 |
| General Patch. |
by Truman R. Strobridge and Bernard C. Nalty
Alexander M. Patch is not as widely recognized as other World War II commanders such as Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley and Patton. However, his success as a commander, first in the Pacific and later in Europe, was an important contribution to the final outcome of the war.
Who is the successful general? Is skill measured exclusively in terms of captured standards and territory seized? Do losses figure in the reckoning of greatness? Are not the better generals those who gain their victories with the least expenditure of human life?
Such an officer may be ignored by the war correspondent or even the military analyst, but the man with the rifle respects him. From the rifleman's point of view, one of the most successful American generals of World War II was Alexander McCarrell Patch who led troops in both the South Pacific and Europe. Many a soldier would agree with the sergeant in Patch's Seventh Army who, looking back on the war with the perspective of some thirty years, declared that the general had "never needlessly expended a GI's life." Patch, he said, had looked out for his men, and this attitude "might be the reason I'm here, alive, today."
Patch did not equate flamboyance with leadership. He had no unique "trademark" like George S. Patton's ivory handled pistols, Bernard Law Montgomery's beret and sweater or Erwin Rommel's goggles. Publicity, Patch believed, should go to the troops who did the fighting. As a result, he avoided issuing boastful communiqués, fighting the war with artillery rather than press releases, and reporters found him poor copy compared to the more colorful generals.
No less than a Montgomery, a Rommel or even a Patton, Patch inspired confidence, admiration and perhaps affection among his men. The self-effacing general had the ability to mix easily with his troops. On Guadalcanal, for example, Time magazine reported, in one of the few stories written about him, that Patch often chatted with his soldiers "while he rolled a cigarette from a sack of Bull Durham." During the fight for that island, he made skillful use of Army and Marine Corps artillery, expending high explosives instead of American lives and perhaps saving some of the very men with whom he had talked.
Patch, moreover, was as bold personally as he was cautious with the lives entrusted to him. A fellow officer once saw him stroll up to front-line units, ignoring fire from Japanese foxholes no more than sixty yards away and calmly surveying the action. This eyewitness reported:
I have seen him repeatedly disregard enemy fire and bombing when others sought cover … His habit was to totally disregard danger to himself but always, before each battle, to study carefully the best way of saving the lives of his men.
The military career that stretched from New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands in the far Pacific to the French Riviera and Germany began at Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, where he was born on 23 November 1889, the son of a lieutenant in the 4th Cavalry. A fall while riding in pursuit of horse thieves cost the elder Patch a leg and forced him to retire.
The family moved to Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, where young Alexander grew up, attending preparatory and public schools prior to enrolling in college. In 1909, however, after a year at Lehigh University, he decided to follow his father's example and attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which he entered in March of that year.
Slender, ramrod straight and 6 feet tall, Cadet Patch soon demonstrated an ability to lead. He became platoon guide and later was elected class cheerleader. He excelled in athletics, once pole-vaulting nearly 12 feet, a splendid achievement in the days of the wooden pole. When grades were posted, however, he ranked far down in his class, showing, according to one classmate, "plenty of ability but no desire to attain scholastic honors." Called "Sandy" because of his close-cropped reddish hair, Patch was a popular cadet, liked for his quiet and often self-deprecating sense of humor.
Commissioned in 1913 as a second lieutenant of infantry, Patch served for five years with the 18th Infantry at various posts in the southwestern United States. He took part in Brigadier General John J. Pershing's expedition into Mexico, an unsuccessful attempt to punish "Pancho Villa" for attacking Columbus, New Mexico. What he learned on the border and in northern Mexico was soon put to the test of combat in Europe.
In June 1917, some two months after the United States declared war on Germany, Patch and his regiment landed in France, part of the new 1st Division. Assuming command of the division's machine gun battalion in November, he became director of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) machine gun school within six months. Patch also lectured occasionally at the General Staff College operated by the AEF at Langres; among his students was George S. Patton. In October 1918, Patch returned to his old regiment, taking command of an infantry battalion which he led during the Meuse-Argonne fighting. The armistice found him second in command of the 18th Infantry.
