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A waterfront brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, went viral. What happened and why?

The riverfront worker who was attacked said he “held on for dear life” as a group of white boaters jumped him in a large brawl that broke out at the Montgomery Riverfront in Alabama on Aug. 5.

In a handwritten account he filed with law enforcement after the Aug. 5 melee and obtained by NBC News, Dameion Pickett recalled what happened the day when the men refused to move their boat so a dinner cruise riverboat could dock.

“A tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face. I took my hat off and threw it in the air,” he wrote. “Somebody hit me from behind. I started choking the older guy in front of me so he couldn’t anymore, pushing him back at the same time.”

Pickett has not made a public statement regarding the incident and did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.

Videos that went viral on social media showed a group of white men attacking Pickett. The footage caused an outcry, with the Montgomery mayor addressing the altercation and police issuing arrest warrants.

Allen Todd, 23, and Zachery Shipman, 25, have been charged with one misdemeanor count of assault in the third degree, a spokesperson for the Montgomery Police Department said.

Another man, Richard Roberts, 48, faces two third-degree assault charges and turned himself in on Aug. 8.

A fourth suspect in the case, Mary Todd, 21, turned herself in on Aug. 10 and was charged with misdemeanor third-degree assault.

A fifth suspect, Reggie Ray, 42, turned himself in on Aug. 11 and was charged with disorderly conduct. Police had previously sought Ray after he was seen wielding a folding chair in the melee on social media videos.

So what exactly happened? Read on for a full explanation of this now-viral incident.

What happened at the Montgomery Riverfront

A large brawl broke out Saturday, Aug. 5, shortly before 7 p.m. at the Alabama capital after Pickett attempted to clear a dock along the river so that the Harriott II Riverboat could dock, witnesses told NBC News . The brawl was fueled by alcohol and adrenaline, witnesses also said.

When a group of rowdy boaters refused to move their pontoon at the Montgomery Riverfront, they attacked Pickett when he untied their boat to make way for the riverboat, witnesses said.

In video shared with NBC News , after a group of what appears to be white men ran along the dock to attack the worker, who is Black, more people joined in and appeared to defend Pickett. Other footage shared with NBC News shows people punching and shoving one another, with one person falling into the water as police struggled to contain the chaos.

The Riverfront is a popular destination with a park, stadium, amphitheater and riverboat.

What police say about the fight

Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert, in a news conference on Aug. 8 , confirmed that a group of private white boaters had attacked a Black dockworker, identified as Pickett. Later, police would identify Pickett as the assistant boat captain of the riverboat.

He had been trying to move the private boaters' pontoon to make way for the riverboat.

As passengers aboard the riverboat — more than 200 — waited at least 30 minutes, Pickett tried to get the rowdy private boaters to move. Several members of the private pontoon group then attacked Pickett, Albert said.

Albert added that police arrived on the scene at 7:18 p.m. local time — about 18 minutes after the riverboat captain had called. He said 13 people were detained, questioned and then released.

What did the attacked dockworker say about the incident?

In a handwritten statement filed with police and obtained by NBC News, Pickett said he asked the group “five or six times” to move their boat.

When he and a dockhand were ignored and given the finger, he says, they untied the group’s pontoon boat, moved it “three steps to the right” and re-tied it to a post so the Harriott II could dock.

“By that time, two people ran up behind me,” Pickett wrote, adding that a man in a red hat yelled, “Don’t touch that boat motherf---er or we will beat your ass.”

He said the men continued to threaten him and then one of them called another man over.

“They both were very drunk,” Pickett wrote, adding that then the pontoon boat owner went over “started getting loud … He got into my face. ‘This belongs to the f---ing public.’ I told him this was a city dock.”

That’s when the brawl began. Pickett wrote, “A tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face. I took my hat off and threw it in the air. Somebody hit me from behind. I started choking the older guy in front of me so he couldn’t anymore, pushing him back at the same time.”

Adding, “Then the guy in the red shorts came up and tackled me … I went to the ground. I think I hit one of them.”

