La Place Patton At Avranches

Perhaps among the greater ruses in military history was the Allies' use of the disgraced general George Patton in the UK in early 1944. Knowing of the Germans' regard for Patton, Eisenhower and his team built a phony army around Patton, flooded the airwaves with its transmissions, and persuaded Hitler, if not his staff, that the Allied invasion of France would come at the Pas de Calais. In July of 1944, while the American armies were still stuck in the Normandy bocage, Patton was given command of the US Third Army at Avranches. After the carpet bombing of St. Lo, Third Army broke out and swept across France and into Germany--something the inventors of blitzkrieg could barely imagine--hindered only by Allied politics, liberating town after town, city after city, all the way to Berchtesgaden and beyond. OK, everyone has seen the movie Patton.  I have too; and read War As I Knew It, long ago. At Avranches is the Patton monument, something else I wanted to see.

La Place Patton in Avranches

Interesting

Bust of Patton in his tanker's helmet

Another Sherman M-4, the tank Patton's armies used; the US
Army's  next generation of tank, throughout the Cold War era, was 
the Patton tank

In a dozen points like this, radiating from the central monument, are listed 
the major towns and cities liberated by Third Army: Dinan, St. Malo, Lorient 
(the major German submarine base), St. Nazaire, Nantes, Dinan, Laval, 
Le Mans, Alencon, Dreux, Mantes, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc, Quincamp, 
Morlaix, Brest,  Falaise, Paris, Orleans, Sens, Troyes, Saint-Dizier, Nancy, 
Angers, Chartres, Reims, Verdun, Metz, Baccarat, Strasbourg, Berchtesgaden; 
and not to forget the rescue at Bastogne

A hotel, and only two stars; but the movie was unforgettable, 
creating an American icon