Old Blood and Guts" dies

Everyone who knows me, knows I'm a big WWII history buff...fanatic. So, I like to periodically blog about WWII stuff. Today, 63 years ago, General George S. Patton, Jr. (affectionately known by his Soldiers as 'Old Blood and Guts') was severely injured in a car accident outside of Mannheim, Germany (in fact, the accident occurred in the vicinity of Kafertal, where I used to live).

He certainly was a 'tough as nails leader' but proved to be a little too controversial for the U.S. Army.

"Along the way, Patton's mouth proved as dangerous to his career as the Germans. When he berated and slapped a hospitalized soldier diagnosed with 'shell shock,' but whom Patton accused of 'malingering,' the press turned on him, and pressure was applied to cut him down to size. He might have found himself enjoying early retirement had not General Dwight Eisenhower and General George Marshall intervened on his behalf."

On December 9, 1945, a day before he was due to return to the United States, Patton was severely injured in a road accident. He and his chief of staff, Major General Hobart R. "Hap" Gay, were on a day trip to hunt pheasants in the country outside Mannheim. Their 1938 Cadillac Model 75 was driven by PFC Horace Woodring (1926 - 2003). Patton sat in the back seat, on the right with General Gay on his left, as per custom. At 11:45 near Neckarstadt, (Käfertal), a 2½ ton GMC truck driven by Technical Sergeant Robert L. Thompson hit the car containing the general head-on. According to the book "Unexplained Mysteries of World War II" the crash was at a railway crossing and the vehicles were just starting up, this means the crash was at no more than 20 MPH. At first the crash seemed minor, the vehicles were hardly damaged, no one in the truck was hurt, but George Patton was leaning back with trouble breathing. General Patton had been thrown forward and his head struck a metal part of the partition between the front and back seats. Gay and Woodring were uninjured. Paralyzed from the neck down, George Patton died of an embolism on December 21, 1945 at the military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany with his wife present.