Patch for Patton

The U.S. Seventh Army was officially given a new commander last week. War Secretary Stimson announced that Major General Alexander McCarrell Patch had been appointed to succeed Lieut. General George Patton Jr., who had been given "another army." Only that and nothing more.

The announcement definitely did not indicate either that Patton had been got rid of (Stimson said that the "unfortunate face-slapping incident" was closed) or that he had been promoted. It showed merely that he had been transferred to a new job, leaving his whereabouts a military secret. (Last winter, some time after his well-executed Sicilian campaign, he was photographed with President Roosevelt in the Middle East. Last December he and his staff were reported in Cairo. It is assumed he will have a job in the invasion.)

In long, lean General Patch, the Seventh Army gets a commander who is just as tough, if not as fantastically hot-tempered, as Patton. Born at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., 54 years ago, son of an Army officer, "Sandy" Patch went to West Point, has soldiered all his life. He commanded a machine-gun battalion in France, where, the story goes, he got a toothache, searched the French countryside for a dentist, finally found a veterinarian and asked:

"Have you ever pulled a tooth?" "Yes," said the vet, "but only from a horse."

Patch opened his jaw: "Then pull mine." With the help of a pair of pliers the determined pair succeeded.

It was Patch in command of Army infantry divisions who went into Guadalcanal to relieve the gallant Marines who had fought through the first hard months.

Academy classmates said: "If he can't beat the Japs, we haven't got anybody in the Army who can." Patch finished the job of cleaning the Japs out of the place. Then he was brought back to the U.S. and put in command of the Fourth Army Corps in training at Ft. Lewis, Wash.

The whereabouts of the battle-hardened Seventh Army and its battle-hardened commander are, like the whereabouts of its terrible-tempered ex-commander, a military secret.

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