Posted on 09/24/2014 7:27:56 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
It seems you’re right on both counts. The truck and Patton’s car collided nearly head-on, crushing the right front fender of the general’s Cadillac. Patton apparently struck his head on the railing above the rear of the driver’s seat, which tore open his forehead and started him bleeding profusely.
I made my earlier statements based on Ladislas Farago’s book “Ordeal and Triumph,” usually considered a reliable biography. But Farago has been criticized for providing sketchy and dubious information on the accident, relying on the testimony of an MP who (falsely) claimed to be the first on the scene. The eyewitness accounts of Gen. Gay and PFC Horace Woodring, both of whom were in the car with Patton, confirm your version of the events.
I have actually visited the scene of the accident.
One bio I read suggested that the superficial wounds were due to Patton's head hitting the interior overhead light. He was talking at the time and not paying attention to the road. The other passengers saw it coming and braced themselves. Patton was totally unprepared for a collision.
That is consistent with the accounts of Gay and Woodring, who both said Patton was talking about the piles of litter that lined both sides of the roadway. Woodring (the driver) insists he never took his eyes off the road, “not with two generals in the car.”
I did wonder why he was hauled all the way to Heidelberg to the hospital, but attributed it to the fact that Germany was in ruin. Perhaps that was the closet hospital at the time.
Had always thought Patton struck dome light with his head. Dome lights in those days were about the size of a hub cap! Metal bezel and fixture.
It was. And it was well-known as a top-notch medical facility.
Robert Wilcox, Target Patton presents the context and detail missing in the article and comment.The public comments of Patton regarding going to Moscow to finish the job were counter to the Marshall-Eisenhower agenda.
Patton was going to California to run for Senate and the White House.
The large truck turned into the Cadillac insuring the unsecured passenger would be catapulted into serious injury.
But the backstory includes Donovan, Bazata and the NKVD: from the above linked article:
But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".
His book, Target Patton, contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.
Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.
Thanks for the ping!
Thank you
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