CLASSIC: A Grave Mistake: The Story of Patton's "Abandoned Rear"

Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we're back to you with a classic episode. We all remember George S. Patton from earlier, but have you heard about his abandoned rear?

Like, you mean like he lost his butt and he just left it for dead? His own butt?

Now, I've got to be honest with you, Noel, 2019 was a long time ago for us. Sure was. No recollection of this one either, buddy. So we are so thrilled that you're joining us today, and we can't wait to hear what we said years ago about this. I hope it's good. I hope it's good, too. Oh, my gosh. Here we go. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

May God have mercy for my enemies, because I won't. Welcome to Ridiculous History. My name is Ben. That is a quote by George S. Patton Jr.

My name is Noel, and that was a very grizzled sounding impression there.

I liked it very much. Is that what he sounded like? I mean, he's living life in the middle of wars, man. That's like a war voice.

He is known as one of the most grizzled generals, as portrayed by, what is it, George C.

Scott? You got it. Yeah, Casey on the Case. That Casey on the Case is a nod to our super producer, Casey Pegram.

That was a nice doubling up of those moments there, Ben. I really liked that.

So who was General Patton, Ben? Great question. In addition to being the main character of today's strange, ridiculous anecdote, George Smith Patton Jr. was a general of the U.S. Army who commanded the Seventh Army in World War II, the Third Army in France and Germany after D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy in June of 1944. He also makes an appearance in one of my favorite graphic novel series, Uber.

which I highly recommend checking out if you are a World War II buff, if you're a sci-fi buff, if you just like good stories. He was born into a family with a very storied military background, both in the U.S. Army and in the late Confederate Army. He went to West Point. He studied fencing. He even designed the M1913 Cavalry Sabre, more commonly known as the Patent Sabre today.

Fun fact about him, he competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics. I know, it's true.

He was a triathlete, or excuse me, a pentathlete, swimming, riding, fencing, running, and shooting. Man, that is a real pentuple threat.

Yes, yeah. I mean, forget about Broadway, right? What do they have, just triple threats? That's right. No, it's true.

This was in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm.

What a guy.

And on his way up to all of these accolades that were later to come for Patton, he was one of the inaugural members of the first ever United States Tank Corps established in 1917.

So he thought he would see more action with these newly invented armored vehicles than he would if he had just stayed with the infantry. And before the year had passed, 1917, Patton becomes a colonel and he's sent to France. and he's ordered to find a good location in France to train people in the use of tanks. He finds a village named Bourg, B-O-U-R-G, and he says, you know what?

This will do. That'll do, pig, because it has so much mud that they can practice driving in. It's true.

It turns out that Bourg's primary exports are fish and mud.

Oh, is that true? No. Oh, okay. Oh, why are we mentioning— the village and we didn't even check with you. Casey, can you illuminate the Francophone perspective on this village, Borg?

Well, Borg is like a generic kind of word that you see in lots of city names, like Luxembourg or something. It's like Pittsburgh that we see here in America. But it just means basically it's like a village that's on the larger side and features markets and would be sort of a meeting place or a trading place for other smaller villages nearby. So that's a Borg. But this one is just called Borg. So they didn't bother specifying anything more, you know, precise, just Berg.

So it's like a town named town?

Yeah, kind of.

Casey on the case. So it seems like a little bit of an uncreative Berg, Borg here. But, you know, that makes sense why they would be so lousy with fish. And mud, but not a bad place to train tanksmen? What do you call a tanker? Where are the fish coming from? I don't know, just my imagination.

Okay, well, they're along the water source. They're a little coastal, right? What do you call a tank driver? Pilot. A pilot? No, you don't call them a pilot. You would call them a driver.

Okay.

The driver drives the tank, but they're not really in charge. They're just steering. They're following orders. Yes, they have a professional backseat driver called the commander. And they're in charge of the whole tank. Ooh, that's got to get a little bit awkward sometimes. A professional backseat driver. Well, yeah.

But they're also in charge of telling the gunner and the loader what to do and communicating with the rest of it. Okay, so you got a gunner. They're not just sitting there.

You got a gunner, a loader, a driver, and a commander. So it's a four-person team in one of these things.

Yes, or three if there's an auto loader installed because then the loader doesn't need to be there. They would just be watching the auto loader. But back to Patton. Back to the Borg. No relation to the Borg from Star Trek. Must assimilate. Which I love. Yeah. You remember when Picard gets taken by the Borg and turns into Locutus?

He gets Borg'd. You could tell he had some heft behind the scenes at that point. because his face wasn't really covered the way all the other Borg were. He just got a little dealy bop on one of his temples. That's right. A little laser.

He was like a high-ranking Borg.

Yes. Yeah, he was. He was. I think they even made a film about it. Man, I forgot. I wonder if the Borg aged well. I used to love the idea when I was a kid. But that's a story for another day. Today's story still has us talking with Patton. He's found the perfect place to create his tank training school.

