This became Lt. Gen. George Patton’s show. The apostle of armored warfare was flown in from England, where he had acted as D-Day decoy, building up a phony force of cardboard tanks and planes that had convinced the Germans, into late June, that the main Allied landing would be in the Pas de Calais. Patton took charge of the newly activated Third Army and began an all-out drive across France at a rate of fifty miles a day, moving with furious resolve from the seaside bluffs of Avranches, into the Brittany peninsula, and then eastward to help destroy the German Seventh Army.
