Mediterranean and European theaters
In March 1944, after handing over command of IV Corps to Major General Willis D. Crittenberger, a fellow 1913 West Point classmate, Patch took over command of the Seventh Army from Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, who was then also commanding the Fifth Army during the fighting on the Italian Front. Under the leadership of George S. Patton, the Seventh Army had been the first American field army to be deployed in Europe during the war, landed as part of the Allied invasion of Sicily (codenamed Operation Husky) in July 1943 capturing Messina on 17 August and bringing the Sicilian campaign to an end. It was then reduced from a maximum strength of some six divisions and supporting units to a skeleton headquarters with relatively little to do, with Clark taking over from Patton in January 1944.
Under Patch's command, the Seventh Army was organized to participate in an upcoming amphibious operation in southern France, codenamed Operation Dragoon. For this operation the Seventh Army was composed of several veteran formations pulled out of the fighting in Italy. These were Major General Lucian Truscott's U.S. VI Corps and General Alphonse Juin's French Expeditionary Corps (CEF), along with numerous airborne units in support.
Under Patch, the Seventh Army invaded southern France in Operation Dragoon on 15 August 1944. Patch – promoted to the three-star rank of lieutenant general three days later – then led the Seventh Army in a fast offensive up the Rhône valley. On 9 September 1944, near Dijon, France, it met up with the U.S. Third Army, under Patton, which had driven east from Normandy. The Seventh Army came under the command of the 6th Army Group, commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. One of Patch's corps commanders, Major General Truscott, who commanded the VI Corps, which came under command of Patch's Seventh Army, wrote of him:
I came to regard him as a man of outstanding integrity, a courageous and competent leader, and an unselfish comrade-in-arms.
Patch's Seventh Army distinguished itself in difficult winter conditions during the Vosges Mountains campaign, clearing strong and entrenched German forces from the west bank of the Rhine and stopping a German counteroffensive, Operation Nordwind, while reserve forces were being committed to the Battle of the Bulge. The campaign marked the only contested advance through the Vosges Mountains ever to succeed.Arthur R. Wilson became the Seventh Army's new chief of staff around this time.
In the spring of 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, offered Patch a B-25 Mitchell and pilot for his personal use. Patch turned down the fleet twin-engined bomber because he wished to remain in touch with his subordinate commanders during fast-moving operations and preferred a smaller plane that could land on unimproved fields and pastures. Patch narrowly escaped injury or death on 18 April 1945, while flying from Kitzingen to Öhringen in Germany during the Battle of Nuremberg. His Stinson L-5 Sentinel liaison aircraft Sea Level was intercepted by a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, but the pilot, Technical Sergeant Robert Stretton, maneuvered the L-5 so skillfully that it escaped and landed safely at Öhringen. Stretton later received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the flight.
Patch stayed in command of the Seventh Army through the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, leading the Seventh Army in Operation Undertone through the Siegfried Line, over the Rhine, and then the Western Allied invasion of Germany into southern Germany. By war's end forward elements sprawled as far afield as Austria and northern Italy.
In August 1945, Patch returned to the United States to take command of the Fourth Army headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, but bound for the expected invasion of Japan.
Patch was hospitalized with pneumonia in November and died a week later.
