Your fingerprints are indeed among those of the perpetrators of the foul deed to my pore hurt arm.
In October the General had lost his command, and not for the first time. Allied Forces Supreme Commander "Ike" Eisenhower removed him as the commanding General of his beloved Third Army, which position had carried with it also made him Military Governor of Bavaria. The General had belittled the differences between Nazis and anti-Nazis, likening them to those between Republicans and Democrats. He was transferred to the Fifteenth, a paper outfit with no troops, no equipment and no mission beyond compiling a history of European campaigns. The intention was clear: he could continue in the Army commanding historians and clerks instead of the Third Army warriors with whom he had rolled and crushed his way across everything the Germans could put in front of them. Or he could resign his commission and retire to write the memoirs of his sixty-one years as a soldier and officer.But on the morning of December 9, 1945 the General had other plans: a noontime luncheon and afternoon pheasant hunt near Mannheim with his Chief of Staff, Lt. General Hobart Gay. Nearly ready to leave and curious as to where his driver was, the general's question was answered as 20-year-old private first class Horace L. Woodring, General Gay, and the General's bull terrier Willie excitedly entered the open doorway together. It was Gay who spoke first:
"General, the news just came over the radio from England; they're saying General Eisenhower's airplane has crashed flying back to SHAFE Headquarters, with no survivors."Looking into the troubled faces of the two messengers, officer and enlisted, who had carried the news to him, General George Smith Patton returned their stares, smiled and spoke.
This changes everything, Patton said, Everything!