The next two decades gave his talents an opportunity to mature as he taught courses, attended classes and performed peacetime regimental duty. He organized a six-week course in automatic weapons at the U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia; assisted the state of Alabama in reorganizing its National Guard; served with the 12th Infantry at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland; and was a member of the Infantry Board.
He spent eleven of these peacetime years as a professor of military science and tactics, teaching cadets in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Staunton Military Academy in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. There, he developed a lifelong fondness for Rudyard Kipling's poems, an interest sparked when a teacher at the school challenged him to a debate on the works of the British poet. Later, Patch tracked down and purchased several valuable first editions of Kipling's works.
Nor did he neglect during those decades the formal military education that would qualify him to exercise high command. He attended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, completing the course as a distinguished graduate. Afterward, at the U.S. Army War College, he wrote a term paper on the organization and equipment of a triangular division of three regiments which would replace the old square division with its four regiments. His emphasis upon increased firepower, greater mobility and more compact units coincided with the views of his classmate, Major George Patton, who was applying the same idea to mechanized warfare.
Yet neither the rigorous regime of staff colleges nor the routine peacetime assignments had dulled either Patch's sense of humor or modesty. Thus, for the yearbook celebrating the twentieth anniversary of his West Point class of 1913, he wrote an article on "How I Became a Hero," relating not his combat record, but, instead, an incident that happened during training in France.
An eager, young captain in 1917, he related, desperately aspired to raise himself out of the mass of World War I heroes to become "a single, magnificent sort of hero." Fired by such a lust for ephemeral glory, the young officer instinctively reacted as he did when the air raid siren sounded and a plane appeared. Pushing aside one of the gun crew members closer to the machine gun, he grabbed the weapon, leveled it at the oncoming plane and squeezed off a burst. To his immense personal gratification, his stream of deadly bullets struck the aircraft, causing it to limp off the field of battle. Shortly thereafter, an aide came rushing up, asking for the commanding officer:
Modestly I allowed my friends to push me forward. The aide saluted and said: "The General's compliments, sir … He directs you to report to him now … You have just shot down a French plane."
When World War II erupted, Patch was ready. In August 1940, some six weeks after German forces had overrun France, he was a colonel commanding the 47th Infantry of the 9th Infantry Division. The way he led and trained his men attracted the favorable notice of his superiors. Soon, he was promoted to brigadier general and placed in charge of the new Infantry Replacement Training Center at Camp Croft, South Carolina. After Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941, Patch was called upon to apply, in desperate circumstances, those principles of high command that he had learned in the years between wars.
General George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, personally selected Patch to command the hastily assembled Task Force 6184, destined for the South Pacific and the defense of the French colony of New Caledonia. Code-named POPPY, this force consisted of an "odd conglomeration" of stray units, a true "military stew of men and equipment." Patch's mission was to hold New Caledonia against any form of enemy attack; he could expect little in the way of reinforcement. As an independent commander, he reported directly to the War Department in Washington, D.C.
Lying at the end of a string of islands stretching across the Pacific, New Caledonia guarded the northeast approaches to Australia and the Solomon Islands. Should this South Pacific life-line be severed, Australia and New Zealand would be isolated and become liabilities rather than assets in the war against Japan. In the enemy's prewar planning sessions, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto had described New Caledonia as a strategic point "to be occupied or destroyed as quickly as operational conditions permit."
Patch and his command won the race against the Japanese. Within two weeks, Task Force 6184 had been organized, equipped and loaded on board seven transports, all that were available on the East Coast of the United States at that time. These ships sailed from New York on 23 January 1942, reaching Melbourne, Australia, via the Panama Canal, on 26 February 1942. Ten days later, they sailed with a naval escort for New Caledonia, landing their men and war materiel at Noumea harbor on 6 March.
As the triumphant Japanese drew nearer, Patch began whipping his makeshift force into fighting trim, forging the Americal Division (a contraction for Americans in New Caledonia) destined to fight its way from Guadalcanal in the Solomons to the islands of Japan. Some of the troops under Patch's command went on the offensive in March, occupying Efate in the New Hebrides and building an airfield there.
