Watching the History Channel this morning. It's 8:30 AM (Sun June 11) and they are presenting an author named Kevin Hymel, and the book he wrote on Patton and the general's personal photograph collection.

Patton's Photographs : War As He Saw It

Speakin' of "Old Blood and Guts", just last week I bought the souped-up edition of the movie "Patton" which contained an extra DVD of special documentaries. One of these was about The 20th Div., who were left behind when Patton took all the tanks and most of the artillary up North to the Bulge. Boy..those guys in XX really had a tough go of it, taking on the 11th Panzer Div. with little more than rifles and a few bazookas, and many were either killed or captured as a result. As usual, about half the veterans interviewed were bitter towards Patton while the other half supported him....Nothing new there!

I also noticed in the movie a bit of Hollywood 'Fubar' in the script... After Bradley has finished remarking that our tanks were inferior to the Germans Patton remarks: "I warned 'em about that." The truth is..it was Patton's call to go ahead with the M4 Shermans instead of producing the M26 Pershings, which were much better suited for facing German armor. This information I learned from reading the very fine book "Death Traps" by Belton Y. Cooper.

Jim