And while he's there, something very strange happens. The mayor of Borg comes to Patton, and he is weeping, this mayor. Openly. Openly, because he feels terrible. I forgot to tell you, Colonel, he says to Patton, that there is an American soldier, one of your countrymen, who has died in this, our small town.

So Patton, like in a frenzy, he's like, oh, man, have I lost someone? Am I one man down? And he looks through his ranks and finds that that is not the case. But the mayor says, no, no, there's definitely been a dead soldier that was left behind here. And there's a soldier's grave. I'm confused about this relationship here.

What is he talking about? Why is he saying there's a dead soldier that is from your company, a dead soldier from a previous engagement here?

A dead American soldier. That's what I mean. Right. Not necessarily as specific as from America. your crew that you're taking to train in tankery. He's alluding to other, some other group of soldiers that passed by. Gotcha. And he feels like he needs to inform them. But Patton, as you said, Noel, he checks through, he says, well, all of my people are fine. And the mayor insists, no, no, look, will you at least go visit this guy's grave? We should also mention that Borg is a really small town and like some other small towns in France, Borg's population declined considerably during World War I and II. So this is a very small place. And the mayor takes Patton to this gravesite, to this quote-unquote gravesite. There's a mound

of dirt. There's a stick posted in the ground at one end and nailed crosswise on that stick such that it forms a rustic-looking cross like you'd see on a grave. Sure. It's another piece of wood, and it has– what perhaps the mayor thought was the name of the fallen soldier. It's a strange name. It's not a very common name, I would say, then or now for a person. The name is Abandoned Rear.

Conjures so much imagery. So you've got the mud and stacked on top of the mud. You got a pile of dirt and shoved into the dirt.

You got a stick.

And then on the stick, there's a sign that says Abandoned Rear. And yeah, and the French mayor says, had apparently made a little bit of a goof and thought this sign was a cross, like you said.

I don't know.

Do we keep spinning this yarn, Ben, before we do the big reveal, or how do we do this?

Let's set the scene just a little bit. Oh, good call. Because Patton's reading this, and, you know, he has probably never heard of someone with that name. And we can only speculate, my friends. We can only imagine, hopefully, optimistically, that the French mayor is– is kind of weeping, you know, by this very straight-laced, somewhat bellicose officer, and then saying like, oh, can you imagine the life he could have led? The inhumanity, the inhumanity of war. He was but a youth, a child. Oh, abandoned rear.

Yeah, the French are known as being somewhat emotional.

Individuals, right?

You know, they like to weep openly while eating cheese and drinking tiny cups of coffee.

Ooh, watch out. We have a lot of French listeners. I'm just kidding, French listeners. Goodness gracious. We don't want to get the La Bouche contingent.

Hey, look, Americans only eat cheeseburgers. And drink large, big gulp Coca-Colas. And what else do we do? We ride Segways everywhere we go.

No, I don't know.

I'm just trying to stereotype everyone. That's going to be my new thing I'm going to do on the show.

That's your new thing? Mm-hmm. So what happened? What happened? Could you tell us the story of abandoned rear, Noel? How did this grave come to pass?

Oh, well, he certainly made a grave mistake in identifying this spot as a grave because as it turns out, the mayor had made a terrible decision. It wasn't a grave at all, but it was a latrine, a potty, a privy.

Yes, a toilet. This latrine was dug in the woods. It's a very common part of camp hygiene here. To bury your, you know, your leavings.

I went to Camp Hygiene when I was a kid.

It was great.

They taught you how to like brush your teeth and put on deodorant and just stay nice and fresh.

Like is the bit you went to a place named Camp Hygiene? I went to Camp Hygiene. Oh, okay. Is that a real thing?

No. Oh, okay. It's kind of like Space Camp, but it's Camp Hygiene.

I see. Where they teach you good hygiene. Oh, man. Space Camp.

I know, dude.

I really did go to Space Camp.

I know you did. I went to Space Camp as well, Casey. Which one did you go to?

Huntsville.

Yeah, I went to Huntsville as well.

Matt also went to space camp from our other show. I have not been to space camp, only camp hygiene.

I feel like you didn't miss very much, Noel.

Really?

Did you do the gyroscope? I love the gyroscope.

The gyroscope, you do the moonwalk, which is way cooler than the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Moderately cooler than the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Contrary to what the 80s film would have you believe, you don't actually accidentally end up in a space shuttle. But I learned a lot. Yeah, I learned a lot. Did you learn how to dig a latrine, Ben? Yeah, I did that in Boy Scouts. Okay, well, that's what I learned in Camp Hygiene.

And that's what they were looking at that they thought was a grave, but it wasn't fact. What does abandoned rear mean? Does that mean we've– I don't understand. What is abandoned rear?

