With respect to connections: Patton's early childhood influence from the 
frequent presence of John Singleton Mosby with the Patton family is 
documented on page 40 of Carlo D'este's, near definitive; "Patton - A Genius 
For War", Harper Collins; 1995.

"As for living heroes, George came to know a frequent guest of the Patton, 
the infamous Col. John Singleton Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla 
(pronounced correctly by using the Spanish "y" in place of the double "ll") 
leader. A prewar lawyer who had learned the law in prison after being 
expelled from the University of Virginia and imprisoned for killing another 
student. Mosby had migrated to California to work for ht Southern Pacific 
Railroad. Mosby delighted the impressionable young Georgie Patton with tales 
of the Civil War, all of which the boy absorbed like a sponge."

"Thus, by the time he entered his teens, Patton had not only learned 
firsthand of the heroics of the men of the Confederacy but had been 
indoctrinated in the classics: Shakespeare, Homer, Sir Walter Scott, and 
Kipling; books about heroes, kings, ..., and above all, to the great 
soldiers of history: Caesar, Belisarus, Scipio, Hannibal, Napoleon, Joan of 
Arc, and Joachim Murat. All engendered in Patton a sense that he was in this 
life a reincarnation of soldiers of the past, that he had served in bygone 
armies and fought in the famous battles of history."

I bring this to your attention for these two personal observations about 
this report: (A) I found D'este's work to a "love story" from Patton's birth 
to the outbreak of War World War II. I drew this to a point of my conclusion 
from the post World War I singular episode where Beatrice knocked a full 
Colonel to floor of a formal ballroom society affair and beat him repeatedly 
until "Georgie" rescued the Colonel and pulled his wife (Beatrice was born 
and bred high) from the poor wretch who made the mistake of making a 
disparaging remark about her husband in her presence and not that of her 
husband's; and, (B) the development of the character - Patton - by the 
constant reference to those past heroes and his dedication to emulate their 
virtues (sans "killer Mosby") as it apples to the following quote from the 
motion picture; "HUD". Therein, the character grandfather, played by Melvyn 
Douglas, tries to dissuade the younger brother from the nefarious attitude 
of his older brother, HUD, with this: "Little by little, the look of the 
country is changed by the men we admire."

A find a lot of history in that last line. Correctly or incorrectly, that's 
what draws me to investigation of our past.

Regards, Ray

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