Sharing more recollections from the fight, he said, “I can’t tell you how long it lasted. I grabbed one of them and just held on for dear life.”

Pickett was eventually helped by other people but noticed the brawl was getting out of hand, writing, “One of my co-workers had jumped into the water and was pushing people and fighting.”

He added that his nephew joined the melee and he had also seen his sister being choked during the fight.

As more chaos ensued, the riverboat had not been tied to the dock but Pickett helped the passengers off the boat. He wrote that he apologized “for the inconvenience. They all said I did nothing wrong.”

“Some of them were giving me cards with their names and numbers on it. Some said they had it all on film, so I pointed them out to MPD,” he added. After the altercation, he was treated at the emergency room where he was treated for bruised ribs and bumps on his head.

What witnesses say about the brawl

Witnesses told NBC News a similar version of events. Christa Owen said she was aboard the Harriott II with her husband and daughter when the brawl broke out.

“What was hard is we were all on the boat and witnessing our poor crewman being attacked by these guys, and we couldn’t do anything about it,” Owen said.

“It was really difficult to watch, and, like I said, we felt helpless, because we were forced to be spectators,” Owen added.

Owen was among those who recorded the altercations, explaining that it was “inexcusable behavior.”

Additionally, Leslie Mawhorter also on Harriott II, added: “They just didn’t think the rules applied to them. It was so avoidable. This never had to have happened. Everything just spiraled from there.”

“I knew something was going to go down, because their attitude was just, ‘You can’t tell us what to do.’ They were going to be confrontational regardless of who you were,” Mawhorter continued.

Have police made any arrests?

Four men and one woman are facing charges , according to police: Richard Roberts, 48; Reggie Ray, 42; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25, and Mary Todd, 21.

“There was no need for this event to take the path it did,” Albert told reporters earlier this week. “The people of Montgomery, we’re better than that. We’re a fun city, and we don’t want this type of activity to shed a dark eye on what this city’s all about.”

Was the fight racially motivated?

In the press conference on Aug. 8, Albert said investigators do not believe the incident was racially motivated.

He said that the local FBI and district attorney’s offices are involved in the ongoing investigation. 

“I don’t think you can judge any community by any one incident. I think it’s important for us to address this as an isolated incident, one that was avoidable,” Albert said. “One that was brought on by individuals who chose the wrong path of action.”

What the mayor of Montgomery said about the altercation

On Sunday, Aug. 6, Mayor Steven L. Reed released a statement saying that “justice will be served” after individuals attacked “a man who was doing his job.”

“Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job. Warrants have been signed and justice will be served,” the statement posted on social media read. “This was an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred. As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community.”

“Those who choose violent actions will be held accountable by our criminal justice system,” the statement concluded.

Reed shared how he felt about the incident during a press conference on Aug. 7.

"I feel like it’s an unfortunate incident. Our statement that we put out the other day is that it’s something that shouldn’t have happened and it’s something that we’re investigating right now," Reed said. "We’ll continue to go through that process before we take any additional steps."

When asked if Reed thought the incident was racially charged, he said the brawl is still under investigation, and that authorities are "investigating all angles."

The investigation is ongoing.

EDITOR'S NOTE (Aug. 11, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. ET): Previous police statements listed the man attacked as Damien Pickett and one of the suspects as Zachary Shipman. On Aug. 11, officials corrected their names' spellings to Dameion Pickett and Zachery Shipman. This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling.

Liz Calvario is a Los Angeles-based reporter and editor for TODAY.com who covers entertainment, pop culture and trending news.

Anna Kaplan is a news and trending reporter for TODAY.com.

Sam Kubota is a senior digital editor and journalist for TODAY Digital based in Los Angeles. She joined NBC News in 2019.

Several people detained after fight breaks out at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park in Alabama

Update : Montgomery police say 4 active warrants out after brawl at Riverfront Park in Alabama

Several people were taken into custody Saturday night after a fight broke out at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park in Alabama, authorities said.