The naval battle of the Coral Sea in early May eliminated the Japanese threat to New Caledonia, relieving some of the pressure on Patch and his division. Patch needed this respite, for he had spent much of his time winning the support of the Free French authorities who ruled the colony. The governor general had feared, with some justification, that the American activity would attract, rather than deter, the enemy. In allaying these concerns, General Patch not only earned the Army's Distinguished Service Medal for his tactful diplomacy, but gained a lasting insight into the concerns of a sometimes difficult ally.
Along with the Americal Division, Patch next went to Guadalcanal where, on 9 December 1942, he assumed command of all American forces, including the 1st Marine Division, which had landed there in August. Less than a month later, the two Army and one Marine divisions were organized into XIV Corps, with Patch as commander. He promptly launched an attack that rooted out the stubborn but half-starved Japanese, crushing enemy resistance early in February 1943.
Returning to the United States, Patch spent the remainder of the year training troops in the deserts of the American Southwest. By the time he reached North Africa, however, the desert war had ended. He took over the Seventh Army, General Patton's old command, which was to invade southern France.
The morning of 15 August 1944, Napoleon's birthday, dawned clear. Almost a thousand ships converged on the beaches of the French Riviera, while the first of some 14,000 Allied aircraft to darken the skies that day battered the coast defenses. Watching the intricate unfolding of a carefully planned amphibious invasion was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, seated in a chair on the bridge of a destroyer.
The first wave of Allied infantry, followed ashore by tanks, artillery and supplies, moved swiftly inland. Described as "one of the best coordinated efforts in all military history," the operation took shape like "a tactician's dream." By D+3, Patch's troops had advanced some 500 miles, evidence that he deserved the recognition accorded him by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who nominated him for promotion to lieutenant general.
Patch's subsequent dash northward to link up with Allied forces advancing from Normandy demonstrated both skill and aggressiveness. At times, his drive up the Rhone Valley resembled Napoleon's return from exile at Elba, triumphant procession rather than a military operation. On 11 September 1944, Seventh Army infantrymen contacted forward elements of Patton's Third Army at the foot of the Vosges Mountains, thus trapping enemy forces to the southwest. Patch's command now assumed its assigned place in an Allied front that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea.
Supply difficulties combined with stiffening German resistance to slow the Allied advance to a crawl. For more than a month, Patch's troops fought their way slowly to the northeast. They did succeed in conquering the Vosges range, but German armor checked them amid the dismal forests of Parroy.
The war took a tragic personal turn for Patch in October, when his son, Alexander III, was killed while leading a rifle company in France. Grasping for even the frailest of consolation, the general remarked to a friend: "Well, he is not cold, and wet, and hungry."
Patch then received orders to resume the offensive by mid-November, for Seventh Army supply lines, stretching southward to Marseilles, were functioning more smoothly than those snaking eastward from channel ports to the other armies. On 13 November, he sent his infantrymen forward, dispatching armored columns through gaps that they opened in the German defenses.
During the next ten days, he reached the pinnacle of his military career. His men destroyed two German divisions, drove a 15-mile wedge between two armies and captured the French-built forts of the Maginot line. Seventh Army reached the southern extension of the Siegfried Line guarding Germany's western frontier, and, to the right of the Americans, a French division reached the Rhine, seizing Strasbourg on 23 November 1944, Patch's 55th birthday. General Jacob L. Devers, who commanded the Sixth Army Group that included both Seventh Army and the French First Army, wanted to exploit the capture of Strasbourg and cross the Rhine, but General Dwight D. Eisenhower vetoed the idea. The Allied supreme commander intended to cross the river at a more decisive point farther to the north, using a more powerful force than Devers could muster.
As a result, Eisenhower directed the Sixth Army Group to attack northward into the Saar Basin while, at the same time, clearing the Germans from the west bank of the southern Rhine. Patch's northward advance forged ahead, perhaps hastening Adolf Hitler's decision to launch his desperate Ardennes counteroffensive, but the enemy clung stubbornly to the Colmar pocket, a stoutly defended perimeter south of Strasbourg.
