About the artist:

General George S. Patton was an amateur photographer who carried an Army-issued Leica camera, took hundreds of photos of the war he saw — ruined villages and fleeing refugees, ordinary soldiers and illustrious commanders, humble camps and his palatial headquarters in Sicily, where, he wrote, the maids all gave him the fascist salute.

Those photos today reside in the Library’s Manuscript Division. Patton died following a car accident in Germany just months after the war ended, and in 1964 his family donated his papers — including his wartime diary and photo albums — to the Library.

The general had mailed the photos home to his wife, Beatrice, to create a record of his wartime experiences — and, he said, to help set the record straight. “I’m going to send you photographs and letters so that some future historian can make a less-untrue history of me,” Patton told her.