The Montgomery Police Department responded to a disturbance at the 200 block of Coosa Street in Montgomery, Alabama, at 7 p.m. after a large group of people were fighting. Several people were detained, police said.

A video of the incident, which appeared to be racially divided, was shared Sunday on social media. It’s been reported that it began because a pontoon boat was blocking dock space needed to park a riverboat. That area is the regular spot reserved for the Harriott II Riverboat.

Watch the video to see the massive boat deck brawl that led to several people being detained.

One short video, posted on social media by Josh Moon of the Alabama Political Reporter, shows several white people fighting a single Black man, who according to Jasmine Williams of WSFA is a dock worker.

The only audio heard is from witnesses yelling, but it appears to begin with an argument between the Black man and one of the white men. Another white man rushes and hits the Black man, who backs up and tosses his hat into the air. Then the fight begins in earnest, and several white people begin hitting the Black man.

During the video, one witness, apparently watching from the riverboat, screamed repeatedly, “Y’all help that brother!” to onlookers who were on shore. It appears some people from the shore did join in to defend him, and the video shows at least one Black man dive into the water from the riverboat.

“Get up there, young buck!” yelled another voice on the video.

By the time the swimmer climbed up onto the dock, about a minute into the video, most of the altercation appeared to be over in Moon's video.

A separate video posted by Lauryn Lauren shows scenes after that, as the Harriott II was preparing to dock. A group of people approached the pontoon boat, and more fighting broke out. At least one person fell into the water from the dock. Authorities were soon on the scene and police began taking people into custody .

Authorities have not released the names of the detained suspects. Charges against anyone involved in the fight are pending, MPD said.

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel can be contacted at   [email protected]

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

What we know about the Montgomery Riverfront brawl

A group of White boaters attacked a Black co-captain on Saturday on a dock at Riverfront Park in Montgomery, Ala., sparking a massive brawl that resulted in assault charges and the city’s mayor calling for justice to be served to the boaters “for attacking a man who was doing his job.”

Three White men were charged with misdemeanor assault over the brawl after 13 people were initially detained by police for interviews , Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert said at a news conference with Mayor Steven L. Reed (D) on Tuesday. Those charged were Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25. Several people were detained after video clips of the brawl went viral on social media over the weekend.

Reed said in a statement Sunday that police “acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job.” He called the fight “an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred.”

Here’s what we know so far about the incident:

Black riverfront worker said he ‘hung on for dear life’ during Montgomery attack

In his written deposition to Montgomery police, filed hours after he was attacked at the city’s riverfront last weekend, dock worker Dameion Pickett said he “hung on for dear life” as he was pummeled by a group of white boaters who disregarded his requests to move their boat so a dinner cruise vessel could dock.

NBC News obtained the handwritten account Pickett filed with law enforcement after the Aug. 5 melee.

Pickett, who has yet to speak publicly about the incident and did not respond to a request for comment, detailed the moments leading up to the fracas, which was captured on video. In his statement, he recounts the battle between white disruptive boaters and the cadre of Black people who came to his aid.

Mary Todd, one woman who jumped into the melee, was taken into custody Thursday by the Montgomery Police Department and charged with third-degree assault. On Wednesday night, two of the three men initially charged in the altercation — Allen Todd, 23, and Zachary Shipman, 25 — turned themselves in to face third-degree assault charges. Richard Roberts, 48, was already in custody. They did not answer requests for comment about Pickett’s account of events. 

Pickett wrote that crew members asked the occupants of the pontoon boat, through an intercom, to move it “five or six times.” When Pickett left the cruise vessel, Harriott II, to confront the passengers of the smaller boat, he heard passengers shouting to the rowdy boaters to “move your boat. You’re in the way.”

The men on the pontoon responded by “giving us the finger” for about three minutes, Pickett wrote. 

Eventually, he and a dockhand untied the pontoon boat and moved it “three steps to the right” and tied it back to a post so the Harriott II could dock.

“By that time, two people ran up behind me,” Pickett wrote. One of the men, in a red hat, yelled to Pickett, “Don’t touch that boat motherf— or we will beat your ass.”

