General George Patton: America’s General

 I-95 Battle Flag Memorial Donations: 22nd Va Infantry

 Colonel George Smith Patton

Mortally wounded at the Battle of Opequon Creek (or 3rd Battle of Winchester), leaving a widow and 9-year-old son, Colonel `Patton was the grandfather of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton III, World War II 3rd Army Commander, who “… often credited his grandfather –the brave Colonel of the 22nd Virginia— as the inspiration for his military career.”  “……..George Sr.’s father had commanded a Confederate regiment during the Civil War and was killed in Winchester, Va.=…….Patton used to pray nightly to a painting of two men he thought were God and Jesus but were really Civil War heroes Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson……..”

Outspoken. Brilliant. Arrogant. Spiritual. Vulgar. These are just a handful of the adjectives attached to George Patton, all of which described him accurately at one time or another.

A complicated man, Patton was a Christian (Episcopal), yet he often studied the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita. He prayed to a personal God and turned to the Bible for inspiration, but he also believed in reincarnation, asserting that he had lived former lives.

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