As the Allies rallied to crush the unexpected thrust through the Ardennes Forest, Patch took over a major portion of Patton's front so the latter's Third Army could speed to the relief of Bastogne. As the Allies were winning the Battle of the Bulge, the enemy attacked from the Colmar pocket, and Patch's men had to help repulse the attack and then eliminate the salient.
The need to reduce the Colmar pocket delayed until March 1945 the Seventh Army drive into Germany. Once underway, the offensive moved swiftly although some German units put up fierce resistance. The 100th Infantry Division, for example, fought for nine days, house by house, to wrest Heilbronn from elite German troops.
From Heilbronn, Patch's men were to advance upon Stuttgart, but, here, he encountered the Gallic pride and sensitivity that he had first observed on New Caledonia. Taking advantage of their own momentum and failing German resistance, the Free French raced ahead and captured the city. Reports of outrages committed by French troops against local civilians prompted General Devers to order the Seventh Army to Stuttgart. The Army group commander visited the city, decided the allegations were exaggerated and left the French in charge.
Having taken Stuttgart, the French commander, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, fixed his gaze upon Ulm, where Napoleon had defeated the Austrians in 1805, even though the town lay in Patch's zone. Ignoring the army boundary, French troops dashed toward Ulm to give added, and probably unnecessary, weight to an American attack. When Germany finally surrendered, Patch's army had captured Hitler's mountain redoubt at Berchtesgaden and stood at the Brenner Pass, looking southward into Italy.
Patch's next assignment took him to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he was to prepare the Fourth Army for combat in the Pacific. After Japan's sudden surrender, he headed a special board to determine the postwar structure of the U.S. Army, a task he could not complete. Rigorous duty in both the humid jungles of the South Pacific and the damp climate of Europe had imposed a fatal strain on his lungs which had troubled him ever since he contracted influenza just after World War I. On 21 November 1945, he died of pneumonia at Brooke Army Medical Center. His body rests at the U.S. Military Academy cemetery.
Alexander McCarrell Patch played a key role in the winning of World War II, but his contributions brought him little in the way of fame. An Army post at Stuttgart, Germany, the headquarters for the U.S. European Command, bears his name as does a community center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Certain of his personal mementos have been preserved in the museum at Fort Huachuca, his birthplace.
Patch's finest memorial, however, is in the memory of his soldiers who endorse General Eisenhower's statement that Patch's operations "were not only successful … but were so conducted as to minimize the losses in Allied personnel."
Biography
General Alexander McCarrell Patch (November 23, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was a senior United States Army officer who fought in both world wars, rising to rank of general. During World War II, he commanded U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces during the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific, and the Seventh Army on the Western Front in Europe.
With an invasion of Japan still an apparent likelihood, Patch returned to the U.S. in August 1945 to take charge of the Fourth Army headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He died three months later in November at age 55, his health having been ravaged during his time in the Pacific early in the war. "Sandy" Patch and Lucian Truscott were the only two U.S. Army officers on active service during World War II to command a division, corps, and field army.
A lieutenant general at the time of his passing, he was posthumously promoted to four-star general in July 1954.
Born at Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, Patch was raised in Pennsylvania. His father, Captain Alexander M. Patch, was a former cavalryman in the United States Army and a graduate (1877) of the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, and his mother was Annie Moore Patch, the daughter of Congressman William S. Moore of Pennsylvania.
Of German, Scottish, and Irish descent, Patch attended Lehigh University for a year, then received an appointment to West Point in 1909. His eldest brother Joseph Dorst Patch, commonly known as "Dorst", also enlisted in the army the same year. Originally interested in joining the cavalry, but realizing that it was becoming obsolete, he chose the Infantry Branch of the United States Army and was commissioned in 1913 on 12 June that year, ranked 75th in a graduating class of 93. Some of his classmates that became general officers were William R. Schmidt, Henry B. Lewis, Henry B. Cheadle, Paul Newgarden, Charles H. Corlett, Robert L. Spragins, Douglass T. Greene, Willis D. Crittenberger, William A. McCullogh, Robert M. Perkins, Carlos Brewer, Henry Balding Lewis, Geoffrey Keyes, Louis A. Craig, Lunsford E. Oliver, Richard U. Nicholas, Francis K. Newcomer.