“I told them, ‘No, you won’t,’” he wrote. Pickett said they were unaware that he had given the captain the go-ahead to dock the Harriott II. The men continued to threaten Pickett, he said, and he told them: “Do what you’ve got to do, I’m just doing my job.”

One white man called another white man over to the scene. “They both were very drunk,” Pickett wrote. Another man came over to “try to calm them down” and then the boat’s owner came over. Pickett explained that the signs denoting where to park had been taken down by someone, so he had to tell them where to move the boat to make room for the Harriott II. 

The boat’s owner, wearing a gray shirt and red shorts with a sun visor, “started getting loud … He got into my face. ‘This belongs to the f— public.’ I told him this was a city dock.”

Soon, the melee began. “By that time,” Pickett wrote, “a tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face. I took my hat off and threw it in the air. Somebody hit me from behind. I started choking the older guy in front of me so he couldn’t anymore, pushing him back at the same time.

“Then the guy in the red shorts came up and tackled me … I went to the ground. I think I hit one of them.”

He said the attackers littered him with threats as they ganged up on him. “I’m gonna kill you, motherf—--. Beat your ass, motherf—--.” 

“I can’t tell you how long it lasted,” Pickett wrote. “I grabbed one of them and just held on for dear life.”

Eventually, Pickett said he looked up and help had arrived. “Two people were pulling them off me.” He described the assistance as coming from a tall Black man and a security guard. After struggling to his feet, Pickett said he looked up and “one of my co-workers had jumped into the water and was pushing people and fighting.”

While being held by someone, Pickett asked to be released so he could dock the boat. He gave the necessary orders to the captain to park the vessel.

 Meanwhile, “my nose was running … and I could hear passengers and co-workers arguing with the people who attacked me.”

The Harriott II docked and when the ramp came down for passengers to disembark, Pickett’s nephew “ran off the boat and went after them. I was screaming for him to come back.”

The nephew did not come back and the encounter escalated. 

“The security guard was trying to get the lady in red to leave; she wouldn’t listen. People from off the boat and spectators were coming down the back end of the dock. The guy who started it all was choking my sister. I hit him, grabbed her and moved her … I turned around and MPD had a taser in my face. I told him I was the one being attacked and could I finish doing my job.”

The back of the cruise vessel had not been tied to the dock. Pickett, despite the chaos around him, helped passengers off the boat with the aid of police. He apologized to them “for the inconvenience. They all said I did nothing wrong,” he wrote. “Some of them were giving me cards with their names and numbers on it. Some said they had it all on film, so I pointed them out to MPD.”

At some point, Pickett said he was led to a medic, “where I sat for 25 or 30 minutes. My head was hurting. I felt a knot in the back of my head and the front.”

 With coaxing, he sought treatment in the emergency room, where he was shown to have bruised ribs and bumps on his head, but no broken bones.

Curtis Bunn is a reporter for NBC BLK.

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Alabama riverfront brawl videos spark a cultural moment about race, solidarity and justice

As bystanders trained their smartphone cameras on the riverfront dock while several  white boaters pummeled a Black riverboat co-captain , they couldn’t have known the footage would elicit a national conversation about racial solidarity.

Yet, a week after multiple videos showing the now-infamous brawl and valiant defense of the outnumbered co-captain were shared widely on social media, it’s clear the event truly tapped into the psyche of Black America and created a broader cultural moment.

What You Need To Know

Bystanders who trained their smartphone cameras on an alabama riverfront dock, as several white boaters pummeled a black riverboat co-captain, couldn’t have known the footage would elicit a national conversation about racial solidarity but last weekend's now-infamous brawl has truly tapped into the psyche of black america and created a cultural moment many see the ordeal on the riverfront dock in montgomery as a long-awaited answer to countless calls for help that went unanswered for past black victims of violence and mob attacks alabama’s capital city is steeped in civil rights history, including being the first capital of the confederacy.

Andrea Boyles, a sociology professor at Tulane University, said a long history of anti-Black racism and attacks and current events likely magnified the attack's impact and response.

