"I am feeling well and looking forward to getting home, where the sun shines and there's no drill or quill..." A 26 May 1907 autographed letter signed by George S. Patton writing as a 21-year-old West Point Cadet to his mother on his West Point class stationery.
West Point, New York: Sunday, 26 May 1907. Letter. This is a lengthy 26 May 1907 autograph letter signed by then-21-year-old West Point cadet George S. Patton to his mother. The letter fills the recto of a single 10.5 x 6.5 sheet of Patton’s class year stationery folded to form four 6.5 x 5.25 panels, the first panel featuring the embossed West Point coat of arms, printed in blue, an eagle atop a “1909” banner (Patton’s class year), flanked by crossed “U.S.” and M.A.” flags. Condition is excellent, the stationery clean, Patton’s hand and ink distinct, a horizontal fold presumably from original posting. The letter is protected within an archival mylar sleeve housed within a rigid, crimson cloth folder.
The letter discusses rumors regarding the upcoming graduation plans, an upcoming track meet, separate visits from family friends Virginia and Hammond Johnson, and his desire to return home to California “where the sun shines and there’s no drill or quill.” The letter is signed "Geo S Patton | Jr. | Sunday | May 26.”
The letter reads, in full: “Dear Mama: There is a rumor today that we are not going to James T. and that graduation will be on the eighth but personally I do not credit it and think that we will carry out the present program and go to JT on the 4th return on the twelfth and graduate on the 18th. Tuesday is the last day of study and on Thursday the track meet comes off. I am in the high hurdles the low hurdles the hundred and the two hundred and twenty so will have plenty to do. This darned weather has turned cold again and it is raining. But then that may prevent parade. I am in the detail for the special artillery drill the one you saw last year. I think it is on Friday.”
“Virginia Johnson was up here at the hop and asked about me but I carefully avoided seeing her. Speaking of Johnsons, Hammond J. of V.M.S. was up here when we played the University of Vir. He was on the team and asked to be remembered to you he was just as ugly and just as good a player as ever but said that he was feeling sad because he graduates next spring and would then have to stop playing and make money. We will bring our trunks up to our rooms next Wednesday and get already to leave.”
“I guess that Ayres does not deserve much sympathy for he is nearly as complete an ass as his mother and sister.”
“I am feeling well and looking forward to getting home, where the sun shines and there’s no drill or quill with both of which I am very willing to part.”
“With lots of love and hoping to see you very soon now Your devoted son Geo S Patton Jr. Sunday May 26.”
More than three decades after he wrote this letter as a West Point cadet, George Smith Patton (1885-1945) became the famously tough, relentlessly bold, persistently controversial fighting general of the Second World War.
Patton “spent one year at Virginia Military Institute before entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1904. At the academy, Patton had special difficulty with mathematics and did not graduate until 1909, 46th in a class of 103. One year after graduating he married Beatrice Ayer; the couple had three children.”
Presaging his future masterful command of armored corps, “Patton chose cavalry as his branch.” During the First World War, Patton was assigned to the new Tank Corps and observed the beginnings of tank warfare, both at schools in England and France and on the battlefields of France. He ended the First World War as a Colonel, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for “conspicuous courage, coolness, energy and intelligence.”
Underpinning Patton’s physical courage was physical prowess. While at West Point, Patton excelled as an athlete; he went on to compete in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm in the pentathlon, a competition including steeplechase riding, shooting, fencing, swimming, and a 5,000-meter race.
During the Second World War, Patton rose to the rank of four-star general before being sidelined with an honorific command at the end of the war and dying soon thereafter from a vehicle accident.
Reference: ANB. Item #008150
Price: $5,500.00