Georgia Carnival: Edition 56

Welcome to the Georgia Blog Carnival…

This is the edition that I could title the “Newbie Edition” as many of the blogs linked to are new to the Georgia blogroll. Instead of highlighting them in a “new additions” post I’ve elected to highlight them within the carnival along with two or three regular submissions from the past month.

Once again this month the Georgia Carnival has been swamped with submissions from non-Georgia blogs and blogs that do not fit the Georgia Carnival theme even though submission guidelines are clearly stated.

Not wanting to leave out a bonafide Georgia blog or a post that fits the criteria I checked each submission…..it took awhile.

Ok, on to better things…The bloggers featured here are all part of the extensive list of bloggers from Georgia I have listed in the right sidebar of this site. Any Georgia blogger can submit a post to the carnival, or a blogger from another state or country can submit a post for inclusion if the topic is Georgia related.The next carnival will be published here at Georgia on My Mind on Friday, July 1oth . Submissions will be due Thursday, July 9th.

If you maintain a Georgia blog and would like to host the carnival at your site e-mail me to set up a date. It’s a great way to put your own personal spin on the carnival.The last edition of carnival can be found here and the carnival archives are found here.

Now on to the carnival:

Amy at the Q Family Adventures, a longtime submitter here at the Georgia Carnival shares Outdoor Adventures Around Atlanta and advises, “Take the kids out for great outdoor adventure this summer around Atlanta.”

ATLHistory.com is a blog that I’m very excited about as it mainly covers Atlanta history. A recent post…seen here…discusses books regarding Atlanta history that can be located and read online.

D-Day was June 6, and I remembered it over at History Is Elementary with several links in my post titled Remembering D-Day.

Live Apartment Fire’s tagline states, “Watching Atlanta’s news through somewhat averted eyes”. The “about” section states the purpose of the blog is to cover the news business in metro Atlanta (TV, radio, print). See more about the backstory of this interesting blog here. Recent postings include TV News Stinks and Duck and Cover Up concerning the attempts of one Atlanta reporter to interview members of the Fulton County School Board regarding excessive spending.

A Voice for Freedom is written by Zack Smith, a graduate of Kennesaw State University. In his most recent post, Seward's Folly Finally Realized With Sarah Palin, Zach makes a great point regarding how current events have long fingers that stretch back through history. He states in his post….”While the governor castigated big government bailouts for companies and people who were “imprudent” with their money, she failed to realize the man she praised bailed out a Russian empire in dire financial straits.” History does have a knack for irony, Zach!

PrimoroBlog specializes in medical practice management consulting topics. Recent postings include Patient Satisfaction and Internet Marketing. The main page for Primoro, Inc. can be found here.

Beautiful Fences is a blog all about beautiful fences. What else would it be? The blog has an extensive site index so you can find just about any topic regarding fences you might need. Micah has several other links to his fence sites listed on his profile here. Recent postings include a discussion regarding stone columns and another discussion regarding lattice fences.

The author of American History Blog is based in Atlanta. This site has a full site index to help you wander around the site, and new posts are added weekly on various topics. A recent posting discussed Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. One of Jefferson Davis’ Georgia connections is the Union finally captured him right here in Georgia.

Straight from St. Simons Island comes Savings With Sadie. This page is full of alerts, coupon information, and just plain deals, deals, and deals. Here's a post discussing how you can get a free issue of Marlin magazine and Sadie’s most recent post asks Are you camera ready?

Well, that’s it for this edition of the Georgia Carnival.

Please support these fine Georgia bloggers by letting them know you have visited them with a comment. Your continued support with your links and shout-outs at your site helps to alert others to what we Georgia bloggers have to offer.

The next edition of the carnival will be found here at Georgia on My Mind on Friday, July 1oth. Posts can be sent to gamind@mail.com or use the handy submission form. Submissions are due by Thursday, July 9th by 6:00 p.m.

Thanks for your continued support of the Georgia Carnival!

General Patton's D-Day Speech

General George S. Patton is a real favorite of mine. He was colorful, he was bombastic, he was complicated and like his words and actions or not he WAS a great American.

Patton has no real Georgia connections except for the many hundred s of Georgia men who were under his command during World War II, however, Patton did have Georgia relations. He is connected to the Hugh W. Mercer family out of Savannah and during his early military days he trained at Fort Benning, Georgia. Later, he commanded the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Benning before they were relocated.

Since today is a time to remember D-Day I wanted to post Patton’s speech to his troops prior to the invasion. Let me warn though…..Patton’s words are in true Patton nature. They are colorful and could offend, but you can’t fault Patton’s true knack of placing the proper expletive in the right place.

I’ve provided the entire speech here in all its glory. This is a speech I have never been able to use in the classroom. :)

Be seated.

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.

You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight.
When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser.

Americans despise cowards.

Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are.

The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they are He Men.

Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call ‘chicken-shit drilling.’ That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who’s not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn’t be here. You are ready for what’s to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you’re not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sock full of shit!
There are four-hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team.

This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we’re going up against. By God, I do.

My men don’t surrender, and I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back That’s not just bullshit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain.

What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like?

No, Goddamnit, Americans don’t think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war.
The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the ‘G.I. Shits.’

Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, Sir.’ I asked, ‘Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?’ He answered, ‘Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!’ Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.

And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.
Don’t forget, you men don’t know that I’m here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this Army. I’m not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.’

We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple-pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too — before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don’t dig foxholes. I don’t want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don’t give the enemy time to dig one either. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have.

We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!
I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position.’ We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time.

Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won’t have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, ‘Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No, Sir. You can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!'

That is all.

Over at History Is Elementary I’ve linked to some of my past postings regarding D-Day and WWII…Remembering D-Day and Eisenhower's D-Day Letter can be found over at American Presidents Blog.