With an invasion of Japan still an apparent likelihood, Patch returned to the U.S. in August 1945 to take charge of the Fourth Army headquartered at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

[5][2] Of German, Scottish, and Irish descent, Patch attended Lehigh University for a year, then received an appointment to West Point in 1909.

Originally interested in joining the cavalry, but realizing that it was becoming obsolete, Alexander Patch chose the Infantry Branch of the United States Army and was commissioned in 1913 on 12 June that year, ranked 75th in a graduating class of 93.

In November that year he married Julia A. Littell, the daughter of an army general, whom Patch had met while he was a cadet at West Point.

The war came to an end on 11 November 1918, at 11:00 am, by which time Patch was a lieutenant colonel, having been promoted to the rank a month before, and major the previous January.

[5] After briefly serving on occupation duties, Patch returned to the United States in May 1919 and, as a professional soldier, chose to remain in the army during what would later be known as the interwar period.

In 1924 he attended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and graduated there with distinction a year later.

[9] In the wake of Guadalcanal's conquest, the state of Patch's health, battered by his bout of pneumonia, tropical dysentery and malaria, forced George Marshall to recall him back to the U.S., after recovering from his illness, he took command in May 1943 of the IV Corps at Fort Lewis, Washington.

By mid-summer he would put his Oregon Maneuver experience to the test in Operation Dragoon, the amphibious assault of southern France that was pressed clear to the Alsace-Lorraine on Germany's southwest flank before year's end.

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.

[12] 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.

[13] 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.

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.

[16][17] 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.

[20] Patch died of pneumonia on 21 November 1945, two days short of his 56th birthday, at Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.