“Especially at a time like now where we see an increase in anti-Black racism through legislation and otherwise, whether we’re thinking about history, the banning of Black history and curriculum and all sorts of things across the state of Florida” and elsewhere, Boyles said. “So this is why it is on the forefront of people’s minds. And folks are very much tuned in, Black people in particular."

Many see the Aug. 5 ordeal on the riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital city steeped in  civil rights history , as a long-awaited answer to countless calls for help that went unanswered for past Black victims of violence and mob attacks.

“We witnessed a white mob doing this to him,” said Michelle Browder, an artist and social justice entrepreneur in Montgomery, describing the attack by boaters on the Black riverboat co-captain.

“I call it a mob because that is what it was, it was a mob mentality,” she added. “It then became a moment because you saw Black people coming together.”

After being inundated with images and stories of lethal violence against Black people, including motorists in traffic stops, church parishioners and grocery shoppers, the video from Montgomery struck a chord because it didn’t end in the worst of outcomes for Black Americans.

“For Montgomery to have this moment, we needed to see a win. We needed to see our community coming together and we needed to see justice,” Browder said.

Videos of the brawl showed the participants largely divided along racial lines. Several white men punched or shoved the Black riverboat co-captain after he took a separate vessel to shore and tried to move their pontoon boat. The white boaters’ private vessel was docked in a spot designated for the city-owned Harriott II riverboat, on which more than 200 passengers were waiting to disembark.

The videos then showed mostly Black people rushing to the co-captain’s defense, including a Black teenage riverboat crew member who swam to the dock. The videos also showed the ensuing brawl that included a Black man hitting a white person with a folding chair.

As of Friday, Alabama police had charged four white people with misdemeanor assault. The folding chair-wielding man turned himself in Friday and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Jim Kittrell, the captain of Harriott II, told  The Daily Beast  that he thought race might have been a factor in the initial attack on his co-captain, but the resulting melee was not a “Black and white thing."

“This was our crew upset about these idiots,” Kittrell also told  WACV radio station .

He later explained that several members of his crew, seen confronting the pontoon boat party after the riverboat docked, “felt they had to retaliate, which was unfortunate.”

“I wish we could have stopped it from happening but, when you see something like that, it was difficult. It was difficult for me to sit there in the wheelhouse watching him being attacked,” Kittrell told the station.

Kittrell told The Associated Press by phone that the city had asked him not to talk about the brawl.

Major Saba Coleman of the Montgomery Police Department said on Tuesday that hate crime charges were ruled out after the department consulted with the local FBI. But several observers noted the presence of a hate motivation, or lack thereof, on the part of the pontoon boat party was not why the event resonated so strongly.

“All these individuals having smartphones and cameras have democratized media and information. In the past, it was a very narrow scope on what news was being reported and from what perspectives,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said.

The technology, Johnson added, “opened up an opportunity for America as a whole to understand the impact of racism, the impact of violence and the opportunity to create a narrative that’s more consistent with keeping African Americans and other communities safe.”

The riverfront brawl spawned a multitude of memes, jokes, parodies, reenactments and even T-shirts. “Lift every chair and swing,” read one shirt in a play on “  Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing ,” the late-19th century hymn sometimes referred to as the Black national anthem.

Another meme likened the co-captain’s toss of his hat into the air to sending the “bat signal,” a reference to the D.C. Comics character Batman. One image of the scene captured from bystander video was altered to imitate Marvel Comics’ Avengers characters assembling through magic portals on the dock to defend the Black co-captain.

Many observers on social media were quick to point out the significance of the city and location where the brawl took place. Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy and the riverfront is an area where enslaved people were once unloaded to be sold at auction. The area is a few blocks from the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying bus segregation laws.

“Much of (the riverfront brawl reaction) is emblematic of the history of Montgomery,” said Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

“This is the home of the bus boycott; this is the home of intense, racialized segregation and various forms of resistance today,” he said. “Even if there wasn’t an explicit mention of race, many people saw a white man assaulting a Black man as a proxy for some of the racist behavior that they’ve seen before. It brought about a sense of solidarity and unified fate, too, in this particular moment.”

