Alexander McCarrell Patch was an American army officer.
Background
Alexander McCarrell Patch was born on November 23, 1889 in Huachuca City, Cochise County, Arizona, United States. In Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, where his father, a West Point graduate, was on duty. Patch was the second son and second of three children of Alexander McCarrell Patch and Annie (Moore) Patch, both of whom had grown up in Washington, Pennsylvania. The family soon returned to Pennsylvania, for his father, having lost a leg in an accident incurred while chasing horse thieves, was retired for disability in 1890. Settling in Lebanon County, he became an executive of the Cornwall Railroad.
Education
Alexander McCarrell Patch, after earlier schooling and a year at Lehigh University, followed his father to West Point. He graduated in 1913, having excelled in field and track, and was assigned to the 18th Infantry in Texas.
Career
When the United States entered World War I, Alexander McCarrell Patch accompanied the 18th Infantry to France, where in June 1917 it became a part of the new 16t Division. Machine guns were new to the division, and Patch was among the first Americans to be schooled by the British in their use; for several months in 1918 he directed the A. E. F. Machine Gun School. During the Meuse-Argonne campaign he commanded his regiment's second battalion. In 1918 he was a victim of the influenza epidemic, which left him chronically susceptible to pneumonia whenever overtaxed. During the next two decades Patch alternated between regimental duty and assignments as a military student and instructor. He had three tours of duty on the faculty of the Staunton (Virginia) Military Academy, and the Shenandoah Valley became his permanent home. In 1924 he attended the Command and General Staff School, and in 1931 he entered the Army War College. At that time the army was moving toward greater mechanization, seeking newer automatic weapons, and developing a slimmer division. Major Patch's term paper dealt with a mechanized division of only three regiments. A classmate, Major George S. Patton, Jr. , who likewise proposed a mechanized division, was greatly impressed with Patch's concepts. For three years (1936 - 1939) Patch, now a lieutenant colonel, served on the Infantry Board. The three-regiment or "triangular" division was then being formed and field-tested, and Patch made many improvements in it, placing automatic weapons and antitank guns in the combat units.
In August 1940 Alexander McCarrell became commander of the 47th Infantry. Six weeks after Pearl Harbor, Gen. George C. Marshall selected Patch, whom he had watched since World War I, to command the task force destined to defend New Caledonia, a strategic island astride sea lanes to Australia. Raw American units, arriving in piecemeal fashion, had to be deployed quickly, but by late May 1942 Patch (now a major general) had assembled them into a fighting team, the Americal Division. That December he was placed in command of American ground operations in the Guadalcanal-Tulagi zone. He immediately organized two army divisions and one Marine division into one of America's first separate corps, the XIV. On January 10, 1943, he launched a well-planned and brilliantly executed attack which crushed the enemy's resistance. Tired and needing rest, Patch was ordered home at mid-March personally by Marshall, who wanted an experienced commander to form a new IV corps for European duty. On March 1, 1944, Patch was given command of the U. S. Seventh Army, which was scheduled to invade southern France in concert with an Allied advance from a northern beachhead in Normandy. Within a few months he had assembled his assault forces, which included a full-sized French army. That August he was given the temporary rank of lieutenant general. On Napoleon's birthday, August 15, he began his landings along the Riviera, an operation so perfectly executed that it remains a model in the annals of amphibious warfare.
By the end of August his Allied columns held Marseilles and Toulon and were advancing up the Rhone Valley. On September 11, they joined Gen. George Patton's Third Army near Epinal, having trapped sizable German formations. Despite his men's exhausted condition, and hobbled by a 450-mile supply line, Patch gambled on forcing the Burgundy gateway and descending the rift of the Rhine. At mid-September the guns of Belfort barred his way, and there Patch met his first and only tactical draw. Fleshed out with new divisions, Patch's army moved on the Saverne Gap with the objective of seizing Strasbourg. During the fighting that October his son, Capt. Alexander Patch III, was killed in action. With Marseilles as a port and a smooth-working supply line, Patch enjoyed a logistical advantage over all other Allied commanders. On November 13 he struck along the Marne-Rhine canal. His infantry advanced well, and he held his armor patiently, timing the very moment when it should break through the enemy's lines. In ten days, Patch was the first American commander to reach the Rhine, and on his fifty-fifth birthday he occupied Strasbourg. Well in front of Patton on his left, Patch hastened his army into Alsace, preparatory to jumping the Rhine, but his American superiors, after an all-day debate, directed him to advance west of the Rhine and, when Patton was ready, to join him in enveloping the Saar. Though bitterly disappointed, Patch reoriented his advance, and within three weeks was through the Wissembourg Gap into the Palatinate.
During January 1945 he met and repelled Hitler's last major offensive on the western front. When Germany collapsed, Patch's army controlled Brenner Pass, 900 miles from the Riviera. Marshall ordered Patch home in June to ready the Fourth Army for Pacific duty. When Japan capitulated, Patch headed a board to study the army's postwar structure and spent a month in Europe collecting data. That November, exhausted and realizing his need for medical attention, he entered Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Alexander McCarrell died six days later of pneumonia on November 21, 1945. His remains were buried in West Point.
Achievements
Alexander McCarrell became forhis service during World War I and World War II. During World War II, he commanded United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces during the Guadalcanal Campaign, and the United States Seventh Army on the Western Front.
Personality
Alexander McCarrell Patch's services were recognized by many governments, but he was so modest a man that he often objected to receiving the decorations.
Connections
While on leave in Washington, District of Columbia, on November 20, 1915, Alexander McCarrell Patch married Julia Adrienne Littell, daughter of General Isaac William Littell. They had two children, Alexander and Julia Ann.
