Greg Nutt posted a photo:

The General Patton Memorial Museum was built to inspire such reverence through exposure and education. Quality of life for each visitor is directly tied to the health of this nation and we strive to ensure each visitor leaves the museum with a renewed understanding of that. We are committed to providing a place to learn about preserving the past and ensuring the lessons it teaches us are carried to future generations.

The name General Patton was selected because he had actually handpicked the site and was the first commander of the DTC with Camp Young as the headquarters for the Desert Training Center, eventually training over a million men to go into the WWII effort. This became the world’s largest military installation both in size and population stretching from Arizona to Nevada to California.

The M3 Half-track, known officially as the Carrier, Personnel Half-track M3, was an American armored personnel carrier half-track widely used by the Allies during World War II and in the Cold War. Derived from the M2 Half Track Car, the slightly longer M3 was extensively produced, with about 15,000 units and more than 50,000 derivative variants manufactured (most of which were interim designs).

The design was based on the Citroen-Kégresse half-track. The developers attempted to use as many commercial parts as possible. There were also several dozen variants for different purposes. The M3 and its variants were supplied to the U.S. Army and Marines, as well as British Commonwealth and Soviet Red Army forces, serving on all major fronts throughout the war. Although at first unpopular, it was used by most of the Allies at some point in the war.

Although originally intended for armored infantry regiments, it was quickly put into action with the Provisional Tank Group when the Japanese Army began their invasion of the Philippines. Initially, there were multiple complaints due to several mechanical difficulties. These were rectified by the Ordnance Department after receiving field reports from the Philippines. The M3's first use for its intended role was during Operation Torch. Each armored division had 433 M2s or M3s, 200 in the armored regiments and 233 in the armored infantry regiment.

The halftracks were initially extremely unpopular and dubbed "Purple Heart Boxes" (a grim reference to the US Army's decoration for combat wounds) by American troops. The chief complaints centered on the complete lack of overhead protection from airbursting artillery shells and that the armor was inadequate against machine gun fire. Omar Bradley quoted in his report about half-tracks that it was "a competent and dependable contrivance. Its bad name resulted from the inexperience of our troops who attempted to use it for too many things". In 1943, the M3 served in Sicily and Italy and received positive reports of it in action. It went into service in 1944 in Operation Overlord and served in Europe for the remainder of the war.