Author(s): Alan Axelrod

Military/War

"Patton's Drive" tells the story of how a young man born to war - who believed himself the literal incarnation of all great warriors past - became a modern American general: in terms of enemy killed or captured, territory taken, and people liberated, the greatest field commander of World War II. It tells the story of Patton before the war that fully revealed his destiny, the youthful captain who pursued the guerrillas of Pancho Villa deep into Mexico and the still-young colonel who led America's first corps of tanks against the Germans in France during World War I. It details as well the terrible price a born warrior pays in time of peace, the two decades that separated the two world wars, an interval most inhabitants of the planet regarded as both blissful and all too brief, but that for Patton was a purgatory of physical and emotional torment, until his next Great War (WWII), which is also covered in depth.