That's just what someone used to describe their leavings or their latrine. Here's the thing. People find out about this story in– Patton's autobiographical accounts, which he drew from his diary entries. And he says that the French, when they had taken this newly dug latrine for a cross, it wasn't old. It was a freshly dug latrine. He decided not to tell them the truth. So he just let it ride or let it roll, I should say, as he was into tanks at the time. And because he didn't tell the residents of the town the truth about this spot, But what do you think happened? Did they just keep up with the grave? Because, you know, you wouldn't desecrate a grave.

No. And they had been up to that point. They had been maintaining it.

Right, right. And since he didn't tell them, we can only assume that they didn't randomly decide to desecrate this grave. And now we come into a question of authenticity. Because the only record of this story is the general's autobiography. And this was incomplete at the time of his passing in 1945. We have some questions, though. We have some questions, and we want to hear what you all think. If you don't have a knowledge of French or English names, then maybe, you know, like maybe you could assume the French mayor thought abandoned rear was a name that would be common in the U.S. But the problem with that is that the word abandon means the same thing in both French and English. Isn't that right, Casey? Abandoné, yeah. Yeah,

Casey on the case. So maybe he thought abandoned was a rank in the army?

Ah, that makes sense, sure. Or like a defector of some kind?

I don't know. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's like a coward's death. Right, and yet they still treated it with the utmost respect. Didn't it also smell? How much dirt did they put on it? You know how to dig a latrine. You went to Camp Hygiene. Yeah. There's a science to this and there are standards.

That's right.

You got to dig it at least five feet down. And yeah, I don't know.

Okay. I've got to come clean. Camp Hygiene is not a real thing and I've never dug a latrine. I've never even pooped outdoors, dude. Sorry.

That you remember? That I remember. That I remember. Yeah. You're not a camper? You don't like to go camping?

Well, look, I want to be more of a camper. I want to be more of an outdoorsman. I am trying to meet somebody in my private life who's really into that because I tend to, you know, broaden my horizons when I'm kind of like.

Do what the SO does. Do what the SO does, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's how I accidentally ended up vegetarian for like a decade. Nice. But I went back. Yeah. I went back. Meat's great. Actually, this is unrelated, but, you know, did I ever tell you when I stopped becoming a vegetarian? Well, you had become one at that point, I assume. I had been one for several years, and then I started eating meat again when I was in Central America. Because where I was living, you know, people are being very gracious, making you dinner or something. And it's very, I think it's very privileged and pretty inconsiderate. To tell somebody that's worked very hard on something, especially if they don't have a lot to go around anyway, to be like, I'm too

good for this food that you've lovingly given me. Yeah, I've got scruples.

I can't have scruples when it comes to being prepared a nice meal. No, no, it's a very good point. You know, it's like, I mean, especially when you're in another country, you're trying to honor customs. It's very, maybe if you don't even speak the language super well, it's really hard to explain this without sounding like a kind of an elitist jerk.

Exactly. And maybe this is similar to– see, you thought we weren't going anywhere with this, folks. But this is not just a tangent. Maybe Patton was in a similar situation where he said– because, again, the French mayor is pre-clemped. He's very upset. He's lacrimose would be a good word for it. So maybe Patton says, it might be awkward for me to explain to this guy that this is clearly not a grave.

Yeah.

I don't want to upset him even further. That's right. Yeah. I think the official term is shithole. Or I guess maybe technically like a shith trough or a shith barrow. A trough?

Mm-hmm. A barrow implies mobility though, right?

Like a wheelbarrow? Well, one of the old terms for a barrow is a large mound of earth or stones, but that's over the remains of the dead, so I'm probably conflating. You might be. My word of the day I walked away with for this one was lachrymose. I love it. Which is a great word. This story doesn't end just there, though. In 1944, during World War II, General Patton returned to Borg, the, as you said, Casey, the town of town, and was given a hero's welcome.

By the people who remembered him from the last time he was there in 1917. And he relived memories. He went to his old office. He went to where he used to live back when he wasn't a huge deal general. And then he said, wow, in 1944, the village is still respectfully maintaining the grave of abandoned rear. Here's my question, Ben. Yeah.

Would it have been more polite– And ultimately less humiliating to just tell the guy, tell the townsman, townspeople, that it was in fact that they had made a mistake. So they didn't just keep up this charade for all these lo these many years. What's more humiliating? You know, a moment of embarrassment or a lifetime of, you know, maintaining a latrine as though it were a grave.

I would say even further, what if the town of Borg is still doing this? What if he never told them?

You don't think they read Snopes in Borg?

I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, Snopes does have an interesting article on this. There was one last piece of speculation regarding how the mayor could have thought it was a fallen soldier. Maybe the soldiers were in a hurry and the soldier's last name was Rear. That was their surname. And they just abandoned them there. And then so it would be like, you know, the same thing as abandoned pegram. I still think that's a stretch.

