Born in 1885, George Smith Patton Jnr. attended the Virginia Military Institute and the United States Military Academy at West Point. It is the oldest of the military academies and educates cadets for commissioning into the United States Army.
He competed in modern pentathlon in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Excelling at military influenced events he finished fifth.
He was a prominent US General who commanded the United States forces in the Mediterranean theatre and in France and Germany after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944. While well known for his exploits in battle, what is less well known is that he was also a poet and a strong believer in reincarnation and past lives.
Patton believed he may have participated in the Crucifixion of Jesus, and saw previous lives as a hunter-gatherer in search of a mammoth. He also believes he took part many historical battles, including the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC), Siege of Tyre (332 BC), Roman–Parthian Wars (54 BC – 217 AD), the Battle of Crécy (1346) in the Hundred Years war and the Battle of Waterloo (1815) Napoleonic war.
In his poem ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, written in 1922 he concludes that he is an instrument of God eternally betrothed to combat. The title of the poem is the first words of 1 Corinthians 13:12. In this poem there are the lines:
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.
He believed he had lived many past lives, but always as a soldier or warrior. The poem tells how he fought in a Greek phalanx against the Persians, as a Roman Legionnaire, as warrior in Crecy and as a sailor on a raiding warship. He also believed he was a general under Napoleon, fought with Alexander the Great, battled the invading Huns in central Europe, served under King Henry V at Agincourt and was a Confederate soldier at the battles of Gettysburg and Winchester.
One anecdote he often repeated was that during World War I while on his first command based in Langres, France, (an ancient Roman town), a French Liaison Officer offered to guide him around. But to the Officer’s amazement Patton said he already knew the town very well. Indeed, he was able to guide his staff car to the exact location of the Roman Amphitheatre, the Forum and the temples of Mars and Apollo. This despite that the fact that these building were ruins or completely gone. He went to relate to his French colleague how he has once served in the Julius Caser’s 10th Roman Legion and had been stationed in the town.
Even as a child, Patton believed he fought a Turkish army. As he became an adult these visions of past lives stayed with him and became more numerous. There are several books that have tried to catalogue Patton’s many past lives. These include ‘Patton: Many Lives, Many Battles’ by Karl F. Hollenbach and – ‘The Past Lives and Reincarnation of General George S. Patton Jr.’ by James David McColl.
In the biography of Patton, ‘Before the Colors Fades’, by Fred J. Ayer, Patton said, “I don’t know about other people; but for myself there has never been any doubt. I don’t just think it, I damn well know there are places I’ve been before, and not in this life”.