Upon being commissioned, Patch's first assignment was with the 18th Infantry Regiment, then based in Texas City, Texas. He later saw action in the Pancho Villa Expedition into Mexico in 1916, and was later promoted to first lieutenant. In November that year he married Julia A. Littell, the daughter of an army general, whom Patch had met while he was a cadet at West Point.
In June 1917, two months after the American entry into World War I, Patch was promoted to the rank of captain and was, along with his brother Dorst, sent overseas with his regiment, which became part of the 1st Division, to join the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front where he remained until November. He then attended the British Army's Machine Gun School in England and commanded the 3rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 1st Division until April 1918, when he then went on to direct the U.S. Army's Machine Gun School until October. Towards the end of 1918, returning to the 18th Infantry, he fought in the Second Battle of the Marne, the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse–Argonne offensive, the largest battle in the history of the United States Army. His leadership came to the attention of Colonel George C. Marshall, then a member of General John J. Pershing's staff. The war came to an end on November 11, 1918, at 11:00 am, by which time Patch was a lieutenant colonel, having been promoted to the rank a month before, and major the previous January. In February 1919, he reverted to the rank of captain and was a staff officer at AEF Headquarters.
After briefly serving on occupation duties, Patch returned to the United States in May 1919 and, as a professional soldier, chose to remain in the army during what would later be known as the interwar period. After four years at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., he spent the next few years as professor of military science and tactics at Staunton Military Academy, Virginia. He returned to this post twice in the interwar years, from 1925–28 and 1932–36. In 1922 he attended the Field Officer's Course at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning. In 1924 he attended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and graduated there with distinction a year later.
This was followed by service with the 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment from 1929–31 at Fort Washington, Maryland. He then entered the U.S. Army War College in 1931 and graduated the following year. Promoted again to lieutenant colonel, he was later a member of the Infantry Board at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1936–39, where he helped to develop the army's transformation from the old square division, with four infantry regiments, into the triangular division, with three.
In November 1940 he was promoted to colonel and assumed command of the 47th Infantry Regiment, then part of the 9th Infantry Division commanded by Major General Jacob L. Devers. General George C. Marshall, now the U.S. Army Chief of Staff and someone who had been impressed with Patch's leadership in France in 1918, was appointed Army Chief of Staff in 1939, just before World War II. He promoted Patch to the one-star general officer rank of brigadier general in August 1941, and sent him to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to supervise the training of new soldiers there.
Patch was promoted to major general in November 1941 and was assigned to command Task Force 6814, a hastily assembled force of divisional size, composed of two Army National Guard infantry regiments. The following month the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, followed shortly after by the German declaration of war on the United States, officially bringing the United States into World War II. He was sent to the Pacific Theater of Operations in Noumea to organize the reinforcement and defense of New Caledonia, arriving there in March 1942. En route he was struck with pneumonia, recovering sufficiently to take command of a loose collection of units and form them into the Americal Division (a contraction of "American, New Caledonian Division").
The Americal Division first saw action in the Guadalcanal campaign in December 1942, when it relieved the valiant but tired and malaria-ridden 1st Marine Division there. The Americal Division and the 1st Marine Division were both relieved by the 25th Infantry and 2nd Marine Divisions, respectively and, in early January 1943, Patch moved up to command of the XIV Corps, and was given charge of the entire offensive on Guadalcanal. Patch personally led troops under his command on a dangerous offensive in the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse to capture several fortified hills and ridges from the Japanese forces. Under Patch's leadership, by February 1943 the Japanese were driven from Guadalcanal.
