It wasn't General Patton but General Douglas McArthur. I heard him say so in 1951 on our new high school tv, and the whole student body was duly impressed, many wept. As far as I remember, we were told McArthur had been quoting from an old American soldiers' song: "Old soldiers never die, they only fade away".

 

Dieter Zimmer, Berlin

According to the Penguin Dictionary of Quotations this is a line from a song of the 1914-1918 war. It would seem to me more probably British than American, but I may be wrong. The author is given as Anonymous.

 

Charles Harrison Wallace