17, decided whether the Army would go into Europe with its fastest army commander or without him. Patton would never again lead an army into battle in the Mediterranean, yet sixteen months later his Third Army turned north and broke the siege of Bastogne.
This documentary follows the decision from the hospital tents near Nicosia to the conference at Verdun. It covers Kasserine Pass and the rebuilding of II Corps, the Seventh Army's drive to Palermo and Messina, the battle of Troina, the medical corps and the treatment of battle exhaustion, Eisenhower's reprimand, the Drew Pearson broadcast, Operation Fortitude and the phantom First United States Army Group, and the relief of Bastogne by the 4th Armored Division on December 26, 1944.
The account rests on after-action reports, casualty tables, medical records and unit histories. Where sources disagree, the video says so, and it does not defend the slap. It weighs it against what Eisenhower had on his desk.
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