In the wake of Guadalcanal's conquest, the state of Patch's health, battered by his bout of pneumonia, tropical dysentery and malaria, forced George Marshall to recall him back to the U.S. There, after recovering from his illness, he took command in May 1943 of the IV Corps at Fort Lewis, Washington. That fall he commanded the 100,000 man strong Oregon Maneuver in central Oregon, the largest training exercise of World War II, designed to test American units prior to deployment in support of Allied combat operations in both the European and Pacific Theaters. In early 1944 he took the corps, then just a headquarters, overseas to Algiers, Algeria to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO). By mid-summer he would put his Oregon Maneuver experience to the test in Operation Dragoon, the amphibious assault of southern France that was pressed clear to the Alsace-Lorraine on Germany's southwest flank before year's end.
In March 1944, after handing over command of IV Corps to Major General Willis D. Crittenberger, a fellow 1913 West Point classmate, Patch took over command of the Seventh Army from Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, who was then also commanding the Fifth Army during the fighting on the Italian Front. Under the leadership of George S. Patton, the Seventh Army had been the first American field army to be deployed in Europe during the war, having landed in Sicily as part of the Allied invasion of Sicily (codenamed Operation Husky) in July 1943 capturing Messina on August 17 and bringing the Allied campaign to an end. It was then reduced from a maximum strength of some six divisions and supporting units to a skeleton headquarters with relatively little to do, with Clark taking over from Patton in January 1944.
Under Patch's command, the Seventh Army was now intended to participate in an upcoming amphibious operation in southern France, codenamed Operation Dragoon. For this operation the Seventh Army was composed of several veteran formations pulled out of the fighting in Italy. These were Major General Lucian Truscott's U.S. VI Corps and General Alphonse Juin's French Expeditionary Corps (CEF), along with numerous airborne units in support.
Under Patch, the Seventh Army invaded southern France in Operation Dragoon on 15 August 1944. Patch–promoted to the three-star rank of lieutenant general three days later–then led the Seventh Army in a fast offensive up the Rhône valley. On 9 September 1944, near Dijon, France, it met up with the Third Army, under Patton, which had driven east from Normandy. The Seventh Army came under the command of the 6th Army Group, commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. One of Patch's corps commanders, Major General Truscott, who commanded the VI Corps, which came under command of Patch's Seventh Army, wrote of him:
I came to regard him as a man of outstanding integrity, a courageous and competent leader, and an unselfish comrade-in-arms.
Patch's Seventh Army distinguished itself in difficult winter conditions during the Vosges Mountains campaign, clearing strong and entrenched German forces from the west bank of the Rhine and stopping a German counteroffensive, Operation Nordwind, while reserve forces were being committed to the Battle of the Bulge. The campaign marked the only contested advance through the Vosges Mountains ever to succeed. Arthur R. Wilson became the Seventh Army's new chief of staff around this time.
Patch stayed in command of the Seventh Army through the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, leading the Seventh Army in Operation Undertone through the Siegfried Line, over the Rhine, and then the Western Allied invasion of Germany into southern Germany. By war's end forward elements sprawled as far afield as Austria and northern Italy.
In the spring of 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, offered Patch a B-25 Mitchell and pilot for his personal use. Patch turned down the offer because he wished to remain in touch with his subordinate commanders during fast-moving operations and preferred a smaller plane that could land on unimproved fields and pastures. Patch narrowly escaped injury or death on 18 April 1945, while flying from Kitzingen to Öhringen in Germany during the Battle of Nuremberg. His Stinson L-5 Sentinel liaison aircraft Sea Level was intercepted by a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, but the pilot, Technical Sergeant Robert Stretton, maneuvered the L-5 so skillfully that it escaped and landed safely at Öhringen. Stretton later received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the flight.
In August 1945, Patch returned to the United States to take command of the Fourth Army headquartered at the Fort Sam Houston, Texas, but was hospitalized with lung problems in November and passed away a week later.
On November 20, 1915, he married Julia Adrianne Littell (1893–1988), daughter of Brigadier General Isaac William Littell. They had two children. Patch suffered a personal tragedy when their 24-year-old son, Captain Alexander M. Patch III, was killed in action on October 22, 1944 while leading C Company of the 315th Infantry Regiment of the 79th Infantry Division in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France. Captain Patch was a posthumous recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He is interred in the Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial, Lorraine, France.
