Alexander McCarrell Patch

Born at Fort Huachuca in Arizona Territory to a cavalry captain. West Point class of 1913, ranked 75th of 93; he chose Infantry over his father's cavalry, judging it obsolete. Commanded a machine gun battalion on the Western Front in the First World War. In the Second he commanded on Guadalcanal, the first ground victory of the Pacific war, and then the Seventh Army from southern France through the Siegfried Line, over the Rhine, into Nuremberg and Munich - one of only a handful of Americans to lead a division, a corps and a field army on active service. On 22 October 1944 his only son, Captain Alexander M. Patch III, was killed in action near the Forest of Paroy commanding a company of the 315th Infantry Regiment. His father drove alone to the cemetery in France, buried him, and returned to his headquarters. On 23 April 1945 at Nuremberg he presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Lucian Adams. He came home in August 1945 to take the Fourth Army, was hospitalised with lung trouble, and died of pneumonia at Fort Sam Houston on 21 November, two days short of his fifty-sixth birthday. He lies at West Point three graves from his son. Patch Barracks in Stuttgart was named for him in 1952.