Then there’s the lingering trauma of seeing past Black victims of violence and mob attacks suffer without help or intervention. Here was the rare event in which bystanders not only chronicled the moment but were able to intervene and help someone they saw being victimized.

In other notable instances, such as  George Floyd’s murder  by Minneapolis police, bystanders were restrained because the perpetrators were law enforcement officers. In a video of Floyd’s encounter with police filmed by Black bystander  Darnella Frazier , people can be heard pleading for the Black man's life as he gasped for air with a white officer's knee held to his neck.

Physically intervening in Minneapolis would have invited arrests and placed the would-be rescuers at risk for harm themselves.

Historically, lynching victims were often taken from their families as the Black community had to stand by mutely. Emmett Till’s family members in Mississippi were  haunted by their inability to stop the white men  who kidnapped and killed him.

Bowder, the Montgomery artist, said the conversation needs to continue.

“I’m hoping for a hopeful message out of this,” she said.

Katrina Hazzard, a Rutgers University professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, said she has seen that hopeful message in the comments of support that have crossed racial and ethnic lines in identifying the aggressors and the right for people to defend themselves and the crewman.

“That’s just been refreshing for me to see and for me to hear across the board,” she said.

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Prosecutor: evidence to be presented to grand jury after incident outside montgomery inn.

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Prosecutors are going to be presenting evidence to a grand jury in the case involving an assault outside the Montgomery Inn Boathouse back in June.

It happened on June 22, when police responded to a report of a fight in the parking lot of the restaurant.

Two people were taken to the hospital with significant injuries.

The family of the two people injured, Doug and Lois Morrow, held a press conference after the incident, saying the two people injured were going to the restaurant to pick up their son, Troy Morrow, from work.

They said while in the parking lot, their truck was T-boned.

Family attorney Konrad Kircher said a man who is related to the other driver walked over to the Morrows.

"Right away, he starts saying, 'Look, look, here's what we're going to do. We're not going to call police. We're going to exchange insurance information, and that will be it,'" Kircher said.

Troy Morrow said he and the driver were arguing when someone else ran over to them and punched him in the head.

"I see him get knocked down and go to the ground. That's when I jumped on top of the guy, whoever it was," Doug Morrow said.

Doug Morrow said he was the next to go down, followed by his wife.

In July, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Dinkelacker ordered the appointment of Clermont County Prosecutor Mark Tekulve to investigate and prosecute any and all criminal matters in the incident.

According to court documents, "a conflict exists in this matter that makes it inappropriate for the officer of the Hamilton County prosecuting attorney to proceed."

The document nor the prosecutor's office stated what the conflict was.

On Tuesday, Tekulve said assistant prosecutor's will present evidence and information from their investigation to a Hamilton County Grand Jury for consideration in the next few weeks.

Tekulve also said that after interviewing all parties and witnesses, looking at videos, police reports and medical records, they determined charges are not warranted against Steve Raleigh, saying there is no evidence that he violated any criminal law.

As for the other people involved, Tekulve said an update will be provided after the Grand Jury’s determination.

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6 Badass Lines From Patton’s Famously Vulgar Speech

By Corey Adwar

Posted on May 29, 2015 1:39 PM EDT

Seventy-one years ago this week, U.S. Army General George S. Patton, Jr. delivered what is considered one of the most rousing military speeches of all time to the American 3rd Army waiting to do battle in German-occupied France.

Patton actually recited the widely revered speech four to six times between late May and early June 1944, without consulting any notes, writes Terry Brighton in his book “ Patton, Montgomery, Rommel: Masters of War .” The content of each of those speeches from one to the next was substantially, but not entirely, identical. Every time, Patton wore his helmet and polished cavalry boots, gripping a riding crop that he snapped occasionally for dramatic effect.