Patch died of pneumonia on November 21, 1945, two days short of his 56th birthday, at Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He is buried in New York state at West Point Cemetery on the grounds of the academy.
Kurmärker Kaserne, in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, West Germany, was renamed Patch Barracks in his honor on July 4, 1952. Patch Barracks is the home of Headquarters, United States European Command (HQ USEUCOM), the supreme American military command in Europe. Patch Barracks also has a middle school named after him, as well as the former high school (1979–2015). The U.S. Navy transport USNS General Alexander M. Patch (T-AP-122) was also named for Patch. Boulevard Patch in southeastern France, from the main road to Pampelonne Plage in Ramatuelle in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, is also named for him.
Patch was promoted posthumously to full general on 19 July 1954 under Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 83–508.
Major Commands
Task Force 6814 - November 1941 to 24 May 1942
Americal Division - 24 May 1942 to 1 January 1943
XIV Corps - January 1943 to April 1943
IV Corps - May 1943 to 2 March 1944
Seventh United States Army - 2 March 1944 to August 1945
Fourth United States Army - August 1945 to 21 November 1945
Awards and Decorations
Army Distinguished Service Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters
Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Bronze Star Medal
Mexican Border Service Medal
World War I Victory Medal with three battle stars
American Defense Service Medal
American Campaign Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal w/ two service stars
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal w/ three service stars
World War II Victory Medal
Companion of the Order of the Bath (United Kingdom)
Commander of the Légion d'honneur (France)
Croix de Guerre with palm (France)
Order of Leopold II, Grand Cross (Belgium)
Croix de Guerre with palm (Belgium)
Order of Abdon Calderón (Ecuador)
Dates of Rank
Cadet, United States Military Academy, March 1, 1909
Second Lieutenant, Regular Army, June 12, 1913
First Lieutenant, Regular Army, July 1, 1916
Captain, Regular Army, May 15, 1917
Major, National Army, January 5, 1918
Lieutenant Colonel, National Army, October 31, 1918
Captain, Regular Army, March 15, 1920
Major, Regular Army, July 1, 1920
Lieutenant Colonel, Regular Army, August 1, 1935
Colonel, Army of the United States, June 26, 1941
Brigadier General, Army of the United States, August 4, 1941
Major General, Army of the United States, March 10, 1942
Colonel, Regular Army, July 1, 1942
Lieutenant General, Army of the United States, August 7, 1944
General, Posthumous, July 19, 1954
Bibliography
English, John A. (2009). Patton's Peers: The Forgotten Allied Field Army Commanders of the Western Front, 1944−45. Stackpole Books.
English, John A. (2011). Surrender Invites Death: Fighting the Waffen SS in Normandy. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books.
Pfannes, Charles; Victor Salamone. The Great Commanders of World War II. Vol. III: The Americans.
Weirather, Larry. "Saving General Patch". Aviation History, May 2012, pp. 18–19.
Taaffe, Stephen R. (2013). Marshall and His Generals: U.S. Army Commanders in World War II. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.
Wyant, William K. (1991). Sandy Patch: A Biography of Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch. Praeger.