I don't know what led the mayor to believe this. And it's not clear whether Patton felt sorry for the mayor or whether he just privately thought it was hilarious.

The Snopes article does point out a really nice sort of ironic little twist to the story of abandoned rear that involves the general's own. battle record, let's say. He was only ever injured in battle once during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of September 1918, where he and five other foot soldiers were charging into machine gun fire. And he was the only one that survived. No, actually, four of his companions were killed. One of them was okay. He got hit in the thigh and this is from his memoir. Quote, It came out just at the crack of my bottom, about two inches to the left of my rectum. Yeah, that's what he said. The doctor said that, quote, he can't see how the bullet went where it did without

crippling me for life. He says he could not have run a probe without getting either the hip joint, sciatic nerve, or the big artery, yet none of these were touched.

Fate again.

I have never had any pain and can walk perfectly.

So it makes me think of that million-dollar injury, the way they would describe it in the Vietnam War or something. Like in Forrest Gump, you win the lottery once, by getting shot in a way that takes you out of the war zone, but doesn't ruin your life. I think Forrest also got shot in the keister. In the buttocks. Yeah. Yeah.

And he shows it to the, to the president in that, uh, really pretty well doctored CGI footage.

Yeah. He showed his buttocks to, um, Lyndon Johnson, right? I think because Johnson says he'd like to see his gunshot wound. Oh, also this goes back to our old episode on, uh, what, uh, terrible person what a real pill lyndon johnson was he had i think he was the president who had a creepy thing for scars.

Yeah maybe so and he also like didn't he get his pants uh tailored in a certain way to make room for his bunghole wasn't he into butts as well yeah yeah uh.

Yeah i've gotta i've gotta figure out who that was that's yeah it was lbj i just i just looked at the clip on youtube there's even a reaction shot where forrest kind of shows in the bullet wound and uh LBJ sort of has a great reaction to it.

Damn son. Yeah, exactly. So there you have it. If we were to draw a moral from this story, uh, what, what would it be? Is it sometimes that it's the thought that counts? Can we say that? Like they, it's what's inside that counts. Yeah, there we go. Uh, because the community of the town thought they were doing the right thing, but what was actually inside was not the, um, the fallen soldier they were expecting. You know what this makes me think? I would love to hear more about strange monuments, strange statues. There's so many. I had been talking off air with some of my friends before, I think with you guys as well in the past, about the idea of getting a statue built to yourself. Like who does that? Isn't that something where someone else should

build the statue for you? Like they should spontaneously love your work Totally. Back when our office was in Buckhead, which is a different neighborhood from where we are currently based, there was a statue for, I believe, the founder of the Peace Corps, which was between our office and the Toys R Us. Did you ever walk that way, Casey?

Do you remember what I'm talking about?

I don't remember the Peace Corps guy statue. I remember there's a Michael Stipe.

The foxes. Yeah. A bunch of foxes. That's right. Yeah. Oh, man, we need more statues here. I'm a big fan of statues. Me too.

In my hometown, there's a true-to-life James Brown statue because that's where he was born. But he appears very short, but apparently is his exact size.

It's weird. At a town where a lot of my family's from, my grandfather actually made tons of the statues around town, like the ones in banks and in airports and stuff like that. I think he made some busts of U.S. presidents too, but I don't know if he ever met Lyndon Johnson. I'll have to find out and update if we can find any more weird presidential or Patton-esque trivia. In the meantime, let us all take this as a lesson in your neck of the global woods.

If you have a mysterious local monument, do some digging. Maybe not literal. That might be illegal. But do some research and see if it is, in fact, what it purports to be. Agreed.

If you want to tell us some stories about some grave mix-ups... You can write to us at ridiculous at iheartradio.com or you can hit us up on our Facebook group, which is The Ridiculous Historians. I think all you have to do is answer a very simple question, which is who are.

The hosts of Ridiculous History?

It could be me. It could be Ben. It could be Casey on the case.

Or just make us laugh. I mean, if you make me laugh, I'm going to let you in. Yeah, you're in like Flynn. You can also find us as a show and as individuals on Twitter, on Instagram at I am on Twitter as at Ben Bolin HSW, but me and Noel both do Instagram. You can find my various adventures, misadventures, and shenaniganry, which is a word I just made up, on at Ben Bolin.

You can find me at HowNowNoelBrown.

Big, big, big thanks to Ryan Barish, to Gabe Luzier, to Christopher Haciotis, to you, Noel, and to you, Casey.

Thanks, Ben.

Thanks to you as well. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. And thanks to you, kind, gentle listeners of the internet. We will see you next time.

And thanks to you, abandoned rear. Casey, can we play some memorial music for him?

For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

CLASSIC: A Grave Mistake: The Story of Patton's "Abandoned Rear"

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