Related: 5 Badass Schwarzkopf Quotes In Honor Of The 25th Gulf War Anniversary »

While some officers disapproved of the curse words and vulgar epithets sprinkled throughout the speech, the enlisted men loved it because Patton was speaking like them, in the “language of the barracks,” according to Brighton.

The most famous portion of the speech may be Patton’s opening statement: “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Patton is believed to have said these lines in the version of the speech he delivered to the 3rd Army’s 6th Armored Division on May 31, 1944, but not in the June 5 version of his speech, according to Brenda Lovelace Gist in her book “ Eloquently Speaking .”

There is no official transcript of Patton’s speech surviving today except for slightly varied versions scribbled by G.I. audience members as they listened to his oration. But, as historian Charles M. Province points out in Armchair General magazine, an official version of the speech briefly survived after the war. In 1951, New American Mercury Magazine published that version, which the editors said was obtained by a congressman who had visited Patton’s Czechoslovakia headquarters.

The publication of the speech led to so many reader requests for reprints that the magazine editors hired someone they called a “famous” actor, whose identity now is unknown, to record the original speech, as well as a modified recording with less offensive words.

Although the magazine’s editors did not legally need approval from Patton’s widow to distribute the recordings, they asked for her permission anyway. She was against distribution, based on the opinion that her late husband’s speech was intended only for the men who were about to fight and die alongside him. As a result, the editors reluctantly destroyed the recordings.

Today there is no single agreed-upon version of the speech among historians. The excerpts below are from Province’s compiled version based on evidence from magazine articles, newspaper accounts, film biographies, newsreels, and books. You can read the entire speech and Province’s narrative, sans the “die for his country” opening quote, here .

Patton started by celebrating the innate competitiveness that makes the American soldier exceptional.

When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

He told his men that their sense of duty should always prevail over their fear of death.

Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

The general emphasized that every soldier has an indispensable role to play.

Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, “Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands”. But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now?

The gist of his message was made perfectly, and anatomically, clear — always be advancing.

I don’t want to get any messages saying, “I am holding my position.” We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy.

He told the inexperienced ones that war is never pretty.

War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!

He reminded them they were about to join him in one of history’s greatest endeavors.

You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON’T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, “Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.” No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, “Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!”

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Quotes About Montgomery

• Stephen E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army From the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945 (1997), p. 391-392
• Lieutenant-Colonel C P Dawney, Military Assistant to Montgomery [ citation needed ]
• Arthur "Bomber" Harris in his memoirs, Bomber Offensive (1947)
• Brian Horrocks, commander of a machine-gun battalion and later commander of XXX Corps, in his autobiography A Full Life (1960)
• Brian Horrocks, commander of a machine-gun battalion and later commander of XXX Corps, in his autobiography A Full Life (1960), comparing Montgomery to Rommel.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower , diary entry (11 June 1943) [ specific citation needed ]
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, in response to violent criticism by Montgomery about Eisenhower's broad front tactics before Operation Market Garden , as quoted in Arnhem — A Tragedy of Errors (1994) by Peter Harclerode, p. 27 and BBC documentary D-Day to Berlin , on Eisenhower's aircraft at Brussels airport on 10 September 1944.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948), p. 179
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948), p. 286
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948), p. 387
• Denis Falvey, A Well-Known Excellence (2002)
• Wilhelm von Thoma who fought against Montgomery in North Africa. After the war he was interviewed by Basil Liddell Hart for his book The Other Side of the Hill (1948)
• General Harold Alexander in Memoirs: 1940-1945
• Winston Churchill , Speech to the House of Commons on the Invasion of France , 6 June 1944
• Winston Churchill, quoted in Ambrosia and Small Beer (1964) by Edward Marsh
• George M. Hall, The Fifth Star: High Command in an Era of Global War (1994), p. 123
• Ernest King and Walter M. Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (1952), p. 612
• Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (1995), p. 144-145
• Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (1952), p. 464
• Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (1952), p. 465
• Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (1952), p. 468
• Georgy Zhukov , The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (1971), p. 661

External links

• ↑ 21 ARMY GROUP PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM THE C-in-C

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