 |
| Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, Jr. |
 |
| Patch at West Point in 1913. |
 |
| Lieutenant General Alexander Patch, August 1945. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| Lieutenant General Patch offering one of his men a cigarette, during his visit to XV Corps Command Post at Fenetrange. "… On New Year's Eve General Patch visited the XV Corps Command Post at Fenetrange and there warned both the XV Corps and the VI Corps Commanding Generals that an enemy attack was to be expected during the early hours of New Year's Day …" |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch, Jr., commander of the U.S. Seventh Army in southern France, and his son, Captain Alexander M. "Mac" Patch III, shortly before the young officer's death. |
 |
| Audie Murphy receiving the Medal of Honor and Legion of Merit from Lieutenant General Alexander Patch. |
 |
| General Patch decorates Audie Murphy with the Medal of Honor. |
 |
| Third Infantry Division's Sgt. James P. O'Connor receives the Medal of Honor from Seventh Army Commanding General Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| Brigadier General Alexander M. Patch, USA, (left) and Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu, France (right). |
 |
| Americal Division commander, Major General Alexander M. Patch, Jr., watches while his troops and supplies are staged on Guadalcanal's beaches on 8 December 1942, the day before he relieved General Vandegrift and his worn out 1st Marine Division. |
 |
| Generals Devers and Patch at Luneville, January 1945. |
 |
| United States Army ground and air generals confer with their Chief, Lieutenant General Millard F. Harmon, commanding Army forces in the South Pacific area, at the close of the successful Guadalcanal campaign. Major General Alexander M. Patch, Jr., left, who commanded the Guadalcanal ground action; General Harmon and Major General Nathan F. Twining, commanding the Army's Air Forces in the South Pacific. Circa February 1943. |
 |
| Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., Lt Gen. Alexander M. Patch and Gen. Jacob L. Devers, October 1944. |
 |
| Southern France Operation, August 1944. Senior Officers on the bridge of USS CATOCTIN (AGC-5), Operation Flagship. Taken while en route to the invasion area on "D-Minus-One", 14 August 1944. Present are (l-r): Brigadier General G.P. Saville, USAAF, Air Commander. Western Naval T.F. Major General A.M. Patch, USA, Army Commander, Western Naval Task Force. Vice Admiral H.K. Hewitt, Naval Commander, Western Naval Task Force. James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy. Rear Admiral A.G. Lemonnier, F.N., Chief of Staff of the French Navy. |
 |
| Major General Alexander M. Patch, Jr. (second from left), commander of the United States forces in New Caledonia; Major General M.F. Harmon, commanding Army forces in the South Pacific area; Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley; and Rear Admiral Kelly Turner, who conducted the inspection of the troops dispatched from New Caledonia to join the Marines in the Solomons. |
 |
| General Patch. |
 |
| Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch and Brig. Gen. W. Rupertus have a chat on a bench as the Army take over from the Marines at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, 23 February 1943. |
 |
| Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch, Commander in Chief of US 7th Army, presenting the Bronze Star Medal to Colonel Jeane Louis Petit, for meritorious achievement in duty, France, 15 February 1945. |
 |
| Lt. Gen. George S. Patton (left), CG Third US Army, shakes hands with Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, CG Seventh US Army (right) at latter's Headquarters in Sarrebourg area, France, 4 December 1944. |
 |
| Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, CG of the Seventh US Army, pins the Silver Star on a French Forces of the Interior leader in the Saint-Tropez area of Southern France, August 1944. |
 |
| The unconditional surrender of German Army Group 'G' is signed 5 May 1945 at the Thorak estate near Haar, Germany by General Jacob L. Devers, CG of the Sixth US Army Group, Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch, CG Seventh US Army, is at his right and Lieutenant General Wade H. Haislip, CG XV Corps is facing camera. |
 |
| General de Gaulle shakes hands with Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, CG US Seventh Army at a ceremony, held in Saverne, France, Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers (center) CG US Sixth Army Group is going to shake hands with General de Lattre de Tassigny, CG 1st French Army 11 February 1945. |
 |
| Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, USN, Commander, Aircraft, South Pacific Force (right) boards a PBY-5A aircraft at Guadalcanal for a return flight to Espiritu Santo, circa early 1943. Present to see him off are (from left): Brigadier General Francis P. Mulcahy, USMC; Rear Admiral Charles P. Mason, USN; and Major General Alexander M. Patch, U.S. Army. The original photograph was released for publication on 7 May 1943. |
 |
| Change of command on Guadalcanal, December 1942. Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, center, succeeds Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, USMC, right. Col. R. Hall Jeschke, USMC briefs them. |
 |
| Captain Chas Paul McFeaters, commander of the transport; Rear Admiral Kelly Turner, USN (back to camera); Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, (left); Major General Millard F. Harmon, Commander of Army forces in the South Pacific (center), and Major General Alexander H. Patch, Jr. (far left), inspecting the troops of the Army task force, which is taking them from New Caledonia to Solomon Islands. Transport is unidentified. |